MUSIC Play on...
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s usual the GCSE performances and compositions were wrapped and canned before the end of term before the lengthy, and not-straightforward, marking process, which JRPT undertakes each year as a now expert judge of the system. With a large number of candidates the IGCSE concert included eighteen numbers and a total of thirty-six players who made up the solo and ensemble contributions. For IGCSE both individual and group components are required and these do not have to be made up exclusively of exam candidates. Thus it was possible to combine other members to contribute to a candidate’s exam and grateful thanks go to the four of them who gave their time and skills to that end. Everything from J S Bach, via Brahms and Massenet to Bridge and the Red Hot Chilli Peppers was performed in that mid-January gig and it certainly had a comfortable feel about it and served to indicate, where necessary, which pieces might feel more at home with something else when it came to the recordings. A week later came their successors, the second year Music Scholars, plus the opportunity for the smaller ensembles who had formed Wednesday Afternoon Activity groups to play in the same concert thus providing quite a wide-ranging programme of possibilities. After an absence of two years the term ended with the crazy ‘Novi Visit’. I say crazy because when asked to describe it the more I say about it the more crazy it seems to me to be. About 135 twelve to thirteen year-old boys arrive at lunchtime the day after our end of term, leave at 4 pm the next day and they too find it hard to describe – or so I’m told. The music department activity, done in future House groups gives each the opportunity to play, from scratch, a piece either in a percussion ensemble or learn, from scratch, a piece on the guitar. After twelve of those sessions all instrumentalists combine in Big School and the remainder, singers, make up a choir of about 100, and learn a song. The timing: maybe 35 minutes to do that. Steve Rhind and Julian Thomas did an amazing job training, teaching, coaching and coaxing them all. The groups then performed to all the parents who could get into the room successfully rounding-off the Novi visit with coordinated sound! The amazing Tony Maloney, Matt
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