Winter Term Concert
The Winter Term Concert was held last week in a packed Thomas Arnold Hall and was a cornucopia of musical delights. A new, and welcome, innovation was the inclusion of twelve pupils from the Prep School into the Concert Band who played a selection from Frozen; how good it was to give these minors a major role. Other firsts were the guitar ensemble and all of Year 7 starring in Junior Singers who sang a beautiful rendition of Somewhere Only We Know, ably conducted by Jannike Smye (Lower Sixth).
Sophie Bourne (Upper Sixth), Tom Taylor (Year 9) and Diana Vanesyan (Upper Sixth) performed beautiful solos on the flute, voice and piano respectively and the choirs (Warminster Singers and Chamber Choir) were on top form as well. The strings showed their wealth of talent with some beautifully phrased Mozart waltzes and the Cello Ensemble gave a stout rendition of some music from Handel’s Fireworks Music. The wind players were represented by a rumbustious rag from the Brass Ensemble and the Flute Smoothies twinkled with Mozart’s Musical Joke and a seasonal offering from Tchaikovsky’s Nutcracker.
The end of the first half was capped with a pair of jazz standards given polished performances by the Jazz Band, but the highlight of the show was the first outing of the Ukulele Orchestra, the brainchild of Lewis Tomlinson (Lower Sixth) and Mr Williams. This 17-piece ensemble strummed enthusiastically through two classics: Sweet Child of Mine and Shout, with vocals supplied by Kathryn Rush (Lower Sixth) and Mrs Parrack respectively. George Formby, eat your heart out!
Derek Harris
Director Music