On Thursday last week, Mrs Henton, Head of the Music Department brilliantly orchestrated the Spring Concert, the first school music concert since the pandemic. Hannah Little, one of our Sixth Form students, writes about the concert:
When I joined Heart of England School, one of the first things I did was join the school choir. Since then I’ve continued to participate in the music department and found a great community where I could do one of the things I loved – music.
After lockdown finally ended and we could come back to school, the number of people who got involved in extra curricular school choirs, bands and orchestras dropped. The choir I joined in Year 7 had around 50 members.
But despite this, the display of musical talent in Thursday’s Spring Concert was a great reminder of why we all missed music so much during the pandemic. All performers showed huge amount of enthusiasm and joy to be on stage, sharing the pieces they’ve been working on since being back at school.
The school Choir’s 12 members incredibly matched the volume of the 50 members that I joined five years ago, with a brilliant first solo from Liljana, Ruby and Hannah, singing ABBA’s – I Have a Dream. Three members of the staff choir also very generously supported the group in their performance.
The music department’s auditioned choir, Chamber Choir’s emotional performance of You Will Be Found from the musical Dear Evan Hansen had beautiful harmonies and the a cappella version of White Winter Hymnal saw Mrs Henton join the group for a percussion section of the song.
The rock bands eight members from Years 8-10 gave a great rendition of Somewhere Only We know by Keane with beautiful vocals from Carys, Bronwyn and Evie as a last-minute addition to the performance.
A new element this year was the Year 7/8 compositions. These were music pieces composed using Apple Mac program GarageBand to match a short film clip as background music. The four pieces in the concert showed the results of the hard work that students have put in during music lessons.
There were also three solo performances from Anthony, Jacob and Oliver from Year 11 on piano and two performances from the Music A Level students, Carys and Noah, which were so inspiring to the younger members of the music department.
Mrs Windebank conducted the school orchestra with a performance of The Elephant from Carnival of the Animals by Saint-Saëns and school strings band String Thing played Henry Mancini’s Moon River. Both pieces were very elegantly played.
Finally, the boys’ choir, Score, got the audience clapping and singing to Shut up and Dance – by WALK THE MOON, to end the night.
Overall, the Spring Concert was a triumph and on behalf of the students involved, I would like to say thank you to Mrs Henton and Mrs Windebank for organising the concert so that we could perform.