The Spring Concert 2018

This year’s Spring Concert included a wide variety of styles, from baroque string music through to a rock band playing Metallica. The evening started with the Brass Ensemble playing the traditional Morris dance tune, English Country Gardens and the theme from The Great Escape. All of Year 7 then took to the stage to sing Michael Hurd’s cantata Jonah Man Jazz. There was a marked change in mood as Michael Forsyth beautifully captured the melancholy of the first movement of Elgar’s Cello Concerto.

In a concert of contrasts the Big Band filled the Chapel with the joyous sounds of the Swing era, before rounding off their set with Antônio Carlos Jobim’s foot tapping The Girl from Ipanema, merging jazz with traditional Brazilian rhythms.

The Senior String Quartet then took us back some two hundred years, performing a Rondeau by the French composer Jean-Joseph Mouret followed perhaps by the biggest contrast to round off the evening as the rock musicians took to the stage to finish with a bang. Starting with Apache, with Alex Miller playing the guitar solo they then went into an arrangement of Michael Jackson’s Human Nature before launching into Hotel California, which ended with Toby Freeman and Mr Harrison playing the iconic guitar solo. Metallica’s Nothing Else Matters took the tempo down a little with some strong vocals from Hannah Goates in a sensitive performance. The audience had been warned that there might be an encore, so they weren’t going to let the performers go without hearing at least one more song.  With the audience applause now focused on clapping along to the beat of Queen’s Crazy Little Thing Called Love, Benjamin Brick’s powerful vocals brought the concert to a conclusion.

Many thanks and congratulations to all the students and staff that made this such an enjoyable evening of music making.