Mrs McKinnell (Deputy Head of Music)

The Music Department was thrilled to be able to host String Fest on the afternoon of Friday 29th April. Having missed being able to run String Fest for two years after the pandemic, it was wonderful to come together as a school community to celebrate string instruments! All players of orchestral string instruments in the school were included, from Years 3 right up to the Sixth Form. They had prepared in advance of the day by practising seven pieces of music - they could choose their part from different levels of difficulty for each piece, making the experience really inclusive. Then on Friday, the students came together for the first time to form a huge orchestra, and we put all of the pre-practised music together over two hours to create 7 pieces for a full string orchestra. Repertoire included everything from Purcell’s Trumpet Tune, to Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious and the theme from Dr Who. 

It was lovely to also welcome our Years 3 and 4 students that were not performing to come to listen to the rehearsals  during the afternoon, so that they could experience a flavour of what was going on and get an idea of the experience of performing in a large ensemble.  We hope that some of them might feel inspired to try out a string instrument in future. 

During the evening, parents of our performers arrived and we were treated to a concert sharing the seven orchestral pieces, alongside a performance from our Senior String Quartet, a piece performed by Junior Strings and three solo items from Eva Ng (Year 10, violin), Olivia Ng (Year 8, cello) and Mimi Morgan (Year 5, violin). The performance was a truly joyous event in which it really seemed evident how much fun the students had had during the day. I was so impressed with our Junior School students who showed fantastic concentration and focus throughout what must have been a very full and non-stop afternoon for them. Our younger students really enjoyed performing with the Seniors, and vice versa as they produced a fabulous standard of performances despite such a fast turn-around in rehearsing their pieces. 

I would like to extend my congratulations and thanks to all the students for their hard work on Friday and in advance of the event, as well as to the VMTs without whom the event could not have been the success it was: Michael Gemmill, Dorothy Williams, Adrian Boynton, Elspeth Attwood and Mel Favel-Wright.