St Benedict's Music Festival 2021

St Benedict’s Music Festival concluded with the Finalists’ Concert on Friday 21^st May, with brilliant performances from the winners of each heat. It was adjudicated by Andrea Haines of VOCES8.

St Benedict's Music Festival Final 2021 — **Adjudicator Andrea Haines; Festival Winners - Theo, Alex, Sebastian and Rory; Director of Music, Chris Eastwood; Headmaster, Andrew Johnson**

This year's Finalists’ Concert was live streamed from the Cloisters to parents, teachers and friends, with only a small audience of staff attending in person. It was good to welcome our adjudicator Andrea Haines, a member of the vocal ensemble VOCES8; no stranger to St Benedict’s, she has visited many times before to run choral workshops for singers throughout the school with VOCES8.

I have been really impressed by your bravery, your passion and your commitment.”

Adjudicator, Andrea Haines

As ever, a range of extremely impressive performances, on piano, woodwind, strings, percussion, guitar and voice, presented a formidable challenge in deciding the winners. Summing up the evening’s inspiring musicianship, Andrea Haines said:

“What a treat it is at the moment to be able to enjoy live music. It’s so wonderful that we can all come together to enjoy music, and we should celebrate it. Thank you to the students, and also staff and parents who support music here. I know that the music programme here is so strong and well supported which is really, really important."

Ms Haines congratulated all the musicians on the huge amount of hard work they had all done in preparing their performances, and referred to the particularly difficult circumstances which have confronted them this year: "It hasn’t been easy, I appreciate, and it’s daunting standing up and performing to an invisible, live audience. Thank you for your bravery. I have been really impressed by your bravery, your passion and your commitment.”

The annual Music Festival is a great opportunity for all our musicians to develop confidence and performance skills; everyone receives valuable feedback from the Heats adjudicator; in the preceding weeks, over 230 solo entries, involving pupils from Years 7 to 13, had been adjudicated by Nicholas Chalmers, artistic director of Nevill Holt Opera.