Performing arts

FROM THE DIRECTOR OF PERFORMING ARTS

With the ever-changing landscape of 2020, we embarked on our 2021 journey with renewed enthusiasm, and so many highlights to look forward to... then the February/ March lockdown threw us all. Our world was rocked once again as we plunged into another lockdown on 17 August, a mere two weeks into Term 3. Sadly, many of our national finals were cancelled due to alert level restrictions, and motivation was a big challenge.

Our philosophy is all about involvement, enjoyment, engagement, growth and nurturing talent across the whole school; nothing will stop us offering quality co-curricular programmes. So once again, some 600 girls continued over lockdown with their extra-curricular dance, drama and music lessons via digital platforms. And with burgeoning programmes from Years 1 to 13, we are extremely proud of the high levels of student engagement across a variety of genres, despite these two challenging and disrupted years. As with last year, only some groups were able to compete in competitions; but all were awarded regional and national gold, silver and bronze, numerous ‘Outstanding’ awards, and selection for national finals. Despite some disappointments, students responded with resounding positivity.

Once again, the Dio ethos was demonstrated by our Arts Council, who early in Term 1 came up with the theme of ‘Kohara’, meaning ‘to gleam and shine, to enthuse and be passionate about’. I want to especially acknowledge Arts Prefect Rosie Leishman, who as Kapa Haka leader, brought a new and fresh vision to the role by whole-heartedly embracing ma - tauranga Ma - ori into the arts. She initiated projects, especially Dio’s own waiata in Te Reo, Kohine Ma, including a different whakatauki that relates to Dio’s core values, ‘whaia te iti kahurangi e’ meaning ‘be more than you ever imagined’. offering exciting weekly projects on the Arts Council’s Instagram page. Thanks, Rosie, for your infectious enthusiasm and for embracing diversity.

As the year draws to a close, despite the challenges, there have been moments of pure joy for the Dio community to share. The list of achievements, from participation to our top performers, is impressive and no-one can dispute the standards at Diocesan are exceptional. We are proud to remain the top girls’ school across the performing arts in New Zealand.

With the continued commitment of parents and families, the expertise of a highly skilled team of professional teachers and tutors, combined with our spirited and highly creative girls, we want to thank everyone for their ongoing contribution to our programmes.

From me and the team, enjoy the summer holidays and roll on 2022!

Instrumental mentoring programme

Over the years we have fostered student mentoring programmes within our cocurricular performing arts. This year has seen a special relationship develop between two extremely talented violinists, Esther Oh (Year 13) and Melody Xue (Year 7).

Both have had success as soloists and chamber musicians. Over the years, Esther Oh has taken out national and international prizes as a soloist, been a national finalist for three years in the NZCT Chamber Music Competition and has been Concert Master for our Symphony and Chamber Orchestras. Early this year Esther won a national concerto competition, and also gained a High Distinction for her LTCL Diploma (Licentiate of Trinity College, London), and was awarded an academic scholarship in music.

Our younger rising star, Melody Xue, is a real all-rounder across both performing arts and sport. As well as violin, she has Distinction G8 on the piano, led our Junior Trio Haydnseek in winning the Newcomers’ Award at the NZCT Chamber Music Competition this year and she is also a national swimming champion. Over lockdown, she came third in the national online Instrumental Music Competition ‘NOTE-ABLE’ with only six finalists selected from over hundreds of entries nationwide. She also won first place in the July SAPAC competitions, having won the Championship Cup for three consecutive years.

As a Year 7 student, Melody is our first young string player to be in both the Symphony and Chamber Orchestras and is currently being student-mentored by Esther.

Learning the art of directing from the violin in both small and large ensembles as Concert Master is something that involves multiple skills. As Esther said in her CAS reflection: “Firstly, respect must be gained, and this is usually the easy bit if you have a high level of technical ability. The tricky stuff starts with the ability to communicate with those less able in your group, and to instil a mutual respect amongst all the players in the group. As Aristotle said ‘the whole is greater than the sum of its parts’, so you need to foster connections with your fellow musicians, understand that creating a cohesive group is not just about teaching correct technique, but it’s about nurturing friendships and mutual respect in order to boost the morale and musicality of the ensemble as a whole. Focusing on building each musician’s sensitivity and responsiveness to my body language during a piece so that we can all ebb and flow as an ensemble is a challenge for everyone. We also need the chance to make mistakes so we can grow into the role as the concert master of an ensemble.”

With Melody’s naturally bubbly personality, Esther feels she will grow into her leadership role over the years. She has gained respect as a ‘rank and file’ section player; one who listens, follows instruction, practises her music at home and has her eyes glued on Esther throughout every performance. There is a blossoming mutual respect between these two highly skilled players, and with eight years between them, this is a rare combo. As the older more experienced player, Esther has recognised Melody’s gift and is thrilled to share her knowledge with a new generation of very talented young string players at Dio. But she added that Melody has to “get better at not losing her music and remembering to bring a pencil to each rehearsal!”

Melody Xue

Diocesan choirs and instrumentalists excel

BIG SING

With no competition last year, it was fantastic to see our Dio choristers excel themselves once again at the gala concert at the Auckland Town Hall in June. Our choirs have developed a rich and diverse choral culture here at Dio and we employ some of the very best young choral directors in New Zealand; the results speak for themselves.

St Cecilia Singers

Distinction (directed by Rachel Sutherland)

Senior Choir

Distinction (directed by Lachlan Craig)

Bella Cantoris

Highly Commended (directed by Rachel Young) Best Junior Choir (Years 9/10) Selected for Cadenza Finale Choir (Rotorua)

Senior Choir

Bella Cantoris

Bella Cantoris, our all-comers Years 9/10 choir was selected for the Cadenza Finale in August. On the day before lockdown was announced, they travelled to Rotorua and sang their hearts out, performing under the directorship of Rachel Young. As the only junior choir competing at the competition, they came away with a bronze award, which was a great achievement against senior choirs from schools throughout the region.

Both St Cecilia Singers and Senior Choir were selected for the National Finale and, along with the top 24 choirs from around the country, would have travelled to Christchurch, but sadly this event was cancelled due to COVID.

KIDS SING

We were absolutely thrilled with the results from our Junior School Chapel Choir who competed at the Auckland Kids Sing competition in the Town Hall on Tuesday 17 September.

As well as winning a gold award, the choir cleaned up with three Best Performance Awards. These were outstanding results for the girls and their director Mehernaz Pardiwalla.

• Best Performance of the Test Piece • Best Performance of a New Zealand composition • Best Contributing Primary

School Choir

Chapel Choir has never achieved so many awards at Kids Sing so it really was something to celebrate on the day Auckland went into lockdown! Singing a varied programme, the choir opened with the Kids Sing test piece, Red Diggers, Yellow Diggers by Richard Oswin, which was full of character and lively expression. This was followed by a beautiful and lyrical commissioned piece The Stars are Dancing by David Gordon, which was accompanied by the sparkle of Dio’s senior handbells group. The programme ended with the song and dance Kusimama in Swahili and English. The lyrics of the song are about standing tall on the earth with hope, strength, acceptance and positivity.

Congratulations to all the girls involved and a very special mention to the choir’s accompanists, Susan Smith on piano and Mary Lewis on percussion, who made the entire performance even more spectacular with their proficient accompanying skills.

2021 KBB Festival

With no KBB Festival last year, it was fantastic that our Dio orchestras and bands once again had the opportunity to work on exciting and challenging repertoire throughout 2021.

In August we took home a total of six awards at this highly prestigious competition. The largest youth music festival for instrumentalists in Australasia, it runs over six days, with 4,000 students from 50 schools coming together at Holy Trinity Cathedral.

With three silver awards and three ‘Outstanding’ and ‘Best Performance’ awards, this was such a fabulous way for our outstanding Year 13 musicians to finish the festival, all of them having participated since Year 9. And the icing on the cake was that we maintained our position as top-performing girls’ school in the festival – go Dio!

Symphony Orchestra (director Shelagh Thomson) Silver Award

Outstanding Soloist Award – Helen Kim (flute)

Chamber Orchestra (director Shelagh Thomson) Silver Award

Best Performance of a Baroque Work (soloist Esther Oh)

Concert Band (director Jill Christoff) Silver Award

Outstanding Soloist Award – Jess Marshall (trumpet)

Also, the KBB Honours Orchestra (the region’s best players) was led by Esther Oh, along with 10 Dio instrumentalists, the highest representation of any school in the region!

Symphony Orchestra

Concert Band

SENIOR CONCERTO AND ARIA CONTESTS

Concerto Finalists 2021 In the last week of Term 2, the brightest and best of our senior vocal and instrumental talent battled it out in the high-class competition that has become an annual ‘fest of the best’ here at Diocesan.

Two amazing evenings of singing and instrumental performances featured 10 vocal and 10 instrumental finalists drawn from 50 auditionees. Adjudicators Stephen de Pledge, internationally renowned pianist, along with rising star and vocal clinician, Clare Hood, both commented on the impressively high standards.

CONCERTO Overall Senior Concerto Winner

– Esther Oh (violin) Piano Cup – Erica Hu Violin Cup – Esther Oh Brass Cup – Jessica Marshall Viola Cup – Matilda Hol Flute Cup – Helen Kim

ARIA

1st place – Hattie Johnston 2nd place – Emily Paramore 3rd place – Holly Graney

Most Promising Vocalist

– Keltie-Kewan Young

Above left: Concerto contest finalists, from left to right: Erica Hu, Anastasia Sun, Jessica Marshall, Ella Riley, Helen Kim, Esther Oh, Eleanor Christiansen, Elsie Ji, Matilda Hol.

Left: Aria contest finalists, from left to right: Holly Graney, Emily Paramore, Hattie Johnston, Keltie-Kewan Young, Eva Wen, Sunny Zhang, Emma Parton, Arabella Tuck.

The beat goes on

The rock band programme at Diocesan continues to grow with over 10 bands across Years 7 to 13 under the tutelage of industry professionals Keith Millbank and Richie Pickard.

Three of our four bands entered into RockQuest were selected for the regional finals, competing against 31 bands in the Auckland Central heats. Dio came home with two great awards:

3rd place - TV Racket (Hattie Johnston, Mia Reid) People’s Choice Award – Second World Problems (Catarina Young, Talia Wood, Sabine MesserGoodall, Mia Hopwood-Craig, Vanessa Huang)

Unfortunately, BandQuest was cancelled again this year due to COVID restrictions.

Diocesan entered three Hip Hop teams into competitions this year, with some fantastic results. The NZCAF and Eutopia CheerBrandz regional competitions in Auckland kept the girls busy. All three teams qualified for the Eutopia nationals, but sadly these were cancelled due to COVID restrictions. On 15 August, our teams competed at the regionals of the NZCAF Hip Hop competition with some great results:

Haydnseek – Newcomers’ Award (Ella Zhang, Melody Xue, Mika Kurosawa)

NZCT CHAMBER MUSIC COMPETITION

At the Auckland finals late in June, we had over 30 girls involved in 12 different chamber groups competing at the Raye Freedman Centre. The overall Junior Award went to a newly formed Year 7/8 trio, Haydnseek, who also performed to the Governor General at the Gala Opening. All 12 groups did a fantastic job, played their hearts out and did Dio proud. Trio Elénk – Special Award for Most Engaging Performance (Esther Oh, Matilda Hol, Elise Ji) Haydnseek – Newcomers’ Award (Ella Zhang, Melody Xue, Mika Kurosawa) Petrus – KBB Award (Jessica Marshall) Ornate – KBB Award (Ella Riley, Sydney Bell, Sara MacGillivray)

HIP HOP

Senior Hip Hop Crew – 2nd in the Mega Crew Category Girls Scouts (Trio troupe) – 4th in the Mini Crew Category Junior Hip Hop Team – 1st in the Mega Crew Category and overall winners

Dance tutor Ashley Metcalfe continues to mentor these talented dancers, creating choreography for and with the girls for their showstopping 2021 performances.

Night of

This year’s Night of Dance was a fantastic evening showcasing our curriculum dance students along with the co-curricular groups.

For the first time, this event was held in the new Arts Centre, enabling the students to perform in a professional-quality venue with a sold-out audience of over 800 people. The evening showcased the talents, energy and enthusiasm of Diocesan’s choreographers and dancers and provided a platform for our students to experience the exhilaration of live performance.

Bringing together a variety of dance genres, with everything from Hip Hop and contemporary to jazz, Samoan Sasa and Kapa Haka, senior curriculum students also presented their own choreographic works showcasing their creativity, innovation and skill.

Night of Dance ‘In Motion’ was a highly successful event. Thank you to all who were involved, from performers to backstage support.