Arts Week 2024 programme

ARTS WEEK 2024 WELCOME TO

Welcome to Arts Week 2024, and to another action-packed celebration of the visual arts, drama, music and the spoken word at Haileybury.

OF LOVE COMPLINE

This year’s theme is A Human Chain, through which we will explore the profound connectivity of all human life – from the life of our own community to national and international conversations. The Arts Week Lecture, given by Dr Gary Wade, will explore this principally through the poetry of Seamus Heaney, pointing us to the most potent connection of all – that of love. The Speech Day Art Show opening, a double bill of Shakespeare, a celebration of the Chapel organ at 25, A Night on Broadway and the annual performance of madrigals by the Pool at Great Amwell promise to confirm the rich diversity of the School’s artistic life.

The Arts Tent on Pavilion provides a focus for many of our activities, and will be used through the week for teaching, concerts and other events.

We invite you to join us!

Angus Head, Simon Bland, Jacob Thomas

5.30 PM

Arts Tent

Seamus Heaney was careful in his use of the word love. However, he ‘risks’ the word at key moments in his writing life such as the death of his mother and the birth of his first grandchild. This inaugural Arts Week Lecture, given by Dr Gary Wade, Haileybury’s Assistant Chaplain, explores several poems which celebrate the bonds that link us together in what Heaney calls ‘the human chain’ of love.

7.30

The Deputy Director of Music and College Organist opens this year’s Arts Week festivities with a show stopping concert of music for the organ. Celebrating its 25th anniversary, and the launch of his recent recording of the Klais organ, Hugh Rowlands presents Bach’s extraordinary Passacaglia and three of Schumann’s evocative Canonic Etudes alongside music written for the organ by such contemporary composers as Martin Martin, Cecilia McDowell and Judith Weir.

1.40 PM /SOUNDBITES /EMILY GROOM & HUGH ROWLANDS

Bradby Hall

Haileybury’s Head of Strings and the Deputy Director of Music perform a selection of works for violin and piano.

9.00 PM

LATE-NIGHT CHORAL COMPLINE

Chapel

Each week, members of the School community gather in the Chapel for Compline - the ancient service of Night Prayer. In this special service, the Chamber Choir will sing Finzi’s extraordinary anthem Lo, the Full, Final Sacrifice, and an art installation will be projected on the walls of the Chapel.

7.30

PM

A NIGHT ON BROADWAY

Ayckbourn Theatre

Prepare to be ‘razzle-dazzled’ by a selection of songs from popular musicals. Successful auditionees have formed a small company that have received directorial advice, costume and staging support to prepare their piece for performance. The event will be judged as a competition to discover Arts Week’s premiere musical theatre sensation!

1.40 PM /SOUNDBITES /SMALL ENSEMBLES

Arts Tent

This lunchtime recital showcases many of the duets, trios and quartets that have been meeting across the year.

5.30 PM

SPEECH DAY ART SHOW PREVIEW

SciTech

The Speech Day Show showcases the very best artwork produced by Haileybury pupils throughout the academic year. We will be exhibiting a range of pieces created by our talented young artists across the year groups. A selection of A level, GCSE and IB artwork will also be displayed in the exhibition. Join us to celebrate the achievements of our persevering pupils and to view what promises to be a stunning and varied exhibition.

6.00

PM

SHAKESPEARE BY HEART

Arts Tent

Pupils and staff perform from memory their chosen work by Shakespeare, with a prize for the best recital. This wonderful event is organised by the English department.

7.30 PM

Pupils from the Removes ‘performance drama’ pathway present extracts from a range of Shakespeare’s best-known plays. Having explored the popular modern form of ‘immersive theatre’ (Punchdrunk, Secret Cinema) audiences can drift between dialogues, monologues and group scenes, in a delightful, immersive setting.

Macy

Vths Colvin

1.40 PM

/SOUNDBITES /MASTERWORKS

Bradby Hall

Lucy Baker and other pupils perform some of the finest works ever written for their solo instruments in this standout pupil performance of the week. June21Friday

5.30 PM BRADBY BAROQUE

Bradby Hall

Soloists play in front of the Senior String Ensemble in a full performance of Vivaldi’s Four Seasons, whilst other individuals and small ensembles perform movements by Baroque composers and those inspired by the music of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. It promises to be an hour of very beautiful music indeed!

9.00 PM

MADRIGALS IN GREAT AMWELL

The Pool in Great Amwell

7.30 PM

LAMDA & DRAMA

SHOWCASE

Ayckbourn Theatre

Featuring performances from our highly successful LAMDA pupils, scene studies from the Lower School Drama Club and an original script written by Harriet Thomas from LS1, the Showcase event provides a platform for young writers, actors and performers to gain valuable stage experience and demonstrate their talents.

The Chamber Choir and Choral Society continue the longestablished tradition of singing madrigals by the pond in Great Amwell. This evocative celebration of summer will see the choirs perform traditional English madrigals and other secular music, celebrating in particular the 100th anniversary of the death of one of England’s finest 20th-century composers, Charles Villiers Stanford.

6.30 PM POP ON PAVILION

Pavilion/Arts Tent

The School’s pop bands and other groups perform one of the last concerts of the School year, in the idyllic surrounds of Pavilion. Groups and soloists from Lower School to Upper Sixth will provide entertainment from a wide variety of artists.

10.30 AM ARTS WEEK

FESTIVAL SERVICE

Chapel

This year’s Arts Week draws to a close with a feast of readings and music at the Festival Service. The Chamber Choir and Chapel Choir sing works by Byrd and Stanford, and the Assistant Chaplain, Dr Gary Wade, will preach.

11.30 AM

AVENUE RUN

Avenue

The annual and hotly-contested Avenue Run concludes this year’s Arts Week in a blaze of fevered activity. All are welcome to line the perimeter of the Avenue as pupils and staff career at speed to the finish line!