on Royal Academy of Music (RAM) Concert

During the lunchtime of Tuesday 17th January, we were joined by a duo of impeccable Fellows of the Royal Academy of Music – Samuel Stopford and Daniel Peter Silcock a singer and pianist respectively.

Proceedings commenced with a lunchtime concert in which the duo performed a multitude of impressive and highly emotive pieces and the audience of pupils, including those from Newton Farm and St John Fisher who were invited to the event, was absolutely captivated. Samuel Stopford worked his way masterfully through the pieces, fully expressing the music’s theme of love through his beautiful phrasing, physical stature and facial expressions. He did an impeccable job of expressing the contrast between the joy of attaining love and the misery of lost love. An outstanding musician, performer and entertainer!

And let us not forget Daniel Peter Silcock’s masterful piano performance, accompanying and complimenting Samuel’s voice perfectly with his fantastic phrasing and emotive playing: you could see that Daniel truly understood the music and was playing to express the themes behind it just as Samuel was. Overall, Daniel is a fantastic musician too! After this thrilling 40-minute performance, most of the assembled pupils dispersed, very pleased, while a select few prepared for the Masterclass.

The Masterclass was an event in which Daniel and Samuel worked with pupils to improve their performances to their greatest extent.The invitation for the Masterclass was extended to all music scholars, award holders, members of Pride of Lyon’s, those in Quainton Hall’s Chamber Choir and pupils taking oneon-one singing lessons in the school. We commenced this event with a captivating performance by Upper-Sixth Student Karun (U6TCF) who sang ‘Come Away, Death’ by Roger Quilter with great emotion. The RAM musicians worked on capturing the theme behind the song (as Samuel Stopford did very well) and the song was brought to an extremely high level of performance and musicality. The audience could see Karun really working with the duo of musicians to improve his performance and this showed in the way he sang expressively and with great phrasing and musicality.

Next, we had a fantastic performance from Quainton Hall’s Chamber Choir. In their performance, they achieved a large sense of unity in the choir and the musicians showed skill in working to improve the performance even further.

Finally, we had a captivating performance of Leonard Cohen’s ‘Hallelujah’ by the Pride of Lyon’s. This song was performed with beautiful phrasing and skilfully executed harmonies. Samuel and Daniel worked with the group to further enhance this by bringing out emotion in the performance and really focusing on singing as a group and bringing the harmonies together.

Overall, these events were spectacular, and we extend our thanks to both Samuel and Daniel for this unforgettable musical experience. n