CHRISTMAS CONCERT AT THE ROYAL ALBERT HALL

Just after lunch on 6th December a coach of very excited Association members left St Catherine’s headed for the Royal Albert Hall in London. Current and former staff and parents, along with current pupils were off to the matinée performance of John Rutter’s Christmas Celebration Concert. The programme featured the Bach Choir, the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra, VOCES8 and our very own Head Girl, Ruby, who won the 2021 BBC Young Chorister of the Year competition.

Conducted and presented by John Rutter himself, this popular festive concert featured glorious symphonic and choral classics and sing-along carols too. We obviously particularly enjoyed Ruby’s performances of Silent Night, Hansel and Gretel (Humperdinck), Colours of Christmas (Rutter) and Angels Carol (Rutter) and gave a loud St Cat’s cheer from our seats high up in the Hall with a magnificent view of the whole auditorium! Ruby has accepted a scholarship place next year at The Royal Academy of Music and we look forward to following her musical career in the future.

SARA DAVIES (1968)

We were delighted to visit Sara Davies (1968) in Cheltenham in November. We had reconnected with her after she joined the 2021 virtual St Cats Presents talk, A Life on the Front Line by Anne Garrels (1969) Broadcaster and War Correspondent. She had tuned in to to see her old school friend. It was wonderful to hear that the two of them had rekindled their friendship and had a chance to catch up with each other before Anne sadly died in September 2022.

Sara is a writer and producer who has written drama documentaries, adapted books for radio drama, and regularly adapts fiction and non-fiction for BBC Radio 4’s Book at Bedtime and Book of the Week. She spent 20 years as a producer at the BBC in Bristol, working on a range of dramas and features before leaving to work freelance. She has won a Radio Academy Gold Award for feature-making and two Mental Health Awards for drama.