Music

Senior School

Music at St Dunstan’s is in an incredibly exciting position despite the disruptions of the past 18 months. Amid the challenges, we have sustained practical music-making while innovating our offering to ensure that there is a genuinely unique, exciting and inclusive musical identity at the College. Against a national picture where music education and activity has suffered tremendously, at St Dunstan’s we have prioritised musical activity amid the restrictions and are all the richer for it.

Though public performances have not been as plentiful as normal due to the restrictions, our ensembles and performers have many successes to celebrate. The use of an outdoor Marquee from September allowed us to continue our cross-bubble groups within the distancing requirements. Furthermore, the creation of year group choirs and orchestras in Years 7 and 8 has seen musical participation in these year groups really thrive. Notably, we were delighted to offer new opportunities in Music Technology Forder clubs, a Composition club and Music Appreciation Club that allowed those producers, composers and critical listeners the opportunity to contribute to our Forder programme. Michaelmas term culminated in the livestreamed Christmas service from St Augustine’s Church in December. Our slimmed-down Chapel Choir performed advanced repertoire with great musicality and balance to the cameras; this group is growing in maturity and we look forward to many public performances and evensongs in the future! Teaching Music remotely brings real challenges, but Lent term was remarkable for its solutions to these challenges, and the very real appetite from our students to keep practising and performing while at home. There was some outstanding composition work created, not only by our exam students in Years 11 and 13, but by KS3 through their Soundtrap DAW subscriptions. These efforts culminated in a series of virtual concerts that ran weekly across the term, including recitals from Year 7, Year 8, our Scholars and Exhibitioners and recordings of student compositions. Throughout these challenging months, it was really clear how essential Music is to our young people through the dedication and passion of their contributions. Trinity term was greeted with excitement as we moved into our fantastic new facilities. The new department space effectively triples the area available for musical activities for our students, and because of this we were able to welcome back all our cross-bubble ensembles. We look forward to further optimisation of the space over the summer which will

see works to our recording studio, recital room and practice rooms completed. Commemoration Day felt like the first ‘normal’ event in quite some time, and featured excellent performances by the Chapel Choir, Junior School soloists and amazing virtuosic playing by Piotr Burda-Zwolinski. We were also delighted to hold three days of ABRSM examinatons in which there were some outstanding results, and were a testament to the success of our instrumental recruitment programmes and the dedication of our Visiting Music Teachers. Both Florence Craven (Violin) and Eleanor Clark (Saxophone) achieved outstanding Grade 8 results in their instruments! We were so grateful that it was possible for the planned Festival concerts to occur against the sustained restrictions, and the performances functioned as a great unlocking of the fantastic rehearsing throughout the year. The Outdoor Concert was a vibrant affair showcasing our instrumental ensembles and bands, despite the rain joining in halfway through! Our young student bands, incubated in the ‘Rock Band’ Forder club,

excelled in their first public appearances and there was an extraordinary performance by Leon Bielski in Year 10. The inaugural Jazz Soirée was a riot of expressive playing and improvisation, celebrating the talents of our Big Band, Jazz Ensemble and student vocalists. We must thank Mr Harrison in particular for the stunning work that he is doing with our Jazz Ensemble, whose improvised performances here and at the Prizegiving ceremony were so polished and full of student enjoyment. Finally, the Festival Finale Concert, this year themed around Broadway classics, was the culmination of intensive rehearsal over the Festival fortnight. The Festival Orchestra delighted in performances of a My Fair Lady medley, a ‘Salute to Broadway’ and an arrangement of Gershwin’s ‘Fascinating Rhythm’. Ruby Robbins and Agnes Sales serenaded the audience with the Big Band in ‘When I Fall in Love’ and ‘Mack the Knife’. The concert culminated in a mega-medley of ‘Broadway Musical Magic’, with a massed choir of Year 7, SDC Voices and Chapel Choir. The concert, almost unthinkable in the depths of the winter lockdown, was a celebration of music-making in which the participants’ euphoria at performing was always on show. It even finished just in time for the football! At the end of an extraordinary year, my thanks go once more to the Music department staff for all their indefatigable efforts and to our students, so well supported by their parents, for their positivity, resilience and determination to keep music-making alive throughout the challenges of the past 18 months. We await a return to a ‘normal’ schedule of rehearsals and public performances with much excitement!

Mr D Oldfield

Director of Music