THE ARTS

Innovation is the key to House Music Competition success

More than 100 boys demonstrated their musical innovation and creativity during the School’s latest House Music Competition. Boys from all 12 Houses played their own arrangements of classic songs spanning the decades, which ranged from Journey’s Don’t Stop Believing, Radiohead’s High And Dry and When The Sun Goes Down by the Arctic Monkeys to ingenious acoustic arrangements of Michael Jackson’s Smooth Criminal and Bridge Over Troubled Water by Simon and Garfunkel.

Members from each House arranged and performed one amplified and one acoustic song at the School’s EM Forster Theatre. The competition was judged on criteria including standard and variety of performance, musical innovation and age range of performers.

Due to Covid restrictions, the contest had a few differences. Instead of one large evening event, each House performed its music in the theatre at different times over the course of a week, with a maximum of eight boys on stage at any time. Performances were filmed, with a special show for boys and parents streamed on YouTube and also viewed by the competition adjudicator.

Winners of the House Music Cup: Smythe House

Runners Up: Ferox Hall; Welldon House

Cullen Shield for Best Acoustic Item: Ferox Hall for High and Dry

The Paul Gamblin Award for Best Amplified

Item: Hill Side for the Piña Colada Song

Best Arrangement: Marcus Siu (Sc4) for Shape of My Heart

Lights, camera, action…

Short Films Awards return for 2021 Tonbridge has launched its second Short Films Competition, this time with even more categories and glittering prizes. The competition is open to the whole School, with boys encouraged to submit an original three-minute film. In addition to the categories of best Drama, Documentary and Comedy films, this year prizes will also be given for Music and Poetry entries.

The competition was devised by Oscar-winning documentary-maker and former Tonbridge pupil Vikram Jayanti (Sc 1968-72), who has been teaching filmic storytelling at the School. In 2020, several stars from the worlds of film and television, including Rosamund Pike, took part in Tonbridge’s first annual Short Films Awards ceremony, which was an Oscars-style, online event, shown ‘live’ on Microsoft Teams in July.

Vikram said: “We’re expecting even more stars of stage and screen to join us for the awards ceremony in 2021, to celebrate the growing filmic talent of our students.” Each category winner will take home a state-of-the-art, mini video camera-equipped drone, the DJI Mini 2.