CULTURE Instrumental Music
BIG BAND The Big Band, like many endeavours this year, was delayed by Covid-19, with the first rehearsal in Term 2. Despite this, the Big Band managed to put forward an entire programme of charts preparing for this year's Southern Jam Jazz Festival, which was unfortunately cancelled at the last minute. The band played at the O¯ tautahi Jazz Jam on 6 August and the Christchurch Big Band Festival during Labour Weekend and at the senior prize-giving. Big Band director Claire Oliver has done an outstanding job in this difficult year, having a profound impact on helping players at all skill levels to improve their playing and integrate into Big Band. This year has also been notable for the additions of several new players, and for having the largest number of trumpet players in the band – all from Years 9–10.
Trombone Michael Taylor* (Head of Big Band), Robert McClean, William Sudell Saxophone Nate Ovendale, Finlay Sharpe, James Burt, Freddy Scott Trumpet Peter Beasley, James Hadden, Oscar Stove, Justin Wang, Jack Simpson, Yannis Zhang Rhythm Matthew Brett, George Couper, Sam Cross, Robert Kidd, Luke Kim, Hugo Sudell, Nick Wilson CHAMBER MUSIC One of our strategic goals for 2022 was to see chamber music become an integral part of our College music offering. This genre of music is without a doubt the most demanding of music art forms and requires a real commitment and understanding
of both the individual and collective role of the performers to bring it off to a high level. We had five groups who went with the challenge. Two groups – the Berlin Trio comprising Joshua Hooker, Ryan Gu, and Jasmine Hooker (St Andrew’s College); and the Fiddlesticks Quartet comprising Joshua Hooker, Bruce Chen, Andrew Welsh, and James Griffin – reached the Christchurch finals of the Chamber Music NZ Schools’ Competition. It is widely known that the Christchurch district competition is the most competitive of all districts in the country, as the overall standard here is incredibly high. The Berlin Trio won the University of Canterbury Award for 1st place, and the Fiddlesticks Quartet was awarded the best performance of a New Zealand work. Both groups won places in the South Island district final, where the competition from the other South Island centres was extremely
178
Christ’s College Canterbury
Made with FlippingBook - professional solution for displaying marketing and sales documents online