participants and socialise with them, which was great as we that felt young and old people rarely get the chance to communicate with one another. All of the songs were inspired by the Old Masters painting collection in Dulwich Picture Gallery, so we went to view a painting, jotted down our thoughts, and then gradually turned these ideas into lyrics. We then came up with a melody, line by line, for each painting, and eventually created our own song cycle for all the pictures. It was very moving and impressive to see people with a degenerative disease come back each week and immediately recall each song. Sometimes it was a slow process, but I thoroughly enjoyed the experience and the music sounded great on the night and was performed with great enthusiasm. The three of us are very grateful to Miss Lofts for organising the event with Dulwich Picture Gallery and giving us the opportunity to take part. packed Great Hall with their winning Part Song performance and, for the first time in the Competition’s history, Grenville’s band of Henry Page, Charlie Godsiff, Archie MacCormack and Francis Aznaran performed their composition, which won the new Electric Music category. The adjudicator for the evening was Mr Andrew Barratt. Andrew was for ten years Director of Music at Kirkham Grammar School in Lancashire and is the brother of Mr Timothy Barratt, the College’s Head of Keyboard.
D uring the Autumn of 2013, I had the along with two other Year 9 boys, Kwaku Gyasi and Toby Bailey. This unique event, organised by members of English Touring Opera, aimed to find out how dementia patients react to music. On a weekly basis, ten or so dementia patients, along with their carers and the three of us from Dulwich College, participated in writing lyrics, composing music and then singing our creations in a performance at the gallery in December. Kwaku, Toby and I were invited to assist the privilege of participating in the ‘Visual to Vocal’ project at the Dulwich Picture Gallery,
HOUSE MUS I C COMPE T I T I ON
T he College’s annual House Music Competition for 2014 was won jointly by Grenville and Raleigh. The House Choir section was won by Marlowe with a performance of Billy Joel’s ‘Uptown Girl’. Spenser was second with ‘Sweet Child of Mine’. The Instrumental section was won by Raleigh with an outstanding arrangement by James Orford of ‘Oh’, I’ve never been in love before. Prior to the choir adjudication, Ollie Norton- Smith, Michael Howard, Jonathan Wolstenholme and Henry Shine of Howard entertained the
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