On Monday 22 May, our orchestra and jazz band performed at the Kingsmead Senior School Ensemble Festival. It was a fantastic evening featuring performances from schools such as Trinity House, Oprah Winfrey Leadership Academy, St Peter’s College and Kingsmead. Our orchestra introduced St Mary’s with a swinging performance of Lefatse Le Monate from the musical Naledi. This was a particularly exciting piece to play, owing to Naledi having just finished its run a week before, and was a great depiction of the magical collaboration that took place between both our music and drama departments in the making of the musical.

Our jazz band entertained the audience with some “fan-favourites” from our rapidly growing musical repertoire. We started off with Cold Heart, an eclectic melding of Elton John’s nostalgic soundscape and Dua Lipa’s 21st century pop star appeal. Afterwards, we gave a reverent rendition of Winston Mankunku Ngozi’s tribute to Archbishop Desmond Tutu, Song for Bra Des. We finished off with a playful performance of South African jazz legend Hugh Masekela’s Grazing in the Grass. Both Song for Bra Des and Grazing in the Grass featured meaningful improvisation solos from various members of the band.

I would like to thank Mr Trollope and Ms Moelwyn-Hughes for giving us the opportunity to showcase what we have been working on in our ensembles and getting us “performance ready” through our many rehearsals leading up to last week. Additionally, thank you to Ms McKinnon for, as always, leading and conducting our jazz band through another successful event of music-making. Thank you to all the girls involved, in both the orchestra and jazz band, for taking time out of their busy schedules to participate last week at Kingsmead, you were all true ambassadors of music at St Mary’s!

TESSA DAGUT
HEAD OF MUSIC AND THE JAZZ BAND