MUSIC DEPARTMENT This year we saw yet another increase in the number of students studying an instrument at KEVI HGS. Our team of seven instrumental teachers deliver almost 120 lessons each week to students in all years. The quality of our musicians continues to grow and enables the music department to stage ever more interesting and high-quality concerts. SYMPHONY HALL We returned to Birmingham’s magnificent Symphony Hall to hear the resident orchestra perform a one-hour long programme. The concert was entitled ‘CBSO Dissected’ and it provided the school-age audience with a guide to the different instruments found in a typical orchestra. The music covered a period of almost 200 years and included operatic music as well as music for film. The students were extremely well behaved and clearly enjoyed the concert. We are indebted to Mrs Vaughan for arranging another successful visit to Symphony Hall and we look forward to returning in the near future. LONDON SINFONIETTA – ‘MUSIC FOR 18 MUSICIANS’ All of our GCSE music students attended a workshop/ concert devoted to Steve Reich’s composition Music for 18 Musicians. Reich’s piece is written for a wide range of instruments that includes: a violin, cello, two clarinets and two bass clarinets, four voices, pianos (up to four players at any one time), maracas, marimbas and xylophones. The first half of this event was an interactive exploration in to the musical genre of minimalism and Steve Reich’s ground- breaking minimalist piece. The second half was devoted to a partial performance of Music for 18 Musicians. The boys were extremely well behaved and appeared to enjoy the hypnotic nature of the piece. MUSIC FOR YOUTH Music for Youth (MFY) was founded in 1971 and aims to provide young people with an opportunity to perform in one of its annual series of festivals and concerts. We have entered ensembles in the MFY festival in the past (by submitting an audio recording for assessment), but this is the first time we have been invited to perform live in front of a panel of judges. The judges for our concert were the jazz musician Andy Grappy and the clarinettist Sarah Watts. KEVIHGS was one of more than twenty schools performing today and our woodwind ensemble was first to play. They performed extremely well, especially as the group included a number of Year 7 boys who have only recently started a woodwind instrument. The clarinet quartet played Yesterday and A Klezmer Wedding – two very different pieces of music and delivered two solid performances. INSTRUMENTAL PROGRESS EVENING Big School was almost full to capacity for our annual concert for students in KS3. The evening kicked off with our Key Stage 3 Dhol ensemble which included a number of Year 7 boys performing for the first time at a KEVI HGS concert. We enjoyed solo items from Thomas Brookes and James Rigby (trumpet), Corey Wainwright, Caleb Williams and Radleigh Camanzo (piano), Joshua Tran and Lee Nguyen (flute), Joshua Joji and Joshua Holdsworth (classical guitar) and Hayden Lightfoot (clarinet). We also heard the saxophone, flute, table, brass, string and keyboard ensembles deliver a wide range of music. COLLABORATION CONCERT This year our collaboration concert involved four schools: KEVI HGS, KEVI Handsworth School for Girls, KEVI Aston School and KEVI Handsworth Wood Girls’ Academy. The performances were scheduled over two consecutive nights, with the first half of each night devoted to two schools and the second half of both concerts delivering the joint musical production which involved students from all four schools. In the first half our string ensemble, led by Mr Beilby, performed Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious, the Clarinet Quartet performed Klezmer Wedding and Yesterday and we had two piano duet items. A mini musical called ‘Winter is Coming’ was performed in the second half. The musical relates the ‘trials and tribulations of staff and students as they return to school after the long summer break.’ The rehearsals for this musical started at the beginning of 2019 and resulted in a really enjoyable performance from all the students involved. A really big ‘thank you’ and ‘well done’ to the boys involved in this event. 37