A new week begins! On Monday morning we were really excited to welcome new students to their first full day of Ingenium, as well as some wonderful new music staff.

 

This week we are delighted to have Tom Hammond at the helm of our orchestra. Tom is an Associate of the Royal Academy of Music, Artistic Director of sound collective, and Music Director of Sinfonia Tamesa.

 

Tom has chosen some fantastic and challenging repertoire including Sibelius’ The Tempest and William Walton’s Suite from Henry V in honour of Shakespeare’s 400th anniversary this year.

 

 

Ken Burton has led our choir for the Monday and Tuesday this week. Ken is known internationally both as a choral director and composer, specializing in gospel music. He directs two prestigious choirs in London, is called upon regularly as an adjudicator for national choir competitions, and has also worked on some of the biggest programmes on British television including Songs Of Praise, The X Factor and Britain’s Got Talent.

 

The choir launched straight into learning some gospel tunes with Ken on Monday morning, including ‘By the rivers of Babylon’, and immediately they were making a fantastic sound.

 

 

Our saxophones began with some new repertoire, including a beautiful arrangement of Debussy's Arabesques. We also welcomed our piano course director Simon Callaghan, who joins the piano team this week.

 

During the course of the day members of our orchestra had lessons with violin tutor Miranda Allen (BBC Symphony Orchestra, BBC Concert Orchestra, Royal Philharmonic Orchestra) and Amos Miller (Onyx Brass, Royal Ballet Sinfonia, BBC Symphony Orchestra). Our singers also had one-on-one lessons with Amanda Smallbone, Jennifer Snapes and Sophie Grimmer (Trinity Laban).

 

 

For our musicianship session we made the most of Ken Burton's amazing talent and brought the whole school together for a gospel workshop. The sound coming from the whole Academy singing together was absolutely spellbinding.

 

 

We rounded off the day with another team-building game for the whole school, playing a variation on Cluedo but in real life - and with Pokémon! Afterwards a well-earned rest was followed by more great music making on Tuesday, so stay tuned...

 

Musicians of the Day

 

Piano

Charlotte for a great lesson with Hiro, always being enthusiastic and for developing great rhythmic variations in sessions with Richard.

 

Saxophone

Katrine, for being consistently hardworking and enthusiastic.

 

Orchestra

Team viola! They were always ready to play, asked loads of insightful questions and were fully engaged during rehearsals all day.

 

Choir

Isabel G. P., for being focussed, energetic and always smiling.

 

Special commendation also went to Salome, for a really fantastic euphonium lesson with Amos.