The Summer Concert is always a well-anticipated event and our musicians certainly lived up to the high standards that they set themselves, producing an outstanding evening of music; with a wide range of style and ensemble, the audience were wowed by the quality of what they heard.
Opening the concert was the Concert Band, composed of players from year 7 to 9 and they put on a fantastic performance. From ‘Goldfinger’ to ‘The Sweeney’, they provided a brilliant opening and showed that despite being one of the younger groups, this in no way compromised on ability or standard. We then moved to the vocal duet of Roise and Emily who sang ‘Flight’ absolutely beautifully, really moving the audience. The Concert Choir was next with a change of pace; they sang ‘Wake Me Up’ and ‘Dynamite’ brilliantly and had everyone tapping their toes! Keeping in that vein, Ellie then gave us a great rendition of ‘Valarie’ before something more ‘classical’. The String Group treated us to the fourth movement of Schbert’s famous ‘Trout’ Quintet with Shao Shen as our pianist, before they took us back to the noughties with ‘Chasing Cars’, moving seamlessly between styles with absolutely no loss of skill.
After a short interval, the College Choir started the second half in a more meditative frame of mind; a serene performance of Ave Generosa’ was followed by a tender rendition of The Seal Lullaby, both demonstrating great attention to balance, dynamics and articulation. The College Choir dispersed leaving the Chamber Choir to follow up in a similar vein with ‘And So It Goes’ in a lovely arrangement by Chilcott. We were then treated to two solos from our A level musicians; Georgie played Resignation by Dancla, demonstrating the amazing talent she has before Millie showed a similar calibre in her rendition of ‘Maybe Love’ from Shucked. The concert was rounded off by the College Orchestra showcasing their superb ensemble skills. A fiery rendition of the opening movement of Haydn’s Symphony No 26 in D minor was followed by a complete contrast; the dreamy and evocative Gymnopdie No 1 by Satie. To finish, they performed ‘Stars and Stripes Forever’, a rousing and energetic finale to the concert.
In what is already a busy term of performances and exams, the musicians of Queen’s once again showed how they can balance all their commitments and produce music of an outstanding quality. Many congratulations to them for once again providing an outstanding evening of music.
