An incredible second day of Summer School on a (mostly) sunny Tuesday at Trent College.
Rehearsals for choir, orchestra, sax ensemble, string orchestra and wind band (busy, busy!) continued throughout the morning (fuelled by regular top ups of tea, coffee and biscuits of course!).
Today’s guests, all-female a capella quintet Papagena blew the roof off the chapel and received a standing ovation at the end of their lunchtime recital for Summer School participants. Their programme, aptly named ‘Nuns and Roses’ featured hauntingly beautiful melodies of traditional Ukrainian lullabies and Georgian hymns all the way through to ‘hard rock’ Guns ‘n’ Roses Sweet Child o’ mine and finishing with The woman’s ‘If’ – a work commissioned for Papagena and based on Caitlin Moran’s female perspective to Rudyard Kipling’s If. Many of the pieces in the programme were also arranged by members of the group. Simply amazing.
Papagena then led the choir in a workshop, teaching them one of the pieces from their recital and working on some of the repertoire chosen by Hilary for this year’s course.
Further rehearsals in the afternoon led to Tuesday’s ‘sharing concert’ – where the singers perform the players and the players perform to the singers. A short session to share items that won’t feature in the final Showcase Concert – from the choir with Hilary (with Richard’s debut performance on the drums…), the sax ensemble with Keiron, the string orchestra with Rob and the wind band, again with Keiron performing A Single Step of his own composition.
That wraps up another busy Summer School day, bring on the finale!
#SummerSchool2023