The Music Department at St Ursulas is led by Ms N Johnson. The Curriculum embraces Music from many cultures and periods of History. Lessons always include practical music making opportunities developing pupils' Performing, Composing and Appraisal skills.
St Ursula's has a very successful Choir and Orchestra and Musical worship is included in Main Hall Assemblies and regular Masses at our local Church, Our Lady Star of the Sea.
St Ursula’s Choir or StUC as they have become known have recently achieved huge recognition by achieving a place in the Grand Final of the Jack Petchey Glee Club Challenge.
Along with hundreds of other young people StUC entered the Competition in June 2011 by submitting a video of their performance of Joyful Joyful. We received a phone call in July saying that we had been successful and won a place in the Regional Final at the Broadway Theatre in Catford.
StUC attended a Boot Camp during the Summer Holiday where they worked with a professional Musical Director, Choreographer, Sound Designer and Stage Manager to tweak their numbers. They worked extremely hard with extra rehearsals every week and even before all the other girls were at school. The week before the Regional Final StUC performed their two numbers to the whole school receiving rapturous applause and a great deal of support.
The Regional Final arrived and after 8 hours of rehearsals the show finally started. StUC performed amazingly and the standard across the board was incredibly high. Of the 10 Acts only 3 were chosen to progress to the Grand Final at the Savoy Theatre in the West End. It was nail biting end to a long day as WHS Glee and Soul Mates were selected. The eight remaining Acts stood on stage, holding their breath, waiting to find out who had won the last place… When St Ursula’s Choir was announced the whole theatre exploded with cheers – an amazing moment for the under dogs of the competition. Most of the other Acts are Theatre Schools and St Ursula’s has done so well to have made it to the top 10!!
On Saturday 5th November StUC will attend a second Boot Camp to perfect the final numbers and then on Sunday 20th November the girls will be performing in the West End, battling it out to be crowned The Jack Petchey Glee Club Champions and win the Grand Prize of £2,000 worth of prizes for their group.
Click here to see the pictures of the first Boot Camp.
On Enrichment Day a group of Year 10 students went down to Natwest Bank in Greenwich to sing Christmas Carols to raise money for Charity. Well done ladies, you sounded fabulous and every one involved had a great time!
St Ursula’s Chamber Orchestra
On Wednesday 13th March St Ursula’s Chamber Orchestra were invited to perform at the Do the Right Thing, Young Citizen of the Year Award Ceremony. This event was organised by Greenwich Council’s Education Business Partnership and was attended by a number of VIPS.
Sheena Davis, Darlene Bio, Olga Bakay, Danielle Blasse, Anna Coughlan and Samara McDonald performed brilliantly. They each received a letter of thanks and a voucher from the EBP. The event organisers sent a letter saying “the high quality of the playing and the range of pieces played was extremely enjoyable for everyone” and our music “really made the evening”.
GCSE Music Compositions by Shirley Lui and Bonnie Bratton
On Friday 18th February, members of
St Ursula’s Choir enjoyed a gospel singing workshop with the Mbawula Township Choir
Our Day at the Workshop
The workshop consisted of vocal exercises and learning songs which happened in a time bracket of an hour and 50 minutes. From 1.30 pm until the end of the day, we sang a medley of South African songs: one gospel, one secular and one like an allegiance to South Africa. Our activity area was St Angela’s.
The fun started as we were first introduced to our guides, who were opera singers, one ironically from South Africa. We then went through very interesting vocal exercises which gradually lead us to harmonisation practice. A similar tune was then fit into our first song with the memorable phrase “U Jehovah’ in it. We were also introduced to how to click sing which enchanted us at first, but we eventually got used to it, some of us anyway!
We then whizzed through two other songs with harmonic accompaniments and at the end of the workshop we performed for Year 7 classes with the adlibbing of fantastic Year 11 vocals. As we finished our performance with pride and the satisfied looks of our audience, we show our potential as children who learn and perform to our best ability, which was the purpose of this day, to learn, to have fun and to prove our talents in the field of music. The workshop had the range of Years 7 to 11, all showing our overall dedication to music.
Darlene Bio – Year 9 Elias
South African Singing Workshop
The room was full of bemusement the first time we heard the songs sung to us after a rather interesting and enjoyable warm up. We listened with intent before it seemed it was our go. We sang at first, a little hesitantly, before we got into a three part choir. As we grew louder, the room became full of harmony. This was all thanks to the two amazing coaches who led us in three fantastic songs.
The enthusiasm in the hall was immense. With the help of some truly awesome Year 11’s, we could lead ourselves. Just as we learnt our last lyrics, a small audience joined us, along with Mr Davies and Mrs Warnock. We performed our afternoon’s work and I have to say I think it went quite well.
Matilda Boyer – Year 9 Elias
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