Page 8 - Abberley Adventures - Feb 2022

ABBERLEY ADVENTURES
8
Music
It has been a really busy half of term with lots of musical performances. Every child in the whole school has performed on stage at least once in the last few weeks, with the culmination being the Music Competition Week in the penultimate week of this half of term. During this week, 98 different solo performances took place as well as Patrol Songs along with the Pre-Prep Performing Arts Showcase. What particularly impressed during this week was the evident building of confidence with children enjoying performances in the smaller space of our wonderful Yates’ Theatre.
The opening of Yates’ Theatre on Friday 28th January was a wonderful occasion with solo musical and LAMDA pieces as well as a performance from our violin ensemble, Stringendo. Parents were welcomed in to watch whilst parents unable to join us watched online. Yates’ Theatre is now one of our favourite rooms in the school. It is a space with so much history and such a wonderful, quirky story with its journey from Stable Block to Victorian theatre to music classroom, to dormitory and now back to being a small theatre. The lighting and curtains have been installed in a sympathetic way to ensure the space keeps all of its period features and charm. The next stage of development for this space will be the installation of a PA system and projection for lectures. Once complete, it will be one of the most versatile spaces in the school.
We are looking forward to harp lessons starting at school very soon and are busy organising the hire of a school harp to be used. These lessons will be taught by a new member of our department, Madeline Kirby. We also welcome Janine Parsons to the music department after half term to teach the piano. Janine is a former Head of the Elgar School in Worcester and a very exciting addition to our teaching team.
Coming up at 7:30pm on Thursday 10th March is a big concert in Worcester Cathedral. This concert will be supporting the Martin Schellenberg Music Trust, which aims to raise money for the musical education of children, in remembrance of our previous Director of Music, Martin Schellenberg. The Junior and Chapel Choirs will both be performing in the cathedral and will be joined by members of the OA community. Each Prep School family has been reserved two tickets for this concert. Donations will be very gratefully received and will go towards covering the cost of the event. Any profits generated will be donated to the trust. Tickets can be bought and donations placed through Eventbrite by clicking here.
Thank you very much for your continued support of music at Abberley Hall and we look forward to welcoming you to our upcoming events.
Drama
The cast of Matilda have been working hard at rehearsals for the last six weeks. Now that the mock exams and assessments are over, we need to have a big push to learn lines. Even if they don’t have a speaking part, there are a lot of song lyrics for everybody to learn and there is a copy of the Matilda Junior Soundtrack on YouTube to listen and sing along to.
We only have one more Sunday morning rehearsal on March 6th. As it will only be just over a week away from our dress rehearsal on 14th March, it is really important that we have as many of the cast and crew members present as possible from 9am until 1pm. There will be a letter coming out soon with a request for costumes for cast members. We will also soon be looking ahead to productions for the summer term when both Years 3 and 4, and Years 5 and 6 will be putting on plays.
54 LAMDA pupils took exams at the end of January. This is a huge achievement for the pupils involved and requires a lot of work outside of our lessons. We often have to wait between 6 and 8 weeks before the results come back but we are proud of all the candidates who attempted an exam this term. We are already working on new pieces and there will be two showcases after Half Term where different pupils will be performing.
Art
The biggest excitement in the Art department this term has been the servicing of the kiln allowing our ceramics room to swing back into action with some exciting new projects. Pupils were able to fire their ‘Moving Fish’ which they constructed last term and others have completed the design stage and are now creating pots, tiles and sculptures in clay.
The Saturday Discover programme in the Art room has been great fun. Junior Art Club have made giant papier-mâché ice creams. They thoroughly enjoyed choosing their flavours and creating fantastical sprinkles on top. Senior Art Club have completed some super Pet Portraits and it has been great to see them choosing a variety of different media to work with. We have a watercolour Bruno, a screen- printed Bertie and a pastel Bella alongside charcoal, pencil, digital- media and I still have my fingers crossed that a crocheted cat is going to appear.
Project Sound is in the final stages of construction. Our sound- absorbing shades have been covered so we just need to add in a final disc of felt to direct the sound. We are so excited to put them up in the Dining Room, follow up with some further science experiments and compare the results with our initial findings.