A wonderful day of music was enjoyed on Monday 28 February when our top musicians from the Fourth and Remove Forms competed in our annual Junior Instrumental and Singing Prize Competition. Boys competed for prizes within the following categories: Strings, Woodwind, Brass, Piano, Organ, Percussion and Voice.
We were delighted to welcome six visiting adjudicators to judge the performances. Tim Smedley for strings (The Martin Hughes Cup), Andy Tweed for woodwind, James Richardson for brass (The Guy Bennett Cup), Matt French for percussion, Alice Turner for organ and piano (The Marcus Tsang Cup) and Tom Williams for the singing prize.
With all the categories running in one day, the adjudicators were able to listen to all the performances, confer, and award an overall Bedford School Junior Young Musician of the Year.
This year the much-coveted title went to Fourth Former Harry L’Estrange who performed Wolf’s Spring can really hang you up the most on the piano and Bach’s Sonata No.1, 3rd Movement on violin.
Jonathan Sanders, Director of Music, said, “We had a wonderful day of music-making in the Music School with nearly 50 boys from the Fourth and Remove forms competing in seven different categories to win the Junior Music Prizes. Six visiting adjudicators joined us for the afternoon and evening and judged each individual competition. At the end of the day, they selected their best performer of the day, who has been awarded the Junior Young Musician of the Year prize. It was so encouraging to see so many young musicians getting involved and playing their very best.”
Prize winners in each category:
Junior String Prize: Harry L’Estrange (violin)
Junior Singing Prize: Angus Timmins
Junior Brass Prize: Kieran Hamel-Henn (trumpet)
Junior Woodwind Prize: Selim Sheikh (saxophone)
Junior Piano Prize (joint winners): Harry L’Estrange/Sam McMurran
Junior Percussion Prize: Yutian (Eric) He (drum kit)
Junior Organ Prize: Alby Chan
You can watch all the entries for each of the categories here: