On Friday, we were delighted to welcome our Vocal Music Fellow for this year, Sarah McDonald, into school. Sarah is currently Director of Music at Selwyn College, Cambridge, Director of Ely Cathedral’s Girl Choristers and Organist to the University of Cambridge, but she took time out of her busy schedule to spend an equally busy day here, filled with workshops and masterclasses for groups of singers and composers across all school year groups.
The Y5-Y8 choir worked with Sarah on one of the songs for the upcoming production of Mission Implausible later this term. Sarah began the workshop with a series of vocal warm-ups, stretches and shakes, before the real work began! Sarah offered lots of useful tips to help with their posture, tidying up the trickier rhythms, phrasing and breathing correctly (and at the right moments), all of which helped to lift the overall sound.
A little later, it was the turn of the Y3-Y4 Choir, and their warm-up involved mimicking first a firework, and then a little bird, which they all undertook very enthusiastically. After the warm-up, Sarah taught them a Canadian folk tune called the Paddle Song. They learned the song line by line, by listening to Sarah sing the line, and then repeating after her to get the words and tune committed to muscle memory. Once the song was learned, they sang it in a round, to brilliant effect. The exercise was great practise for memorising, keeping in time with each other and staying in tune!
Sarah gave three masterclasses to boys throughout the school who have singing lessons; they each performed a song they were learning, for inspiration and pointers, which ranged from technical to performance hints. The Sixth Form composers showed and played back pieces they had written, for observations and suggestions.
Later in the day, Sarah enjoyed a workshop with the Consort Choir, our joint chamber choir with pupils from Bedford Girls’ School, and her day culminated with the Chapel Choir, with whom she took sectional and full rehearsals in the Chapel. The trebles in the Chapel Choir enjoyed the warm-ups with ridiculously high notes, and lots of work was done on improving their psalm-singing.
Sarah was friendly, inspirational to all ages and had a fount of knowledge, which she freely shared; all pupils in attendance benefited greatly from her visit.
Sarah said of her time here, “An incredibly rewarding day spent at Bedford School working with choirs and singers from age 8 to 18. So much fabulous singing: very encouraging!”.
You can read more about Sarah MacDonald here.
