Sancta Maria College music students had a whirlwind seven days of concerts which reaped rich rewards at the beginning of August.

Starting on Sunday 6 August, our Big Band played in the finals of the Auckland Schools’ Jazz Competition at the RSA in Point Chevalier, coming away with a gold award. Other awards from the previous Sunday’s heats saw us earn a silver medal for our student-led Stage Band, whilst our senior combo, Dollar 64, also won a gold and our other two combos, The Rolling Johnstones and The Jazzatrons both brought home silver awards.

Monday (7 August) saw us take our singers to the vocal heats of Stand Up Stand Out (SUSO) and Milly Corboy has earned a place in the very competitive semi-final, which will take place at The Herald Theatre on 9 September.  We wish Milly well for this performance.  The following Thursday (17 August) saw the Band heats which Cesura earned a well-deserved place in the semi-final along with Milly.  We also wish them well.

Tuesday saw our Symphonia and Festival Orchestra perform at the KBB Festival. Our Symphonia earned a Highly Commended award, whilst our younger, student-led Festival Orchestra was a non-competitive entry and learned a great deal, especially from their performance in a mass orchestra of schools.  We had a breather on Wednesday, but on Thursday we took three bands to the KBB Festival. The Stage Band were non-competitive for this one but played extremely well. Our Concert Band brought us home a bronze medal and our Big Band won a gold!

On the Friday night (11 August), we had five of our students at the Honours Concert: Sofia Dela Cruz (flute), Daniel Pereira (double bass), Alanna Santoso (viola) and Jennifer Zeng (cello) all played in the orchestra, whilst Minky Kim played trombone in the jazz band.  It was late on the Friday night that we were told that our Big Band had been selected to perform in Saturday night’s Gala Concert, so after a frantic morning of gathering our instruments and equipment, we turned up for the big show and our Big Band did us proud.

Huge thanks are due to our band leaders: Lukas Fritsch, Hamish Arthur (not to mention our student conductors Megan Bottom and Kristine Guerrero) and all of our fine itinerant music staff.

The final results are in, and our Big Band won gold.  Concert Band won bronze.  Symphonia were highly commended, and our Stage Band & Festival Orchestra (non-competitive) received a participation award.  All our musicians should be very proud of their efforts and performances.  Congratulations and thank you to all the students and staff!