Oswestry School pupils had a fantastic time at the Oswestry Youth Music Festival last week. Over 80
pupils took part in a range of solo, duet and ensemble classes covering every section of the festival -
piano, strings, woodwind, brass, percussion and voice.

This was the first festival with our new Head of Music, Jonny Fitch, who did us proud preparing
instrumental and vocal ensembles from both Senior and Prep Schools. They all gave confident
performances of pieces cleverly arranged for them by Mr Fitch himself.

A huge highlight of the week was seeing 20 of our pupils take the stage to perform Viva La Vida by Coldplay and Mars from Holst’s Planets Suite in the Youth Orchestra class. They played fabulously and the room seemed to explode with cheers and tears as they were announced the winners of the class. Thank you Mr Fitch for your
hard work and for being such an inspiration to our pupils.

A huge thank you also goes out to our dedicated team of peripatetic music teachers who come into
school every week to teach a variety of instruments and who help prepare the pupils for their
performances.

Notable mentions:

• Will Oram entered five rock bands who had a great time at The Hermon Chapel on Thursday night with The OzRaptors (Morgan , Calum , Freddie, Jeffrey ) taking third place despite being some of the youngest performers in the class.
• Sylvie Reverdy’s Prep School Cello Ensemble Cellissimo (Arthur , Edward , Charlotte , Oliver ) retained their class trophy for a second year.
• Sam Snowden’s Vocal Ensemble Oswestry School Voices (Ella , Ffion , Elisa , Daniel , Akaash) performed two extremely difficult one voice per part repertoire to take the win.

Not all festival highlights are trophies - Honourable mentions go to:

• Sammy who looked so self-assured as he performed in the musical theatre class achieving a well deserved third place.
• Darcey who performed well in several classes on her flute but also stepped out of her comfort zone to sing in a small ensemble with Lottie and a friend from another school.
• Wang and Ed who both took second places in the hotly-contested Piano Solo classes (as well as Wang's two wins in duet classes).
• Isla whose poised and well-prepared performances earned her a 2nd and a 3rd in the Vocal Solo classes.
• Akaash and Anya who both moved up to the 21 & under age group in the Vocal classes and achieved good placings (2 x 2nds Akaash; 3rd Anya).
• Daniel whose performance skills are now as impressive as his voice, earning him 2 second places as well as one win.

Some of our international boarders showed us how we “Do Things Differently” at Oswestry School...
Zeya, Tinna and Ferenc brought KPop to Oswestry and Elisa astonished the adjudicator and audience when she performed When I’m Gone, AKA The Cup Song from the movie Pitch Perfect earning the win with a rarely awarded Outstanding mark.

We applaud every pupil who took part in the festival for their hard work in preparing for the event and
their courage to stand up and perform.

Oswestry School pupils achieved 31 placings, and 11 trophies. Roll call of trophy winners: