Onwards - July 2012 - South Wilts Grammar School for Girls

ONWARDS
The Arts Festival Poetry Competition 2012 – The Olympic Dream
Year 8 students were invited to enter a poetry competition as part of the Arts Festival.
It was designed to give students the opportunity to think and write about the Olympics and to
use their creative skills. Prizes and certificates were awarded and the short-listed poems were
published in an anthology given out during the festival. Well done to all the students who
entered, and special congratulations to Lucy Street, Laura Coakley and Bethany Puzio, for
their truly outstanding poems. Themed around “The Olympic Dream”, these poems explore
the determination, aspiration, pride and pressure involved in participating in the Olympic
Games.
All the poems entered are available for everyone to read on the English area of the school
VLE in the ‘Best of the Best’ section and in book form in the Learning Resource Centre. (Mrs
Coundley)
Congratulations!
Rachel Abbott has recently graduated from Bristol
University with a 2:1 Honours Degree in Music and
Victoria Clarke with a First Class Honours degree
from Leeds University. (Mrs Poppleton)
Chamber Orchestra
On 12th July we very much enjoyed an informal
concert of beautiful music given by the Chamber
Orchestra and held in the Music Department.
The orchestra, under the direction of Mr Parsons,
played exquisitely with great style and verve. The
members have had a very happy and hugely
successful year, and wished to play together for a
final short concert before several of their number left
to begin their university courses in the Autumn. (Mrs
Poppleton)
Year 7 Concerts
Each form in Year 7 is ending the term with a lunchtime
concert, which they will have organised and
advertised themselves. They have risen to the
challenge and prepared very enjoyable and varied
programmes. We are very impressed by both their
bubbling enthusiasm and their great musical talent.
Pro Corda National Chamber Music
Festival Prizewinners’ Concert
On Sunday 15th July 2012, I performed
at Wigmore Hall. Getting to this stage
was a combination of teamwork, a lot of
practice and determination. I am playing
as part of a violin trio, and we have
been playing together for almost a year
now. Our trio won the U16 section of
the Pro Corda National Chamber
Festival for Schools. The first round was
at Guildhall School of Music and
Drama, the music school I attend every
Saturday in London.
We played to two of the most senior
people at Pro Corda, and it was almost
like a workshop so that they could see
how we responded as a group to
coaching. In the second round we
played to the head of Pro Corda,
Andrew Quartermain. All went
according to plan and we learned a
couple of days afterwards that we had
got through to the finals. Suddenly, we
found ourselves heading up to Kent to
Sevenoaks School for the finals. We
performed to a panel of judges on a
huge stage at Sevenoaks.
This was the most important
performance so far. Later that day, I got
a call from one of my trio members
screaming down the phone that we
were playing at Wigmore Hall! The
Prize-winners concert was on Sunday
15th July 2012 at 6:00pm we all
enjoyed the experience. (Anita
Monserrat 9A)
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