Wowing the Judges at Woodley Festival

Four of our talented musicians took part in Woodley Festival over the weekend of 8th and 9th March, delivering some stunning performances and racking up a number of prizes!

Taylor (Year 11) commented on the experience: “I think participating in Woodley Festival is very beneficial because of the feedback the judges give you and it also allows you to enjoy other people’s interpretation of music with people outside of school. Leighton Park prepared me very well for the concert with more than ten concerts per year training my confidence to perform on stage and also giving me experience playing in front of an audience. The teachers in our school are very supportive and lead us to make our music perfect and enjoyable.”  Sophie (Year 11) agreed, saying: “Woodley Festival is extremely good for the performance experience and has definitely improved our stage presence and comfort performing. It is also valuable and inspiring to meet other musicians with similar passions to your own and support them in their playing.”

The small group consisting of Taylor, Tom, Leonie and Sophie came first with ‘Moon River’ by Henry Mancini in their ‘Ensemble with 3-6 people Open Category’. Sophie explained, “The composition was arranged for a string quartet, but we slightly altered the part to make it fit for an oboe, clarinet, cello and violin as this is what the group started out as. We are all members of the Reading Youth Orchestra (RYO) as well as the school orchestra. I believe we did very well at Woodley festival, and it was an enjoyable experience. Meeting up every Friday at RYO has made us become close friends and I thought it would be a good fun to play in a competition, which we turned out to win and it has been a really enjoyable experience. In the comments of our piece, we were encouraged to play higher quality music, and the adjudicator could see the potential we had as a group and encouraged us to keep playing together.”

As individual entrants Sophie received Honours for her ‘16 and Under Recital Class’, Leonie received Silver for her ‘Strings Solo, Open Class’ and Tom is looking forward to his vocal section performance next week. Taylor also came first in two categories against strong competition receiving Gold for his Ronald Binge’s Concerto for Saxophone in the Concerto Class and Gold for his Paul Creston’s Sonata Op.19.  in the Woodwind class. Astonishingly, Taylor also came second receiving Silver in the Grade 8 class with ‘Czárdás’ by V. Monti, despite his clarinet being held together with plumbers’ tape!