Music under lights

Press, 19 April 1986, Page 9

Music under lights

The lighter side of music shows through under street lights outside the Cathedral Grammar School in Christchurch last evening as senior members of the touring Wells Cathedral School choir hold an impromptu rehearsal. From left, the tour organiser, John Newman, harmonised with the school’s director of music, Timothy Goulter, vicar’s choral counter-tenor, Lyndon Pallen, and the organist and master of choristers, Anthony Crossland. Sixty people from the

school’s choir and chamber orchestra are on a three-week tour of Singapore, New Zealand, and Los Angeles. Of these, 39 are school students. The youngest is 10 years old.

Wells Cathedral Grammar School is an English public school where the tradition of music probably dates to before the Norman Conquest of 1066. These days it offers about 15 scholarships each year, to musically gifted girls and boys to

study instruments, mainly string instruments and piano.

Mr Newman said the tour was going well, although not without minor mishaps.

“Our choristers’ master, Anthony Crossland, was shifting furniture in the Auckland cathedral before a performance and managed to drop a form on his toe. One of our bassoonists gashed a leg on a hotel escalator in Singapore and needed

five stitches,” be said. Different acoustics in the various cathedrals meant the players needed two or three hours practice before a performance to get used to the sound, he said. One pleasant offshoot of the tour had been the number of New Zealand relatives discovered. All tour members were billeted with families and there had been many discoveries of uncles, aunts, and cousins. The choir and orchestra will give a concert this evening at Christchurch Cathedral.