Rangi Ruru girls’ chorale

Press, 29 June 1988, Page 20

Rangi Ruru girls’ chorale

The Rangi Ruru Girls’ Chorale will give a concert this evening at 8 p.m. in the State Trinity Centre. The choir leaves soon for Australia where it has been invited to sing at the International Society for Music Education conference in Canberra, next month. There the chorale will join choirs from Australia, Canada, Finland, Hong Kong, Iceland, Japan, Sweden and the United States of America to present three recitals to music educators from around the world.

While in Australia the chorale will give concerts at schools in Canberra and Brisbane, and most of the girls will also perform at Expo ’BB as members of the school’s choir, jazz band or dance ensemble. The chorale’s repertoire includes sacred and secular songs from the sixteenth century to the present day, and represents English, German, Hungarian and New Zealand composers. Four New Zealand composers’ works and arrangements of Maori

songs will be presented — compositions by John Ritchie and Dorothy Buchanan, and songs commissioned with funding assistance by the New Zealand Composers’ Foundation by Anthony Ritchie and Felicity Williams, a former pupil, who will conduct her own compositions.

The head of music at Rangi Ruru for the last 15 years, Glenys Drummond, has trained the senior chorale for most of that time. The chorale’s accompanist, Jeanette Hick-

ford, will be joined in some numbers of choir members playing flute, cello, and percussion instruments, and a small ensemble dance will perform in a few songs.

Guest soloist for the concert will be Helen Bush, a senior performance student at the University of Canterbury and a former pupil of. the school. Other solo items will be provided by chorale members, Heather McCaw (vocal), Sarah Kitson (cello), and Samantha Perkins (oboe).