Long Summer Night of Music and Fashion

I'm sure many of you will remember the "Open Letter to Hawley Place School", written, I note, almost exactly a year ago! In it, you'll recall, I ranted on about the length of school concerts, and the hideous inattention to any kind of detailed planning.

I am, it has to be said, going to whine again today. But my whining will have an element of congratulation this time.

Actually, the hell with it - let's get straight on with the congratulations!

Last Thursday night, I attended the Senior Music Evening event at Hawley Place. And it was fantastic! Really, really great! The quality of music in the senior school is SO far removed from the quality in the junior school, I have to remain amazed that the junior school refuses to reduce the length of their concert. I totally get that the kids in the junior school have less ability to focus en-masse, and thus I expect rehearsals can be troublesome. In addition to which, the usual way on which solo parts are decided, is to throw the question, "Anyone want to do a solo?" into the class, and hope that the children volunteering are not the worst singers in the class.

However, I wasn't going to grumble at past failures, my plan was to praise the lovely evening I attended. Of course I'm always going to enjoy watching Charlotte sing; she sings like an angel, and I'm a damn proud mum! I wasn't able to distinguish Lizzy's voice within the choir, but I was delighted that the single (note that, single) number performed by the Years 7 & 8 choir was clearly well rehearsed and very much in tune. And while, as a mum, I was mildly disappointed that Lizzy didn't get to have a little solo part in the medley, I wasn't the parent put-out by this decision.

Allow me to praise something else I noticed - support by the girls for their friends. As noted, all the performances were extremely professional, with only one performance producing a wince from me, but EVERY performance was greeted with whoops of support from the rest of the girls. I can't begin to imagine how much confidence this imparts in the girls who may be a little unsure.

And so we move on to the fashion part. I know Lottie was a little put-out that she wasn't allowed to wear the sparkly frock she'd chosen for the evening, but only the year 11 girls were allowed to wear mufti-evening dress. Even the year 10 girls were expected to wear a sort of uniform, albeit black leggings, and a red/black layered t-shirt. I get this, after all, there's little that can go seriously wrong with your uniform. Unfortunately the same cannot be said for the dresses chosen by the aforementioned year 11 girls. I cannot imagine a more unsuitable selection of dresses and shoes being worn by anyone, anywhere. No - there was one dress I'd say was classy, if a little old-fashioned, but the rest of them were, frankly, horrible. I very much suspect that my outlook on these dresses has to do with me being old, but, DAMN!!

And then there's the length of the show. At least the problems produced by younger children being able to rehearse their songs only once were alleviated, but 3½ hours is just TOO LONG! Longer than 2½ hours and the performance starts to become self-indulgent. I'd love to be able to get home by 10:30, rather than racing home with two very tired girls gone 11pm.


Still, criticisms aside, kudos to the school for a fabulous show! Watching shows like this encourage me that the quality of music in the school is only going to get better.