Music

With over 500 hours of instrumental lessons each week and a team of 6 full-time and 35 peripatetic music staff, music plays a important part in life at St Edward’s.

The Music School features 20 practice rooms, seven ensemble rooms, the large Weston Recital Room, a rock room, the Fenton Recording Studio, and the Ferguson Sixth Form Music Library. We also have an award-winning concert hall  – the Olivier Hall – with a 1,000 seat capacity, enabling pupils to experience performing in a professional venue. 

To see our musicians and singers in action, tune in to Teddies TV and visit Teddies Presents. Watch the video below to find out more about Music at Teddies.

 

We try to involve as many pupils as possible in some form of music, running a huge number of different ensembles and choirs. 

Our two Chapel Choirs, Symphony Orchestra and Concert Band prepare amid the perfect acoustics of the Weston Recital Room for performances at prestigious venues in the city of Oxford and beyond, including Cadogan Hall, St John’s Smith Square and the Royal Albert Hall. Pupils have enjoyed collaborating with professional orchestras and ensembles — including the English Chamber Orchestra, the Philharmonia Orchestra and the Southbank Sinfonia. The School’s location makes it perfectly placed to take advantage of the cultural life of Oxford, London and Birmingham — whether that’s performance opportunities or trips to see opera (particularly using our links with Garsington), musicals, chamber recitals, orchestral programmes or lectures.

We also encourage pupils to excel in jazz, rock and alternative music. Our Big Band performs in gigs around the county, complemented by our trad Jazz Band and improvising Modern Jazz Ensemble. Rock bands link with music tech, making use of the fully equipped Fenton Recording Studio (running Ableton and Logic), and there are a number of gigs and band competitions for the School during the year.

 

Pupils are encouraged to take part in chamber music and smaller vocal groups too. We run three Close Harmony Choirs, a strings Sinfonia, Junior Wind Band, Brass Band, and a range of different chamber groups for quartets, quintets and small-scale ensembles. Every pupil has the chance to find something within their range, and music activities fit into the co-curricular side of the School, so musicians can also be sports enthusiasts, artists, academics….we encourage our pupils to develop all their talents. Click here to visit and follow our pupil-run music blog. 

Watch the video below to see highlights from the latest Gaudy Week festival at Teddies.

To find out more about the huge range of music on offer at Teddies, click on the headings below. 

Choirs

The School’s choral tradition has always been strong, and pupils continue to enjoy the opportunities to sing with others and to be ambitious in working towards major concert projects.

We have two Chapel Choirs, both mixed SSAATTBB choirs and both 45 strong, which sing regularly in Chapel services both midweek and on Sundays. They sing a full cathedral repertoire of music, and have performed in evensongs around the country, as well as maintaining links with Oxford city colleges. They have had the opportunity to perform in the Royal British Legion’s Festival of Remembrance as the main choir in the BBC’s concert/service at the Royal Albert Hall, as well as in their own concert in Cadogan Hall alongside the English Chamber Orchestra and, a performance at St John’s Smith Square. 

The Chapel Choirs also combine with our Choral Society of parents, staff and friends: St Edward’s Singers. The Singers hold regular rehearsals in the Ogston Music School, and perform major oratorios and requiem masses once a term with a professional orchestra in Summertown, Jericho or Oxford. There is further information about how parents and neighbours can be involved with this group here.

A sub-set of the Chapel Choir, the Chamber Choir, works to challenge our Sixth Form major singers to embark upon more difficult works, giving experience to those who go on to choral scholarships at competitive universities each year. We are lucky to have good links with cathedral schools feeding choristers into St Edward’s and, with Oxbridge colleges and cathedral city universities on the doorstep, pupils can progress through each step with relative ease.

Beside the Chapel Choirs, St Edward’s offers a tradition of singing for all. Singing is important to the School: pupils and staff enjoy singing congregational anthems in Chapel services, and there is huge excitement every year about the House Singing Competition — a two-round (unisons, then harmonies) contest where pupils run very high standard singing groups of their own in the stunning setting of the Olivier Hall.

In addition to singing in one of the choirs in the Chapel and the glorious surroundings of the Weston Recital Room, we have a series of close harmony choirs for different year groups, to encourage those who wish to sing in harmony. These groups tend to combine 16-20 voices in SATB arrangements, performing in informal events during the term. Whether their interest is in singing gospel songs, spirituals, the latest dance tracks, or a recent Out of the Blue arrangement, there is an opportunity for all to take part.

Orchestras

The Symphony Orchestra combines the most advanced fifty instrumentalists in The Ogston Music School to embark upon some of the most challenging orchestral pieces in the repertoire.

Pupils at the School gain a very broad picture of orchestral music from all periods: whether it be a baroque concerto grosso, a classical symphony, a Romantic tone poem, or a more modern work. Recent school concerts have included a heavyweight classical programme including Beethoven Symphony no 3, a programme of dance movements including Borodin’s Polovstian Dances and Tchaikovsky’s Nutcracker Suite no 1, and a French-inspired programme with works by Ravel and Debussy.

The Orchestra tends to play one major concert per term, and during the Gaudy in summer (to watch videos of the performances, tune in to Teddies Presents). They have also played in major venues for school concerts and occasions, including Cadogan Hall and St John’s Smith Square.

Admission to the main Symphony Orchestra is by invitation only, but there are several training groups which encourage pupils to develop their ensemble skills. Sinfonia Strings encourage our beginner and intermediate violins, violas, cellos and basses. Wind and brass players tend to start off in chamber groups, but also have the opportunities of Brass, Jazz and Concert Bands in preparation for Orchestra.

Bands

The third major musical ensemble at St Edward’s remains the School Concert Band. Consisting of 60 players, this group undertakes major concert band repertoire, attempting some of the more challenging works available to this kind of group.

Recent concerts have included Holst suites, and Saint-Saens and Tchaikovsky arrangements. On top of that, the Band plays more popular marches and film music. They are heard twice a year at our CCF parades, providing the music for military marching and drills.

Behind the Concert Band, there is a set-up of other wind and brass ensembles, provided for by the many practice and performance spaces in The Ogston Music School. A Wind Band, acting as a training Concert Band, plays popular favourites and well-known theme tunes in concert band arrangements. The Brass Band plays a wide range of music from the traditional brass repertoire, performing at major occasions within the School, as well as serving the community for Christmas parades, remembrance ceremonies in nearby villages, and festival occasions.

And then there are the jazz bands! We maintain the tradition of three very different kinds of jazz, with popular and hard-working bands which give the pupils the opportunity to play in garden parties, jazz evenings and clubs and receptions outside the walls of the School. The 20-piece Big Band plays a mixture of traditional and modern charts — from Glenn Miller to the latest improvisatory arrangements. The 7-piece Dixieland Jazz Band retains the 1920s spirit — charlestons, rags and blues to entertain the masses — in a band which is, whilst directed by a member of staff, entirely led by the pupils themselves. The Modern Jazz Ensemble then encourages pupils to go “off the page”: learning to express themselves through improvisation, working with a tight-knit group to produce excitingly inventive and creative ideas.

Chamber Music

The School works hard at getting as many pupils as possible to work with others in a small ensemble, in order to understand the beauty and the challenges of chamber music.

As part of GCSE, A Level and IB study, every pupil involved in academic music is encouraged to set up a trio, quartet or quintet — and several lunchtime slots in the School calendar are cleared to enable these groups to meet, practise and develop their musical ideas in the Ogston Music School’s generous selection of spaces.

Other pupils from Fourth Form and upwards are also encouraged to join the chamber music programme. There are ample opportunities to perform in these, and in solos which are in progress, as part of our ‘Friday at Five’ concerts in the Weston Recital Room. These are kept very informal indeed, with pupils quietly supporting one another in pieces of grade 1 to 8, Shell to Upper Sixth performers, and every style from classical to pop, jazz to folk.

Rock, Pop and Music Tech

St Edward’s embraces developments in music, particularly in the material being produced from sequencing and composing software, and in the possibilities of using the Fenton Recording Studio creatively.

We have a set-up of 6 Macs running Ableton and Logic, and these are also connected up to a live room in the Fenton Recording Studio, enabling full recording facilities for any soloist, ensemble or choir.

Music Technology is therefore introduced to every Shell in their first year, and is then offered in a series of workshops as they progress through the School. Those who wish to particularly develop this area can take up the 1:1 lessons (as per an instrumental lesson) with a recording engineer/composer, or take up the options as part of the GCSE Music course. We also offer an A Level in Music Technology.

The rock and pop bands then link up with music tech. In the Spring Term, the School hosts its annual Battle of the Bands where pupil groups battle it out for the coveted cup in our 1,000 capacity professional venue, the Olivier Hall!

For further information about the music programme, including information for prospective music scholars: contact the Director of Music. For further information about the concert programme: email the Music Secretary

 

Stunning facilities for music and the arts.
The Good Schools Guide
Pupils enjoy significant success in
creative subjects such as music and dance.
ISI Report 2022

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