Christmas Carol Tour

Every year, under the guidance of Mrs Sutcliffe our head of music, the choir go out into the community to sing Christmas carols. This is something that the students look forward to.

This year the choir visited Ashbury Lodge for the elderly and the Cheriton nursing home, just around the corner from the school. The elderly thoroughly enjoyed the singing and some tapped their feet and some sang along. To be able to do this for the community is just fantastic and the work the young people and their teachers put into this is highly praised.

An addition to the tour this year was the school's involvement with Nationwide Building Society HQ in Pipers Way. One of our specialist objectives was to create a choir in a business setting and for our students to join them for a performance. Chris Body, who leads Thamesdown Ladies Choir, was especially commissioned by the school to deliver 8 lunchtime sessions culminating with a joint performance at Nationwide. We also asked the local Prospect Hospice to join us with their collecting tins and mince pies and £119.97 was raised during the hour lunchtime performance. It is hoped that the Nationwide choir will perform on the Commonweal Performing Arts stage at The Old Town Festival on 26th June 2010.

"The first choir session went well – some fairly good voices, all with some previous choir experience (mostly at school).  We got started on simple 2-part stuff very quickly and the 6 of them made a good sound on ‘Barbara Ann’.  However, the final performance was just amazing, I am really proud of them all," Chris Body commented

Thank you to everyone for your help and support.

Other Commonweal Christmas concerts were at Bath Road Methodist Church, an Evening of Carols at the school and performances to the school on the last day of term