Autumn / Winter 2025 Music

[northerngoldilocks]

Time for a new thread in time for the new school term!

Come and talk about music lessons, choosing instruments, exams, auditions, specialist schools, orchestras or whatever other music activities are going on. Everyone is welcome, from those with total beginners to those whose children are studying music at advanced levels. Ask for advice or share successes or struggles.

@IcyAquaSloth no clue on Trinity I'm afraid - sounds like an admin tick but sure someone else can verify.

Just saw on Facebook that NYO are advertising the 'side by side' rehearsals in Coventry on the 5th Jan - for age 12-19 and grade 4 or above orchestral instruments in case useful for anyone on here? My kids school shared it for the London date so both of mine are doing it before we see NYO in concert.

Getting to the end of Christmas concerts here, school and 2 Saturday music centre ones done - just the Christmas holiday orchestra to go this weekend. Day 1 today so looking forward to hearing all about how it is tonight. In reality DD will tell me all about it and DS will say 'its fine' as thats how this always goes.

Afternoon all. A mere 13 carol concerts here, plus rehearsals. Plus production rehearsals. And church services. I'm involved in about 10 of these concerts! All good fun though. I, however, never want to sing O Come all ye Faithful ever again.

DS's current project is buttering up musical directors of Cambridge Chapels, so he can go and sing to them to assess choral scholarship prospects! So far Kings and St John are very interested!

We've done a good number of Trinity exams and never changed for us. It would be a bit of a public relations disaster if it did wouldn't it? So congratulations by the sounds of it!

Fingers crossed then! My 10yr old got 87 so just made a distinction on her G5 violin so really dont want marks to go down!

That sounds exciting @herbaceous. How does that all work? Dd will be applying for Cambridge next year (not music) but is very interested in singing in the college chapel choir if she gets in. She’ll be g8 standard by then and will have been singing in a chapel choir for 9 years but I have no idea of how good you have to be to get in!

DS’s state school has now finally finished. His orchestra performance was done and brilliant! It was their debut as it was a new orchestra and everyone was so excited and did excellently.
now I do have a question. Our local theatre has carmen in Feb. It’s by the Ukrainian national opera. I assume it’ll be very good and want to take DS to it. He’s been obsessed with Carmen music recently. However I’ve not seen it myself and not sure whether it’s suitable for a 9 years old or not? What do others think?
thank you.

@QueenMabby It is all slightly opaque. At Cambridge you apply for the course, find out whether you're in, then apply for choral scholarship afterwards. Different colleges/chapels have different requirements for number of services per week, whether they have boy choristers or adult women, etc. So you partly have to choose your college depending on those factors, I presume.

At Oxford you apply for choral scholarships before you know whether you've got in. Which seems mad.

DS is mainly intereted in Oxbridge for the singing opportunities, so has been recommended by his HoM to informally meet the DoMs at various colleges to assess his chances, to see if it's worth applying to Kings/St John/Trinity etc.

All a bit too complicated for my liking!

Other universities with choral scholarships are of course also in the extensive spreadsheet!

It would be a marvellous 'starter' opera. Great music, lots of drama, and any sauciness in the plot will go right over his head!

@QueenMabby - a friend of mine is a Cambridge Dom and ran the choral scholar application process for a while. If she wanted a chat with him I'm sure he'd be up for a zoom to explain the process. DM me if that would be helpful.

Thank you @herbaceous, thats what I was hoping too. I think he’ll just love the music and won’t even get the plot. It seems a rare opportunity to miss as it’s coming to us. Normally we’d have to travel to see any good shows.

I may be picking your brains too!

Feel free to.

My DD was once refused admission to ENO at Coliseum, iirc it was because of swearing in the production or maybe there were some explicit scenes too, I can't quite remember what the production was.

A Ukrainian production is likely to be classical but I'd double check with the venue.

She would definitely be able to sing in /a/ chapel choir queenmabby. As others have said, in the first place apply to a college with a mixed or women's choir that she likes the sound of. Honestly, with her experience, it's very likely she will get in. But also you can apply to a different college's choir once there if your own doesn't work out. If you search cambridge college chapel choir vacancies you will see there are still opportunities available for the current academic year.

Thank you @Ubertomusic, good idea to check before I book it 👍

Thanks for all the advice on the Cambridge choral opportunities and @Londonmummy66 I may well be picking your contact’s brains next year to help narrow down the colleges!

@QueenMabby it’s probably worth some informal trials before choosing where to apply. If you have a choral scholarship you will normally attend the relevant college, so it may impact where she applies (at Cambridge the best mixed choirs are Trinity and Clare). If she doesn’t have a choral scholarship though then she can apply to any college choir with spaces once she is there (likely that the top ones will be full up with choral scholars, not always though). Also the subject you study isn’t relevant but obviously the ones with heavy lecture requirements (sciences, medicine) can be difficult to manage with the rehearsals.

@QueenMabby @herbaceous etc - dd2 is also interested in choral scholarships. I think there is an Open Day specifically for them as well (perhaps)?, which I was planning to send DD2 to. She's a decent enough singer (grade 8 next term she reckons) but mostly an instrumentalist so I suspect it might not be enough.

She can however, hold a soprano or alto line with confidence and switch between the two and knows a lot more choral music than she used to after two years of chapel choir on top of NYCGB. We will see.

She had a heavy day yesterday - has been doing South London Youth Orchestra, but there was a three hour break between rehearsal and concert so we picked her up, popped her behind a microphone and she did the tenor lines for various carols on bassoon, the soprano lines on others on flute, and the descants on voice where the singers weren't quite confident on them. Then nipped back for a full orchestral concert, which was awesome.

I have no idea how she managed it. Perhaps unsurprising she's still in bed this am.

Happy Christmas to you all and especially to any chorister families who are celebrating Christmas properly today! It’s been a marathon of concerts and services for us but we made it!

Hope everyone had a good Christmas.

we are on the road travelling north. At least todays matinee is 2.30pm instead of last years 1pm.

o think ds broke a record on Xmas Eve. Curtain down to out of the theatre in 45 secs and on the train in 7 mins!

@Comefromaway that's impressive! I'm usually hanging around with the other bassoon parents as mine is frequently nearly last out! @Legoninjago1 I'm sure they will be tired after all that. We just had had one relaxed service on Sunday and that's all the music done.

He was very eager to get home. He also managed to get from Manchester Victoria to Picadilly in 11 minutes!

@horseymum he was alright actually! Loved the whole thing, thankfully! I was the one who couldn’t handle the pace… The 2am bed time after Midnight Mass was a particular killer!

@Comefromawaythe advantage of keyboards and exits!

Does anyone London based have a luthier recommendation please? Have had a bridge mishap- it’s ok ish now but would be good to take DD’s violin to be checked over. Am soooo lucky the sound post didn’t collapse 😬

Yes! I meant to post something similar to yesterday, but ironically we were just all too exhausted and did a considerable amount of dozing 🤣😴 Enjoy a well deserved break!