Senior Saxophone Group
Senior Saxophone Group
Following on from the success of recent years the Senior Saxophone Group has aimed for even loftier achievements over the past few months. At the start of the Christmas term we furthered our commitment to performing outside school by providing some background music for the Cheswick Green Summer Fete and a few weeks into term we were back to playing first in front of a school audience for Speeches, and then the first school Open Day of the year. During the Christmas term we turned our competitive attention towards the Lichfield music festival and returned with nothing less than a first place and a second place in the two categories we entered. The St Cecilia Concert was then nearly upon us, which we used to showcase a couple of our more popular tracks, including Over the Rainbow where Phil Achille’s solo never fails to impress. In December we also revisited Packington Hall for a charity concert in aid of Macmillan Nursing, then shortly before the end of term, the Sax Group provided some of the musical entertainment for the PA Christmas Fayre, and battling a mix-up with parts, we managed to put on an impressive show.
We returned after Christmas and resumed rehearsals virtually immediately. Later on in the Easter term we travelled to Dudley once again for the annual music festival. With our much-commented-on saxophone-themed waistcoats, and despite some rather over-enthusiastic counting in, we managed to gain first place with the Solihull Swing Band (the Sax group accompanied by Will Lucas on the drums, Sam Baddeley on the piano and TJ Hertz on the bass and drums). This year sees the departure of long-term members Chris Lewis, Seb Brown and Puneet Tailor, but we are sure that the hard work and talent of the remaining members, Phil Achille, Sam Smith, Peter Whiting,Winston Yap, Alistair Yap, Rob Henderson, Andy Pickering and Natasha Santana-Vaz will take them to even greater heights. However, the foundation of the group’s success is definitely the commitment and leadership of Miss Greswold, without whom none of this would have been possible.
Sebastian Brown