27/3/2008

Local News

Festival will unite our musical youth

A MUSIC festival will bring together 650 young musicians from across Hampshire as both performers and audience.
The Aldershot Festival for Youth will take place on Sunday March 30 at Connaught School on Tongham Road, Aldershot.
The event is part of a nationwide series of 57 regional festivals, celebrating their 35th anniversary, organised in collaboration with the Associated Board of the Royal Schools of Music.
The idea is to offer young music groups the chance to perform in front of their peers, but also to expose them to new musical styles as audience members.
Music for Youth is the world’s biggest youth musical festival, with over 40,000 young performers taking part, and culminates in the Music for Youth Schools Prom at the Royal Albert Hall in November.
Twenty-three groups will perform at the Aldershot festival.
These include All Saints Chamber Choir from Fleet, Salesian College Jazz Band, Farnborough, and Westfields Junior School Choir, Yateley.
The choir from Westfields in Yateley will be performing a song they only recently learned for a radio recording as part of the Big School Sing Up.
Halima Pakasholo is a Namibian song and the 80-strong choir of seven to 11-year-olds will be performing it in Namibian.
They will be unaccompanied apart from a drum and some percussion instruments, in front of a live audience at the festival for the first time.
Jane Blaszkowicz, Director of Music at Westfields Junior School, said: “The children recorded the song to be played on 210FM, and are now really excited about performing it at the festival.
“We have been working really hard and are looking forward to seeing such a wide range of performances under one roof.

First printed in: Surrey Hants Star