Wellington (concert and evensong)

After arriving in Wellington, we joined the Kotuku choir for the first time for a small rehearsal, which included teaching them Riu riu chiu, learning The Wellington Song and a counter melody to You Raise Me Up which was sung by Zane Te Wiramu Jarvis as well as running through a piece called Dry Your Tears Africa. It was a great way to start introductions between the two choirs. After the rehearsal boys were collected by host families from the Kotuku choir and the wellington cathedral choir.

Two days later was the day of the concert at the Michael Fowler Centre. We arrived fairly early in the morning for a short rehearsal on the stage to decide what music we would be singing. We were then joined by the Kotuku choir again and I rehearsed a piece to open the concert called Kotuku Rising with them in which I had a small solo. We were then joined by about 200 primary school children who were going to sing the chorus to Dry Your Tears Africa and sing with us in the Spanish round that we learnt in the hotel a few nights before.

After what we would sing was decided (in this case Salvator Mundi, The First Three Spirituals and Hear My Prayer) and a bit of free time in Wellington, it was time to perform.

In front of a crowd of 700 people, everything ran very well, and there were some outstanding moments such as Hear My Prayer (if I do say so myself), and the hope stomp was truly spectacular to watch. The concert as a whole went really well and we had some brilliant feedback from the audience.

We spent the next morning with our host families before having a rehearsal for evensong in Wellington Cathedral. For this evensong we would be singing Psalm 2, The Magnificat and Nunc Dimittis by Stanford and Song For Athene, which would be conducted by either Mr Toyne or Michael Fulcher, the director of music at the cathedral. There was a really great congregation at the evensong and the acoustic of the cathedral made everything, especially Song For Athene sound amazing.

The musical side of Wellington went really well and everybody hoped that this would be kept up and improved as the tour progressed.

Tom Batstone (Year 10)