Written by Eleanor (Year 11)
The GDST music event of the summer, ‘GDST-Vision’, did indeed seem to be a vision at first. How could one produce a group performance from home in isolation?
This was exactly the question that The Sevenths, a student-led acapella group consisting of yes, you guessed it, seven Year 11 members (Lizzie, Mika, Ottilie, Susannah, Izzy, Alice, and Eleanor), found themselves faced with after Dr. Foster asked them to create an entry. Having recently graduated with astonishing speed to A Level students, we felt ready to take on another challenge. We felt our chosen song, ‘You Are The Reason’ (originally written by Callum Scott), hit all the right notes, with the added special touch of having been arranged by Ottilie herself.
In the end, it was decided that the easiest way to record the single parts so that they would still end up in time with one another, was to record a backing track. In this way, it was possible to listen to the backing track on a computer through headphones, while recording each individual singer’s voice with a phone. With ‘dum dum dum’ sounds streaming out of each member of The Sevenths’ rooms behind firmly-closed doors, their parents were starting to wonder whether the impact of the lockdown had been larger than initially thought…
Then it was time for the tech wizs. Ottilie compiled all the photos submitted from our school community into a PowerPoint presentation, ensuring everything was in the correct order with the correct transitions and other subtleties. Next, Mr. Hay put it all together with audio which was no mean feat and more than a little time-consuming. We are very grateful for his help.
On the day of the competition, the whole school had periods 3-5 off to watch the competition and cast their votes. The performances ranged from ‘Spring’ by Gustav Holst, the opening number of Little Shop of Horrors, The Beatles’ ‘With A Little Help From My Friends’, to Michael Buble’s ‘Feeling Good’. The latter included a video featuring some experimental animation effects such as a flying dog across the screen, CGI explosions, and a recurring image of a blue pear/ bird wearing a belt. To this day, I’m still confused.
There were three prizes: ‘The People’s Vote’ (voted for by students) which was won by Blackheath High School who sang a beautiful rendition of ‘Chasing Cars’, ‘The Most Creative Piece’ (voted for by music directors across the schools) awarded to Bromley High School for their performance of ‘With A Little Help From My Friends’ featuring some of the very adorable younger GDST pupils, and ‘The Chief Executive Award’. It was left to Cheryl Giovanni, the inspiring Chief Executive of the GDST to award this final prize, and that went to – drum roll please – The Sevenths from Oxford High School! Praising the ‘relevance’ and ‘poignancy’ of our contribution, she emphasised that ‘it was a clear winner’.