2019 Barrett Music Competition

The Barrett Music Competition is the highest Music award given to individuals who have a deep passion for music, founded by Rev. Dr John Barrett – our very first principal. He created this event to encourage and increase the level of appreciation of music in the school.

The categories for the competition included Piano, Vocal, Mixed Instruments and Original Music Compositions.

This year, we were blessed to have our distinguished adjudicators, Mr Eric Watson (an established international composer, conductor, music technologist and pedagogue) and Mr Arkadiusz Bialak (an international pianist and music educator) join us as we enjoy the students’ fine performances.

Here’s the winners of the competition:

• Overall Champion: Anna Zheng Hanyu, 5 TCT
• Piano: Ethelyn Huang, 2 Thoburn
• Vocal: Vo Thi Tra My, 4 CKS
• Mixed Instruments: Park Junha, 6 Thoburn
• Original Music Competitions: Anna Zheng Hanyu, 5 TCT

It is with pride and great joy that we witness how the students have grown and developed in Music, in events such as this, for we saw how they have learnt to manage themselves and their performances to emerge as confident performers today.

Take for instance, our overall champion, Anna Zheng (5 TCT), started out her performing journey two years ago as a Music IGCSE Student in 2017 without much confidence. But this year, she came back to the competition with charisma, and great determination to judo her weakness — nervousness. She managed with flying colours, even with some distraction from the light brush of wind (from the air-conditioner) against her music scores. That tenacity conquered her fears and won the day, so much so that she gave a lovely piano performance to secure two big wins – as the winner of the original music compositions and as the overall champion of the competition!

In keeping with the school’s desired teaching value “Building Through Belief”, the event’s organiser— the Electro-Acoustic World Music Ensemble encourages and grooms students from Year 1, to assist with the running of the event.

Apart from Andi Li (5 GHK) who is a dependable senior who had helped with the process of marks collection from the adjudicators, all the technical setups were prepared by the      Years 1 and 2 students.

We would like to thank:

• Lukas Choy (2 TKK), Lighting Designer, and Lawrence Lee (2 LSG), CCA Chairman, for managing the sound and audio system;
• Jareth Tan (2 TCT) for taking all the videos and footages;
• Daiki Kashiwagi (1 TKK) as Stage Assistant;
• Ethan Kee (2 LSG) for assisting in visual projection;
• Luke Lai (1 GHK) as Front-of-House; and
• Natasha Wong (2 CKS) as Emcee.