Music
Music has its own Wiki!
For work that you can complete during this strange post-earthquake time, please visit our new Wiki at http://aranuihighmusic.wikispaces.com/
It is a work in progress, feel free to leave comments and help me out!
Past News...
2010 has been an incredibly busy time in the Music Department, with competitions, gigs and a lot of work being put into finishing the recording studio.
Mr Roberts (Bob) is leaving us very soon to take up a position of HOD of Music at Hagley High School. We wish him all the best with that. He will be sorely missed by myself and the students. He has been very busy lately finishing our new, three room recording suite. It looks amazing and means that we now have the ability to record top quality CDs. The students have no shortage of talent and original music so it will be an exciting time as we learn to use it. We hope to be able to produce a CD of the School finest music each year.
RockQuest
A big congratulations goes out to 2 Aranui bands who made it through to the Finals of the Smoke Free Rock Quest.
D’preeciated is a Year 11, 12 and 13 band featuring the Polynesian styles of Tusi Vaoga, Lesa Filmaua, Alex Mosegi, Uale Peneli, and Iosefa Samelu. They wowed the judges with their clever arrangements and beautiful vocal harmonies. Unfortunately they did not make it to the national finals but they very positive feedback from the judges and were and were offered some great opportunities from people that heard their unique Aranui sound.
AJ Park is a a Year 13 drummer at Aranui and his band “The Guest” came second in the regional finals and now has a chance to be in the national finals. They have recently used the newly finished studio to make a music video, which will be submitted as part of the marking to see which seven bands make it to the national finals in Tauranga. His band was very polished and energetic which is a result of their vast performance experience. We wish them luck.
New Zealand Music Month Gigs
During May some Aranui bands were invited to perform at the Christchurch central library. As part of NZ Music Month.
On Thursday the 13th of May we took the Guitar Ensemble led by our itinerant guitar teacher (and semi famous guitarist from the chart topping band “The Dukes”). The group played a beautiful mix of Latin, Blues and Jazz guitar arrangements and earned some group performance credits at the same time.
On the 29th of May it was the Jazz Combos turn and they were also very well received. The band did some classic “Steve Wonder” some Jazz standards some latin and pop. The band took on the very difficult art of improvisation and featured some great Jazz solos from Johannes (our Sax player form Estonia) Caleb (Trumpet) and Kem (Guitar).The crowd really loved our very talented vocalists and we received some amazing comments about the band.
We have been invited back next year and will happily take up the challenge with even more bands in 2011. You just can’t beat that real life performance experience and it is a great way to promote the amazing talent from Aranui and earn some NCEA credits at the same time.
A big thanks to Paul Mcalister from NZ Vanlines who donated his time and a van to transport the musical equipment to and from the gig.
Also a big thanks to Hallensteins, who donated 14 NZ Music month t-shirts for the band to perform in.
Jazz Band and Combo
These two bands are busy fundraising for an upcoming trip to Blenheim to compete in the “Southern Jam” Jazz competition. This is a week long event that has the bands performing around various venues in Blenheim and Picton and then take on all the best schools in the South Island in a competition. Before that we are also competing in the CPIT Jazz Quest. This will involve hours of practice and total commitment from all the band members. We wish them good luck.
UPCOMING EVENTS
Eastside Rocks
On Tuesday the 29th of June we have the annual Eastside Rocks Primary School Music Festival which is also going to be filmed by the children show “What now”.
Pacifica Beats
We have 3 bands competing in this and they are all sounding really good. The event will be on Friday the 23rd July. I will let you know where and you can come along and support the bands.