In this year’s spectacular House Music competition which involved hundreds of girls across the year groups, each House presented a programme of music starting with a soloist followed by an instrumental ensemble, a vocal ensemble and finishing with the House Choir.

Under the careful guidance and leadership of the House Conductors, each House has been rehearsing for weeks and on the night, they all gave their best performances.

The theme for the House Choirs was the much-loved music of ABBA and the audience were treated to some of ABBA’s greatest hits starting with AGS who kicked the competition off with a brilliant rendition of ‘Does Your Mother Know’. Tedworth took to the stage with a fantastic performance of ‘Lay All Your Love On Me’ followed by Holcombe performing the all-time favourite, ‘Mamma Mia’. Aisholt did a brilliant job with ‘Waterloo’, and the final act of the night came from AGN finishing off the competition with ‘Gimme Gimme Gimme’.

We were delighted to welcome Stephen Clarke, former Precentor at Radley College, as our Adjudicator and he had the tricky task of selecting the prize winners in a hotly-contested competition. Holcombe House was crowned as the overall winner and AGS House Conductor, Zoe, was the very worthy winner of the ‘Best Conductor’ prize. Holcombe girl, Lucia won the prize for ‘Best Soloist’ with her spellbinding harp playing; Tedworth was awarded the ‘Best Programme Design’ prize; Aisholt was victorious in the ‘Best Instrumental Ensemble’ with a Phantom of the Opera medley; AGS won the ‘Best Vocal Ensemble’ and Holcombe took the ‘Best House Choir’ prize as well as being overall winners.

Director of Music, Dr Charlotte Exon said, ‘I just want to say thank you for the music! House Music is always tremendous fun and the standard of musicianship and singing goes from strength to strength each year. It was clear that a great deal of time and effort had gone into rehearsing the various ensembles. Our Adjudicator, Stephen Clarke was most complimentary about the standard of music that the girls achieved, the respect that they showed to one another and the fun that they so obviously had. Special congratulations to Holcombe for winning the competition and thank you to all the girls who took part – well done to you all!”