Over two weeks in June, our chamber music groups competed in the NZCT Chamber Music Contest Canterbury Districts and South Island Regionals

Congratulations to the following Chamber Music groups:

Burnside High School Brass Quartet (Ben Macdonald, Emily Allan, William Kao, Nanami Shibata) - winners of Best Performance of a New Zealand Work (a newly commissioned composition especially for this group from Patrick Shepherd, President of the Specialist Music Programme, called "Continuum III") AND winners of the Woolston Brass Cup for the most outstanding brass ensemble in the districts contest.

Fingersticking Good playing Sonata for Two Pianos and Percussion by Bartok (Roy Zhang, Hiromu Crosado, Ciaran Wright, Sho Woodhouse). Highly Commended AND winners of the Graham Johns Percussion Trophy for most outstanding group containing percussion instruments AND a KBB Award at the districts AND selected for the South Island Final. They should also receive an award for the best group name this year.

Reflections playing Quartet for an Outdoor Festival by Robert Aldridge (Elisa Bird, Indy Williamson, Benjamin Davey, Oscar Chin). Highly Commended AND winners of a KBB Award at the districts AND selected for the South Island Final.

Feier playing the first movement of Schumann's Piano Quintet in Eb major (Karen Huang, Emma Fletcher, James Anderson, Josephine Ngu, Matthew Seinafo) - selected for the South Island Final.

The standard of performance from all groups in the district final on Friday evening was exceptionally and consistently high with the overall winning group comprising students from St Andrews and Christ's College. National finalists were selected following the South Island final. 

Following the South Island Finals, Reflections and Fingersticking Good were also selected for the Nationals that will be taking place here in Christchurch at The Piano on August 6-7th. 6 of the 12 national finalists are from Christchurch which says a lot about the quality of chamber music happening in our schools. Many thanks to the tutors who worked with these groups since the start of the year.

Thanks to those staff that came along to either the districts gala night or the regionals and supported these amazing young musicians - they really appreciated it. A huge thanks to the staff and tutors who worked with the groups towards this contest.