From the nostalgia of 70s Classic Rock hits, to the Grunge and Alternative Rock phase of the 90s, all the way to showcasing what today’s music has to offer, the Senior Contemporary Band, in its 3rd successful year, showcased the musical dedication and commitment of 5 contemporary instrumentalists, as well as 3 featuring vocalists. Unfortunately, our group's hopes of entering competitions as an ensemble each year have been halted in their tracks due to the lurking presence of Covid-19, but that hasn’t stopped us from giving our all to each of our performances, playing for the pure enjoyment of it all. Our notable performances of 2022 were the Burnside High School Contemporary Showcase, Contemporary Cafe taking place at a bar of all places - the wonderful “A Rolling Stone”, and capping off the year with a performance of most of our pieces at the Music Prize Giving for 2022.

My friend Oscar Fischer and I had the honour of being founding members of the Senior Contemporary Band back in 2020, and it has truly been remarkable watching the band grow and evolve. With the wonderful tutoring from Mr Oswin, our goal was to always set ourselves apart from other cover bands by using extra percussion and keyboard effects to mimic the different textures used in the original studio recordings of the songs, which gave us all the opportunity to get incredibly experimental with different sounds. I have always felt at home in Senior Contemporary Band, starting out solely as the bassist, then performing a couple of songs as vocalist/bassist the next year, all the way to becoming the lead vocalist/bassist and getting to choose songs for the group. What set the Senior Contemporary Band apart from other Burnside ensembles for me was the amount of control the members all had, and the way Mr Oswin allowed us all to come up with ideas ourselves, choose our own songs, and act as our own managers which I believe will benefit us for when we all get involved with bands outside of school. Overall, while not a busy year for the Senior Contemporary Band, we all most certainly had a blast, and it taught us useful skills about band management, and having fun with what we play.