It has been an extremely busy week for the OBHS choir members. As well as performances at OBHS and OGHS, on Sunday, we got back from Timaru after competing in the inaugural South Island Cadenza choir competition. The bus was full of members of the OBHS choir, the OGHS choir, and the combined boys and girls choir.

The Cadenza is a competition for choirs who just missed out on making The Big Sing finale. It was a very full schedule of sound checks, rehearsals, performances, and workshops, with just enough time to fit in some food, water, and sleep. Friday saw us up at 6am to get ready and head to Craighead Diocesan School for a full day of singing, to arrive back to the accommodation around 9pm. Although it was an exhausting day, it was followed by one of my highlights of the trip: seeing a group of boys, from Year 9 to Year 13, playing mafia together. The laughter, false accusations, and feeble attempts to defend one's character provided plenty of entertainment.

Saturday allowed for a little bit more of a sleep in, but promised to be another long one, with more rehearsals, performances, and workshops, as well as a gala concert and after party. The performances over the two days saw some of the best singing the boys have done all year. At the gala concert, both the boys choir and combined choir received distinguished awards, which is the second highest honour awarded in the competition. Two musical highlights of the trip were the boys' performance of the country song, Man of Constant Sorrow, and hearing them perform in the Craighead school chapel, which was acoustically and visually stunning.

It was impressive to see how supportive the different schools were of each other. Although it was a competition, the schools were not afraid to give standing ovations to performances they deemed worthy. It was also wonderful to see the relationships formed between the schools. Seeing students from Otago Boys', Otago Girls', Nayland College, and Marlborough Girls' all singing Bohemian Rhapsody in the practice room was just one powerful display of this. The boys were fantastic ambassadors for the school.

A big thank you to Mr Shields, Miss Mackay, and Ms Gorman for supporting and organising the boys and girls, and a massive thank you to Ben Madden and Olivia Pike for the incredible work they do with the choirs.