MAIDSTONE YOUNG MUSICIAN COMPETITION MAIDSTONE GRAMMAR SCHOOL FOR GIRLS Saturday 19 January 2019 Programme £2 ROTARY CLUB of MAIDSTONE DAWN PATROL Registered Charity Number 297018 Good luck from Maidstone Youth Music Society (MYMS) to everyone linked to the Maidstone Young Musician 2019. Maidstone Youth Music Society (MYMS) has existed for 45 years and provides a music centre for young people aged 6-19 from 30 schools across the borough on Friday afternoons and evenings at Invicta Grammar School. We currently run eight ensembles: Alpha Band; Orchestra for All; Youth Strings; MYMS Voices [two choirs]; Beta Percussion Ensemble; Maidstone Youth Wind Orchestra; and Maidstone Youth Orchestra. Come and join us at MYMS and enjoy the thrill of playing high quality music, together with making friends who may well be lifelong. Our students successfully combine their music-making each week with their studies and the vast majority then go on to university, reading a wide range of subjects, and continuing their musical journeys. We are delighted that the Maidstone Young Musician of the Year 2018 [Joseph Pickard, cornet] and the Runner-Up [Emma Beniston, violin] are both MYMS players. Please contact Richard Gretton, MYMS Manager for more information either by email on [email protected] or by telephone on 07802-425022 Website: www.myms.org.uk 2 Introduction Welcome to the Maidstone Young Musician of the Year 2019 competition! We hope you enjoy the evening. Congratulations to the eight finalists, their parents and teachers. Selection was made at the preliminary round, Maidstone Music Festival. Our three judges now have the task of choosing a winner and a runner-up. We are honoured that the Mayor of Maidstone has agreed to present the awards. The event is also the gateway to competing at district, regional and national levels for the title of Rotary Young Musician, and for this the best instrumentalist and vocalist of the evening have the opportunity to go forward. As well as organizing this competition, Dawn Patrol is raising funds this year for Safe Anaesthesia Worldwide and Medical Detection Dogs. We also help in the local community through practical acts of service. You are invited to explore whether Dawn Patrol might be for you! Our meetings are over breakfast. The two other local Rotary clubs are Maidstone, (meeting at lunchtime) and Riverside. (meeting for supper). Together we co-operate as ‘Rotary in Maidstone’. Clinton Davis, President, Maidstone Rotary ‘Dawn Patrol’ Rotary Rotary is one of the world’s largest and most successful global membership and humanitarian service organizations, with 1.2 million members in over 200 countries. Rotary fights disease. Since 1985, its key humanitarian priority has been to rid the world of polio. Rotary spearheaded the campaign at a time when there were over 1,000 cases a day in 125 countries, paralysing and even killing children. Today, the number of cases is down by 99.9%. Providing clean water and hygiene facilities is another aspect of Rotary work, as is the expansion of quality healthcare, protecting children from disease and building sustainable health solutions. Another important role of Rotary is in the context of natural disasters, ensuring that money raised goes to local Rotarians directly bringing relief to people in need. The stock of shelter boxes, providing families with the main items they need for their initial months, is constantly replenished. Education is another major interest, Rotary’s goal being to strengthen the capacity of communities to support basic education and literacy around the world. This has also resulted in the various youth competitions run nationally, including Rotary Young Musician. Rotary seeks to promote world peace, advancing goodwill and understanding across the world by training local leaders to support long- term peacebuilding. 3 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS Maidstone Rotary Dawn Patrol is grateful to the following for their help and support: Advertisers Absolute Creative Print, Aford Awards, Cobham Hall School, Earl Street Employment, The Gallagher Group, Gullands, Maidstone Youth Music Society, The Piano Shop and Sutton Valence School The Maidstone Music Festival for holding the first round of the competition Nancy Litten for acting as music consultant and compiling the programme Chas Bedford for photography Elaine Craven for the use of her boardroom as a venue for the photo-shoot Auctioneer John Oakley for conducting the fundraising Auction of Promises The Mayor of Maidstone Councillor David Naghi Talent is rife within the County Town, and as the Mayor of Maidstone, I am lucky to meet and watch performers from all kinds of disciplines. I am therefore very pleased to be associated with Maidstone Young Musician 2019, a contest that showcases those with a musical gift, and encourages them to pursue a career, or further advancement in this field. I am a keen advocate of promoting the successes of our younger members of society and believe that an opportunity such as this acts as an advertisement for just how much our youth can achieve; and inspires other young people to put their skills in the spotlight. I wish the Maidstone entries the very best of luck at both the local and national levels of the contest. 4 5 JUDGES Kevin Ashman Kevin is an experienced music professional with wide experience of many facets of musical activity. He is a brass performer, teacher, and choral conductor, being musical director of Paddock Wood Choral Society. As a performer, he regularly plays trumpet, piccolo trumpet, flugelhorn and cornet with a variety of orchestras, brass and concert bands and other ensembles. He has recorded as a soloist on several CDs and featured as a soloist in prestigious international concert venues such as Toronto's Roy Thompson Hall, Symphony Hall, Chicago, and The Royal Albert Hall and Barbican Concert Hall in London. He is frequently called upon to organise, direct and perform in music groups for a variety of musical activities, including concerts, civic events and commercial media activities. Examples of these include BBC TV's 'EastEnders' and 'The Wrong Mans' as well as 'Spooks', 'The Greatest Store in the World' and The Co-op’s 2014 Christmas advertising campaign. He has organised and managed major events in venues such as London's Royal Albert Hall and Birmingham's Symphony Hall, liaising with management, performers and conductors to ensure that the event runs smoothly. He has organised international tours for UK groups and also arranged and hosted visits by international groups who have toured the UK. His current role also involves managing copyright compliance for Salvation Army music publications, negotiating permissions and royalty rates for the use of Third- Party copyrights. He also represents The Salvation Army on the Christian Music Publishers' Association. 6 Andy Millest Andy Millest BMus (Hons), PGCE, studied Music at Sheffield University before going on to teacher training at Cambridge University (Christ’s College). He immediately returned to Kent to take up a teaching post at his old school. From 1990 to 2016 he held the post of Director of Music at The Rochester Grammar School where the Music Department continues to contribute greatly to the fine reputation of that highly successful school. In 2004 RGS became one of the first two schools in the UK to gain specialist status for Music. Many of his capable students have gone on to music-based careers. Andy has directed many notable events including, in recent years, Faure’s Requiem, Vivaldi’s Gloria, Dickens with a Twist and stage musicals such as Into the Woods, Singin’ in the Rain, and Little Women. Since September 2016 he has discovered the joy of working part time with the wonderful students at Abbey Court, Medway's school for students with severe and profound learning difficulties. In September 2017 Andy helped establish the first Music Man Project (MMP) sessions held in Kent. MMP is a weekly music school for adults with learning disabilities. Many of the current 55 or so members will be performing at the Royal Albert Hall in April. He has conducted the Kent County Junior Choir since 1999, plays cornet in the Gillingham Salvation Army Band and conducts the Gillingham Songsters. His personal best in the Parkrun (begun last January) stands at 26min 52sec. 7 Lucia D’Avanzo Lucia graduated from the Masters course at the Royal Academy of Music in 2012 and with a First Class degree from the Royal Northern College of Music (RNCM) in June 2010. Teachers have included Thomas Kemp, Pavel Fischer and Mateja Marinkovich, and she has played in Master Classes taken by Wen Zhou Li and Ivry Gitlis. Lucia also has strong musical connections with Kent, where she studied at the Kent Music Academy (KMA) from 2000–2006 and developed a love of orchestral and chamber music. Her KMA string quartet was chosen to represent the centre as part of a tour of Mauritius, where they appeared on Mauritian Television and performed for the British Ambassador. Lucia held the title of Maidstone Young Musician of the Year in 2005 and was the leader of the Kent County Youth Orchestra for two years, working with esteemed conductors such as Peter Stark, Kenneth Woods and Guillermo Scarabino. Whilst in Manchester, Lucia progressed to the final round of the RNCM’s Norman George Violin Scholarship and was chosen as one of the first students to perform in the college’s new Monday Lunchtime Recital series playing Leoš Janácek’s Sonata for violin and piano. Lucia loves organising concerts and performing neglected works. Her third-year recital featured Max Bruch’s Violin Concerto no. 3, op. 58, and in her Final Recital she performed Violin Sonata no. 4 by Charles Ives alongside a work she commissioned especially by Greenwich-based composer Lucy Smith called The Way of the Ostrich.