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Celebrating Success!
Inner Voices Choir
Each year some of our most talented musicians are selected to join the Inner Voices Choir. This choir is made up of the most promising young musicians in the city. Students rehearse every week in preparation for concerts at some of the country's most prestigious venues, including St Paul's Cathedral and Durham Cathedral. This year, the students went on tour to Belgium!
Autumn 2024
St Michael's Students Support King Charles in 2024 King's Christmas Speech
Congratulations to Julia M, Irati A-G and Paul G in Year 12 who performed on national television to an audience of 7 million people on Christmas Day. This was an extraordinary experience for them and the school. All staff and students had to sign legal contracts of secrecy about the event until the broadcast was aired! Please see below for Julia's reflections on the day.
This Christmas our Inner Voices choir was fortunate enough to sing the carol after the King’s Speech on Christmas Day. It was an incredible experience of the highest honour and it was difficult to keep it a secret from everyone we knew until 3pm 25th December. The event took place in a gorgeous and small church called Fitzrovia Chapel and immediately upon entering we were faced with an overwhelming amount of cameras and nervous excitement. The process itself was singing the carol ‘Once in Royal David’s City’ over and over again until the recording team were satisfied with how we sounded. Then, after a quick lunch break, we matched our recorded voices to our filmed faces. It was a long day of filming, however, the end result sounded absolutely beautiful with all our harmonies between the parts and it was even more thrilling to watch ourselves sing on television right after King Charles on Christmas Day. Thank you to Mr Watkins and Mr Allwood, our two fantastic choir teachers, and to Ms Corcoran and Mr Magnoff who made this opportunity possible for us.
Julia M
12RU
Spring 2024
St Michael’s Students Perform Exciting New Music at St Paul’s Knightsbridge
In the recent Inner Voices concert we attempted to capture a modern feel that is opposed to the more classical repertoire we normally perform. The concert was based on an interpretation of an album called “Truth is a Beautiful Thing” by London Grammar. We were joined by a talented youth orchestra with a large string group as well as a synth band that added amazing accompaniments to the vocals of the choir. The keyboard, drumming and electric guitar were truly absorbing and the lighting and special effects were extraordinary. Overall, the concert was an amazing experience and I loved being able to experiment with new forms of choral music.
Jonathan Amoo, 9VI
Autumn 2023
St Michael's Students Perform Live on National Radio!
St Michael's Students Perform Live on National Radio!
Congratulations to all the SMCC students (Irati A-G, Julia M and Paul G) who took part in the Inner Voices concert that broadcast live on BBC Radio 4 on Sunday. This music will, amongst other things, have helped to keep the sailors awake on the nuclear submarine HMS Vanguard, where this radio station is kept on permanently!
Please find Paul's reflections on the experience below.
Mr Magnoff
BBC Radio 4 Broadcast - Sunday Worship
BBC Radio 4 Broadcast - Sunday Worship
The main word I would use to describe this experience is: Beautiful! Even though I was dead tired from arriving so early for the rehearsal, our conductor’s training methods raised my mood and energy by a mile. The warm ups were quite straining at the start, but it paid off when listening to the recording of the Sunday Worship. The broadcast team were also very active and critical when needed. I can confidently say that we would not have sounded as well without their input and requests with our singing. I really enjoyed this experience and I wish that more people would listen in and partake in these types of extracurricular activities.
Paul Gaid
11 DA
Summer 2023
Inner Voices Choir 2023
It’s been another fantastic year for St Michael’s incredible choristers. Representatives from Year 10 and Year 8 have practiced every week with nationally renowned conductors and have had the privilege to sing in some of the finest venues across Europe. Please find Irati’s summary of the year below.
If you would like to join this choir (which has talented musicians from across schools in London), make new friends, travel to new countries and perform on the most celebrated stages in the country, please see Mr Magnoff in S26.
Mr Magnoff
St Paul’s Cathedral
St Paul’s Cathedral is a great place to sing, but it does seem quite intimidating at first because it takes quite a lot of your voice just to be heard, the acoustics from the cathedral walls are incredibly majestic. Even when singing some songs such as Magnificat and Nunc Dimittis by T. Tertius Noble, the pieces are just emphasised by the general openness of the cathedral and the organist that plays just above the Quires. This makes the experience all the more incredible as almost all of the songs we sang were in Latin, referencing the original language the choir would have sung in. All in all, there is no other place in the world where church services can sound more beautiful.
Belgium
During the February half term, we had the incredible opportunity of going to Belgium with the Inner Voices choir. Our trip lasted five days and in those couple of days not only did we get to sing in many beautiful towns, including Brudges, Ypres and the gorgeous Ghent, but we also made so many new friends. We spent our time going on boat rides through the Lys River (where we learnt about the history of the beautiful city), having bowling torments in Kortrijk and exploring the Gravensteen, Castle of the Counts. When we were not singing in incredible Cathedrals we were exploring the city in groups and eating our fair share of Belgian waffles. It was seriously the most fantastic experience for all of us. In our time in Inner Voices, we have performed in St Paul’s Cathedral twice, travelled to Durham for a couple of days and visited Belgium! Thanks to the opportunity to join the choir we were able to form an incredible community and bond with all of the choir members and learn so much (especially musically). We will never forget the times when we got to sing in front of over 300 people from all over Belgium in one day, perform at the Last Post Ceremony (which is a ceremony that takes place every night at the Menin Gate in Ypres in tribute to all the Belgian soldiers who died in WW1), and the hilarious times we had at the bowling alley with our choir instructors. The Belgium trip taught us how dedication and hard work were the reasons we were able to sing in the fabulous Sint-Niklaas (Saint Nicholas) 13th-century cathedral and fundamentally have the opportunity to travel to Belgium.
St Paul’s Knightsbridge
Although it is a smaller church than St Paul’s Cathedral, it is still a wonderful place to sing. The work we had put in as a choir paid off beautifully, the soloists and their singing during the Disney love melodies were exceptional, making me believe that the original singers were in our group. However, this would not have been possible without the remarkable work of our two leading conductors, Edward Watkins and Ralph Allwood. Their motivation and their upbeat techniques help us to understand our music. With their hard work and dedication, the performance at Knightsbridge would not be as majestic as it sounded during the performance. Overall, I wholeheartedly recommend that people from our school attend Inner Voices’ next concerts in the following terms.
Irati A-G, 10BC
Spring 2023
January 2023
St Michael’s Choral Scholars perform at St Paul’s Catherdral!
Congratulations to Irati A-G, Julia M and Paul G in Year 10 and Jennifer B-D and Jonathan A in Year 8 who performed with Inner Voices Choir at St Paul’s Cathedral on Monday to widespread acclaim. Please find Paul’s reflections on the concert below:
St Paul’s Cathedral is a great place to sing, but it does seem quite intimidating at first because it takes quite a lot of your voice just to be heard, the acoustics from the cathedral walls are incredibly majestic. Even when singing some songs such as Magnificat and Nunc Dimittis both by T. Tertius Noble, the pieces are just emphasised by the general openness of the cathedral and the organist that plays just above the Quires. This makes the experience all the more incredible as almost all of the songs that we had sung were in Latin, which also referred to the original language that the choir would use to sing in. All in all, there is no other place in the world where church services can sound more beautiful.
Paul G, 10DA
Mr Magnoff
2022
PTZZ1967.MP4FHXL2491.MP4Inner voices is the choir that myself and two other friends of mine attend. It has been the most amazing experience and has presented us with so many opportunities.
Our time at the choir began at the start of September of this year. To begin with, naturally, I was very nervous, as I had heard such great things about the choir and truthfully felt quite overwhelmed and intimidated. It was truly incredible how fast we all felt welcome and were able to relax and just collectively enjoy singing together. I had never been part of such an amazing and well-organized choir and just felt really glad and proud to be part of something so incredibly remarkable.
The choir has without a doubt improved my confidence and allowed me to make wonderful friendships outside of school. We have been given so many opportunities to sing in beautiful venues such St Paul’s and Durham Cathedral. On our latest trip up North we were able to stay two nights in the gorgeous city of Durham, it was there where I personally felt the most part of the choir.
When we arrived there we all went around and re-introduced ourselves and said what music we enjoyed listening to. We were then put into our room with friends and finished the first evening off with a hilarious balloon building competition. The next morning we had our rehearsal and in the evening we brought our trip to a close with a breathtaking performance in Durham Cathedral. Our trip was amazing because of the wonderful people that were part of the choir, our conductors and the midnight chases we had around the hotel (:
Every rehearsal is always one to look forward to because it is guaranteed that we will have a laugh, learn about music and genuinely have a great time. Even for the rehearsals with the difficult pieces to learn we are challenged and the stunning results make it all worthwhile.
Innervoices has so far been one of the most sensational communities I have been part of. I genuinely love it and I am so extremely grateful for the opportunity that was given to us to join the choir. I am so excited for all the fun concerts, abroad trips to come and learning experiences along the way.
Irati A.G, 9BC.
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