Pupils from the music club and choir began practising for the Waltons School of Music competition when we came back to school after the Christmas holidays. The teachers who worked with us were Amy, Tina, Louise and Conor. Firstly, we started picking out our favourite pieces of music and we also looked at the theme of the competition which was ‘Music Moves Us’. We thought it would be nice to move through the different genres of music from contemporary to traditional, to jazz to classical, to rap and to pop. After this, we chose songs that would suit each genre and put them together so that they would flow nicely. After some discussion, we chose who would be able to rap, play traditional music, play jazz, etc. It was hard at first to practise all of the genres together, but eventually, we put them together and it began to sound great. For the beginning section of the piece we changed the lyrics of a song from Frozen to be about the theme of ‘Music Moves Us’. Then it led into the traditional music part where we had fiddles, concertinas, tin whistles and an Irish dancer performing. After this section two pupils were rapping and street dancing. Then came a classical section called Pachelbell’s canon. After this, we played Viva la Vida for the pop section with pop dancing and we finished the piece with Hit the Road Jack for the jazz section. The final piece was just under five minutes long. We brought everything back together by finishing with the opening song that we sang at the beginning. Overall, we practised about three times a week leading up to the closing date and we also did a lot of practice ourselves at home.

On the week of the closing date, we recorded the finished piece a few times until we were happy with the final video. Then we nervously awaited the results which were released on Friday March 1st. Most of the pupils from the group gathered to listen to Lyric FM to hear the announcement of the finalists. We couldn’t believe it when they called out Knockanean N.S.! We are one of six finalists chosen from the whole country, and we will be performing in the National Concert Hall in Dublin on April 8th in front of a huge audience. We have really enjoyed the experience and our favourite parts included hearing our school name being called out live on radio and having the chance to come together to play many types of music. We are really looking forward to performing in the National Concert Hall in April.

By Cadhan O’Loughlin, Mila Rose Flannery, Harrison O’Doherty and Niamh O’Reilly.