The Spring Concert is the last musical event of the academic year for which all Year 7 pupils prepare to take part, and this year’s impressive performance of ‘Up the Odyssey’ (a comic, musical retelling of Homer’s work composed by former Director of Music David Nield) was as entertaining as ever. During their music lessons throughout the spring term, Year 7 pupils learned the chorus numbers together in class, whilst the brilliant narrators and soloists prepared, in rhyming couplets, to bring the story and characters to life, helped by a well chosen prop or two. In this concert, Year 7 pupils not only have an important role as performers but also as audience members, this being their opportunity to hear some of the exciting instrumental ensemble music in which they are invited to participate at school. Following the School Orchestra’s performance of the fourth movement of Tchaikovsky’s Fifth Symphony, the Chamber Orchestra played a serenade after Beethoven’s Sonata in D. The Jazz Combo, Wind Band and Concert Band then went on to perform music by artists ranging from Glenn Miller and Duke Ellington to Stevie Wonder and Beyonce, before the Year 7 chorus and soloists provided the uplifting finale to the evening’s performance.