The House Music competition is a Wilson’s tradition that seems to grow in popularity and quality from year to year. Following last year’s entirely online event, we returned to live classes this year, with 236 entrants joining in a series of afternoon performances judged by professional musicians from across London and the UK. There were some exceptional performances this year, particularly in the vocal and woodwind categories and the winners should be extremely proud.

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The Grand Finale of House Music 2022 (Young Musician of the Year) took place in the John Jenkins Hall on Tuesday, 3 May evening. Our adjudicator this year was Claire Cossins (Senior Instrumental Leader for Sutton Music Services), who had the unenviable task of deciding between some outstanding performances. Our Senior Musician of the Year was awarded to Anton, whose performance of Schubert’s Der Erlkonig was described as “terrifying, in a good way!”. Schubert creates four distinct characters within a piece lasting just four minutes, and Anton conveyed them all very
effectively. Written when the composer was only 18, the piece has a famously complex and often dissonant accompaniment and yet a very tuneful melody line that sometimes has to be sung in the sweet voice of a small child and sometimes in the demonic persona of the Erl-King.
 

Pavamaan performed both as a singer (with Gershwin’s ‘I Got Plenty of Nuttin’) and as a classical guitarist. It was for the latter performance which he was declared winner of Junior Musician of the Year, with ‘Preludio Saudade’ by Mangore. He is the first guitarist to win at the House Music Grand Finale that we can remember, and richly deserved to do so. He captured the serenity of the cathedral imagined by the composer.

Other excellent performances among many mellisonant moments, included Han-Joon with the first movement of Brahms’ Violin Concerto No.2 and Joshua, whose performance of Povolotsky’s ‘From the Sixties’ had toes tapping around the JJ Hall.
 

Thank you to Dr Clayden and Mrs Straw for organising the event, to Mr Kramer for engineering the recordings and backing tracks, and to Mr Lissimore for providing accompaniments for several of the performances.
 

Wilson’s Senior Musician of the Year: Anton (13D)
2nd Place: Han-Joon (11C)
3rd Place: Raymond (13G)
Highly Commended: Theo (13B)
 

Wilson’s Junior Musician of the Year: Pavamaan (9S)
2nd Place: Joshua (8S)
3rd Place: Adhiraj (7G)