Freddie Renyard, a Wellington School pupil in Year 10 has won a hotly contest music competition, beating aspiring composers across the country.
Each spring, The Royal Opera House in London runs a national competition to find 10 young composers aged 11-16 who create their own fanfares which are then played each night before the opera and ballet performances during the Opera House summer season.
Freddie, a music GCSE student and keen film score composer was the winner of this year’s competition. He was delighted to be invited to spend a day at the Royal Opera House working on his composition.
Wellington School rose to the challenge this year and entered 31 fanfares composed by pupils in Years 8 and 10. Most had very little experience of composing music for an orchestra and so the Music Department were delighted to hear that out of 150 entries from across the country, 40 fanfares were short listed and of those 40, 9 were composed by Wellington School students. All the entrants then spent a few nail-biting days waiting to hear if any of their 9 fanfares had made it through to the winning place.
The winning composer Freddie, was invited up to the Royal Opera House to work with renowned composer Duncan Chapman, as well as members of the Opera House Orchestra. He was given a tour behind the scenes, had lunch in the artists’ canteen and worked on scoring his fanfare. In April he returns to London to hear his fanfare recorded by the orchestra under the baton of the eminent conductor Antonio Pappano.
In May he will attend a ballet triple bill at the Opera House where he will also hear his fanfare performed to the thousands of people in that evening’s audience.
It is a tremendous honour for Freddie and a great tribute to his composing skills.
In addition, congratulations are due to all the short listed Wellington pupils:
Ethan Cole and Daisy Steele-Perkins
Ellen Cowling and Joseph Stevens
Kaja Jankowska and Emily Beacock
Albie Kynaston, Beatrice Renyard and Hughie Vyse
Lucy Revolta, Marlena Taczarek and Kerri Curtis
George Pocock and Lara Jay,
Darcey Anderson, Emma Govey and Isabel Colman