Young Musician of the Year 2019

Tuesday 19 Mar 2019

Saxophonist Maddison Goode was the overall winner of this year’s Young Musician of the Year competition and Benjamin Clarke was awarded the Key Stage 3 title. A wealth of musical talent from across the age groups was on show at the event, which involved pupils at all levels competing in classes for piano, strings, woodwind, brass and singing.

Our Young Musician of the Year contest is a fantastic opportunity for our students to perform in front of an audience, compete among their peers and receive detailed, personalised feedback from a professional musician. The competition demonstrates and showcases every one of our school values of participation, ambition and respect, and the much sought after prizes are hard fought among the rich talent of musicians at school. Our pupils devote hours of time to rehearsals, alongside their studies and other school commitments.

This year we were very fortunate to have the Chief Executive of Manchester Camerata, Bob Riley, act as adjudicator. Bob has toured with ensembles all over Europe, and has also performed for Her Majesty the Queen, Top of the Pops with Kylie, and much more. Led by Bob, Manchester Camerata delivered two Royal Philharmonic Society awards and one from the Association of British Orchestras, for the epic ‘Hacienda Classical’ collaboration with Hacienda Club DJ’s which saw the orchestra open the Pyramid Stage at Glastonbury 2017.

Our overall winner, Maddison Goode, performed Hypnosis (Clarke) on the soprano saxophone and Benjamin Clarke won the Drum Kit Class as well as being named Key Stage Three Young Musician of the Year, for his performance of No One Knows (Queens of the Stone Age).

Bob Riley commented: “The commitment to music making and the very high standard really impressed me. Some of it is absolutely at specialist music school level, such as Chethams. Congratulations!  The staff are extremely good musicians themselves. The supportive and collegiate atmosphere in everyone I met was really fantastic.”

The full list of winners were as follows:

Class	Winner
Piano Class 1	Robyn McChesney
Singing Class 1	Millie West
Woodwind Class 1	Katie Simpson and Lucy Topliss
Guitar Class	Ines Martin-Caro
Piano Class 2	Lily Coward
Brass Class	Oliver Newbury
Woodwind Class 2	Emma Belshaw
Singing Class 2	Martha Richmond
Drum Kit Class	Benjamin Clarke
Strings Class	Sam Underwood
Piano Class 3	Joshua Kirkhope-Arkley
Singing Class 3	Ben Kelt
Woodwind Class 3	Marisa Allen
Singing Class 4	Maddison Goode
Piano Class 4	Nicholas Peat
Singing Class 5	Nicholas Simper
Key Stage 3 Young Musician of the Year	Benjamin Clarke
Young Musician of the Year	Maddison Goode