Musicians from Sancta Maria College took part in the inaugural Young Star Music Awards, a competition organized by the Eastern Districts Country Music Club. After a qualifying round, our best seven acts took part in the finals at Buckland’s Beach Memorial Hall.
A real mix of ages were represented by our acts: High Voltage (Rad Atienza, Rueben Ferguson, Sean Hancock and Laurence Stewart) played a Johnny Cash song called ‘One piece at a time’, Erin Wahl gave a fine rendition of Dolly Parton’s ‘Jolene’, then members of our Junior Choir performed Taylor Swift’s ‘Our Song’ under the guise of The Junior Singers.
Four other choristers, Maddi Blincoe, Hannah Dangatan, Jade Pereira and Paris Stephens sang John Denver’s classic ‘Country Roads’ , then three of our senior choristers (Maris Balili, Audrie Mamaradlo, Anna Nguyen) sang the Dixie Chicks’ song ‘Travellin’ Soldier’. Not to be outdone were Jewel Kimi, who sang ‘The Climb’ and Kayla Kippen who gave a country twang to Lady Gaga’s ‘A Million Reasons’.
All performances were well received by a large audience of country music enthusiasts who saw Kayla take home the first prize and a trophy that will sit in the school’s cabinet with pride of place. We would like to thank the organizers for making this such a marvellous event and Sancta Maria College can be very proud of its fine young musicians. We look forward to competing again in 2018.
Stuart Gibbs
Head of Music
Sancta Maria College
