(photos at the very bottom)

An early bus and a hot day and off we went to Devon’s Westpoint Arena for The Mix, where Devon Music Service put together an amazing event for children with all things musical. It really is amazing.

Mrs P had previously done some of Hall of The Mountain King with the class but Wren Music did something slightly different in their marquee with more of a call and response singing event. We also had some time at the big stage listening to some bands from Exeter College in this part of the morning. One was eerily like Clannad and the harmonies were just lovely. We had lunch shortly afterwards so that we could get to our next event at 12.

And then it was the Devon Teachers’ Rock Choir!  I’ve been singing with them for several years now, propping up the small tenor section. The children loved listening to our set: Foo Fighters’ Home and Times Like These, Coldplay’s Fix You, Guns and Roses’ Sweet Child of Mine, Roll Jordan Roll, Metallica’s Nothing Else Matters and Gary Barlow’s Open Road. Yep, some are rock and some are easy… But the kids loved them and sang along!

We had to squeeze a second set in due to teachers’ children wanting to see them (!) but our Georgeham crowd went off to the Samba tent. They took over the tambourine section and a few drums and cow bells and the Samba Master, if that’s title, shouted instructions.  Hopefully the clip will come out and you can hear the dance beat!

The Big Sing was next and due to the BBC pushing something entitled ’10 Pieces’ as a programme to get young children inspired by classical music, we had several pieces (Mrs P took song sheets) to sing along to. There were over 1000 children in front of the stage singing and dancing! Zadoc The Priest went down better than the others, but it’s incredibly hard and we’re not sure if we got the amens and hallelujahs in correctly!  The children loved it though!

Quickly popping in to the ‘Have a Go’ tent, the children played lots of musical instruments and tried to make it sound like one piece of music! Meanwhile I popped over to the ‘Battle Of The Bands’ marquee where Freedom was getting huge screams of approval for his guitar riffs! It’s lovely seeing past pupils doing well – Brock and Freedom should be proud. Hopefully another successful You Tube upload? That’d be nice.
(Skip to 3.20 for the start of their version of Sweet Child of Mine and an excellent guitar solo!)