Diocesan School’s elite senior choir, St. Cecilia Singers, has been crowned one of the top performing choirs in New Zealand at The Big Sing Finale on Saturday night (27 August 2016) adding the feather in the cap for a hugely successful year of singing for the School’s choirs.

It was a ‘three-peat’ for the School, being the third year it has taken home a coveted Gold Award. Run by the New Zealand Choral Federation, The Big Sing is New Zealand’s nationwide top schools’ choral competition with more than 200 schools whittled down to just 24 for the Finale.

Facing stiff competition, the St. Cecilia Singers unique performance repertoire included an innovative Latvian piece with an accompaniment of tuned wine glasses.

In a fiercely competitive environment, Choir Director, Shona McIntyre-Bull, says: “You’ve got to stay ahead of the competition. The tuned wine glasses provide an evocative sound and added an extra touch of flair to our performance.”

Diocesan’s junior choirs (years 7 and 8) kicked off the School’s winning streak, beginning the competition season at The Kids Sing in July and taking home an array of accolades and awards, winning the Best Full Primary Choir, Best performance of the test piece and two Highly Commended Awards.

The St. Cecilia Singers entered The Big Sing competition strong. They’d already won Best Festival Recital Programme by a Female Choir at the Auckland regional festival in June. This victory saw them selected, for the fourth year running, as one of the 24 school choirs from over 200 entries to compete at The Big Sing National Finale in Dunedin in August.   

This year’s Gold achievement sees the St. Cecilia Singers building on their past successes. In 2014 and 2015 they were one of only five choirs to win Gold in the National Finale and in 2013 they achieved Silver.

Diocesan’s two other choirs competing in The Big Sing regional finals, The Senior Choir (Year 9- 13) and Bella Cantoris (Year 9-10), both won highly commended awards.

Shona McIntyre-Bull, who has been teaching at Diocesan for the past 11 years and leading the St. Cecilia Singers since 2011, describes singing as her “greatest joy.” She says she feels extremely lucky to be a part of the team of outstanding professionals working in the choral programme at Diocesan.

“St. Cecilia Singers has been running for over thirty years. We have an incredible team of singing teachers including our voice and language coach, Rachel Sutherland, who is the principal vocal consultant with the NZ Secondary Students Choir. I feel extremely lucky to be part of it.

“Big Sing is an extremely tough event and we were competing against schools of a much larger size. I am very proud of our girls and their commitment to hours of practice and rehearsal leading up to the Finale last weekend.”

Diocesan is committed to providing the very best education in the Performing Arts, and is currently undergoing construction of an ambitious new Arts Centre, the first stage of which is due to be completed in early 2017. The multi-million dollar venue will include 25 purpose-built performance and lecture rooms and a 1000 seat auditorium.

Diocesan Principal, Heather McRae is incredibly proud of Diocesan’s choral successes. “Diocesan has a long tradition of choral excellence. I’m thrilled to see both the junior and senior choirs excelling.”