Expressions of Interest Now Open
Expressions of Interest are now open for Instrumental and Vocal Music lessons for 2022.
Please complete the expression of interest form (link below), and you will then be emailed the relative information and conditions with a link to the contract.
Music at Westlake Girls
Westlake Girls is proud of its vibrant and busy Music Department with many and varied co-curricular ensemble groups that contribute to its longstanding reputation for excellence. Each Premier ensemble group has a development pathway leading in, ensuring that every young musician is developed, whatever their starting level. Our association with Westlake Boys High School allows us to cooperate in numerous mixed ensembles, providing socialisation through music making. For many years the Westlake schools have dominated regional and national music competitions as well as achieving great success in many international competitions.
2021 was another outstanding year of success for our premier groups. Sadly, we were unable to compete in the finale of the Big Sing due to Covid. However, for the first time in history, the Westlake schools premier choirs (Cantare, Choralation and Voicemale) took a clean sweep of the top three awards at the Auckland Regional event held in June. The Auckland Regional results were:
Best Festival Programme by a female choir: Cantare (Director Fiona Wilson)
Best Festival Programme by a mixed choir: Choralation (Director Rowan Johnston)
Best Festival Programme by a male choir: Voicemale (WBHS – Director David Squire)
Spirit of the Festival Award: Cantare (awarded for demonstrating leadership, community participation, collaboration and innovation).
We also had outstanding results at the KBB Festival with our premier mixed ensembles:
Westlake Symphony Orchestra (Conductor David Squire): Gold and Best Performance of a Romantic Work
Westlake Concert Band (Conductor Warwick Robinson): Gold and Best Performance of a pre-1950s Work
Westlake Chamber Orchestra (Conductor Miranda Adams): Silver
Westlake Big Band (Conductor Hayley Barker): Silver
Our development girls ensembles:
Taharoto Orchestra (Conductor Fleur Knowles): Bronze
2021 was a successful year for four Year 13 composition students who were awarded First, Third and two Highly Commended in the NZCF Federation Choral Composition Competition. Jonine Tiaka (pictured seated below) won with her composition piece Invictus. Lisa Qian came third equal with A Night Thought while Hannah Jones and Melody Zhang both received a Highly Commended for Voices of the Air and Tree at My Window respectively.
Also in 2021, Year 10 student, Kinda Kassibawi was successful in being selected as one of the 93 finalists in the Lion Foundation ‘Play it Strange’ Song Writing Competition.
Cantare choir was fortunate to be able to perform at two ANZAC memorial services at the Auckland War Memorial Museum, and two our students (Alanah Jones and Madi Jagger) performed with the New Zealand Secondary Schools Choir.
Cantare was also invited to perform with the Auckland Philharmonic Orchestra in the Auckland Town Hall for the Discovery Concert programme. And while international travel wasn’t possible in 2021, four premier instrumental Westlake ensembles toured the North Island in July – shortly before New Zealand went into lockdown.
Check out Westlake for yourself
If you’d like to experience music at Westlake, our fabulous video is well worth a watch.
SOUNZ – the Centre for New Zealand Music features videos some of Westlake’s performances over the past few years. SOUNZ facilitates recording and promotion of New Zealand orchestral works for school and non-professional orchestras. You can see the videos here. You can also watch a clip of Cantare performing at the National Finale of The Big Sing in 2019 where they won Gold.
