Diocesan Scoops Two Awards At Elite Festival

Diocesan Scoops Two Awards At Elite International Festival

An award-winning choir from Auckland's Diocesan School for Girls has scooped two top prizes at an elite international competition in China.

The 40-member Virtuoso Voce choir from the all girls Anglican independent school has returned home with two magnificent glass trophies after winning a Silver Award and the International Friendship Award at the 10th China International Chorus Festival in July.

The choir of Year 7 and 8 students conducted by Shona McIntyre-Bull was the only one from New Zealand to be selected for the elite competition which
promotes world peace.

Virtuoso Voce competed against more than 500 other choirs from China, Malaysia, Singapore, Israel, Poland and Finland at the China International Chorus Festival (CICF) which has been held in Beijing every two years since 1992.

Open to amateur and professional choirs from China and overseas, the CICF is the largest, highest-level international five-day event held in the country of more than 1.3 billion people.

"The competition standards were among the highest in the world, so we were thrilled that our girls did so well and performed to such an excellent standard," said Diocesan's Performing Arts Director David Gordon.

The festival is supported by The International Federation of Choral Music. This year's theme was 'Forever Friends' and the festival aimed "to build a harmonious world together for the future through peace and friendship".

Virtuoso Voce choir performed a 15-minute programme of three works in the Children's Choir section of the festival's competition, including a song in Maori, Tihori Mai.

Competitive performances were judged according to four categories: intonation, music quality, faithfulness to scores and overall "artistic impression".

Mr Gordon says the school decided to put Virtuoso Voce forward for the festival because it had competed so well against other choirs in New Zealand.

"For the past two years Virtuoso Voce has achieved top results in Auckland by winning the KIDS SING competition in 2008 and 2009.,"

Two other Diocesan choirs excelled at last week's 2010 KIDS SING competition held at the Auckland Town Hall.

The school's 60-member Chapel Choir of Year 6 students won a Gold Award and the 50-member Bella Voce won a Silver Award at the competition run by the New Zealand Choral Federation.

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