On Thursday 20 March a number of Shiplake’s senior musicians were invited to participate in a music workshop hosted at local girls’ school Queen Anne’s. The workshop was delivered by multi-award winning a cappella group All the King’s Men.
The group are based at the King’s College London, with regular performances at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival and other competitions around the world. All the King’s Men combine tight vocal harmonies with mesmerizing choreography. Ahead of their evening performance at Queen Anne’s School, the singers gave up their afternoon to share their expertise with Sixth Form students.
The Shiplake boys and Queen Anne’s girls were put through their paces learning an arrangement of Lion King classic The Lion Sleeps Tonightcomplete with moves and animal noises!
Following the workshop, the pupils were given the chance to see the entire group in action during the evening performance, before performing their hastily rehearsed arrangement to an expectant crowd. Excellent solos from Cameron, Grossman, Tom McCooke and William Simpson helped the hybrid group to deliver an enjoyable performance.
The rest of the set from All the King’s Men comprised of inventive arrangements of well-known songs including Coldplay’s Yellow, Whitney Houston’s How Will I know? And Cee Lo Green’s Forget You.
Year 13 Music scholar George Graham described the event as “An absolutely fantastic evening and so inspiring to everybody there. The a cappella group are definitely an act you must go and see!”
Video footage of Shiplake’s performance is available on the Shiplake_Music YouTube channel.
