KS3 Songwriting Day at Charter North

Year 8 and 9 participants of this year’s ‘Battle of the Bands’ were lucky enough to be chosen to attend a SSLP songwriting day, hosted by Charter North, with sessions led by professional singer-songwriters in London. The students were split up into three bands and were given time with Sophie Holmes (singer-songwriter, Lee Burnett and Steve Foley (guitar/band musicians) and James Burgess (drums).

A Distorted Life (Sienna Nicholls, Gianna Cheung, Adam Podjarny and Alfie Hicks, all year 8) created a beautiful and haunting original song, titled ‘Ghost in my guitar’. This was performed alongside another stunning original song (moving a colleague to tears!) written by singer-songwriters Daniel Sampson, Claudia Quin, Joseph Crown and Maeve Russell, all year 9. Pretty impressive to be able to write a song in less than a day!

We also had Anaphylactix, a well-adored Alleyn’s band already with members Johnny Ovenden, Arthur O’Byrne, Ada Watson and Ben Daley. Unfortunately their keys player, Leon Bricht, was unwell but nevertheless, they gave an excellent performance of ‘Last Train Running’ full of groovy guitar licks with a driving rhythm section.

We look forward to all these bands performing their songs at the Festival of Inspiration on Thursday 22^nd June! Well done to all involved.

Darcey Wynter, Head of Music Outreach