{"id":71353,"date":"2021-12-06T21:28:00","date_gmt":"2021-12-06T21:28:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/hillside.work\/sec\/staging\/jake-just-misses-out-in-bbc-young-chorister-final\/"},"modified":"2021-12-06T21:28:00","modified_gmt":"2021-12-06T21:28:00","slug":"jake-just-misses-out-in-bbc-young-chorister-final","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/hillside.work\/sec\/staging\/jake-just-misses-out-in-bbc-young-chorister-final\/","title":{"rendered":"Jake just misses out in BBC Young Chorister final"},"content":{"rendered":"

After reaching the final of the prestigious BBC Young Chorister of the Year 2021 competition, Jake Thomson of St Mary’s Cathedral in Edinburgh gave a performance described by one of the judges as \u201cabsolutely beautiful\u201d but it wasn\u2019t quite enough to land the title.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Twelve-year-old Jake, from North Berwick, had reached the last six of three boys and three girls after his performance of Be Thou My Vision<\/em> in the semi-final impressed the trio of judges. In the final, all competitors sang a Christmas Carol, with Jake choosing Bethlehem Down<\/em> by Peter Warlock.<\/p>\n

Judge David Grant said: \u201cThis song really focuses on the telling of the story and there was an assured ease at the bottom of his voice. I feel Jake is a very strong singer.\u201d<\/p>\n

Fellow judge Lesley Garrett said to Jake: \u201cYou created a wonderful atmosphere here. You could have heard a pin drop; it was spell-binding. You drew us to you to hear this interesting story. I could hear the foretelling of the suffering of Christ.<\/p>\n

\u201cI loved the bottom of your voice \u2013 that C-sharp was just gorgeous. I don\u2019t think you are quite as comfortable [at the top] as you are with the lower sounds, but you can afford to be. I thought that was an absolutely beautiful performance.\u201d<\/p>\n

Alas for Jake, despite this high praise, the standard of singing among the finalists at Salisbury Cathedral was exceptional and it was 16-year-old Ruby from Guildford who was chosen as the winner after what the judges acclaimed as a \u201cflawless\u201d performance. The runner-up was 14-year-old Mila from Rochdale. After the announcement of the winner, Jake joined Ruby and all the semi-finalists at the end of the show for a special arrangement of John Rutter\u2019s Angels\u2019 Carols<\/em> led by presenter Aled Jones.<\/p>\n

Rev Canon Dr Marion Chatterley, Vie-Provost of St Mary’s, said: “Jake\u2019s success in the competition is a tribute to the hard work he has put in since he became a Cathedral Chorister in P5. \u00a0Over the past four years he has developed his singing and the results were apparent when we heard him in both the semi-final and the final.<\/p>\n

“Our Cathedral choristers work incredibly hard to produce something very special. They learn to work as a team, to listen to one another, to the lay clerks and to the organ, and the result is music that lifts and transforms our experience of worship.<\/p>\n

“If you have a child in P4 or P5 who loves to sing and who is ready to make the commitment to singing every day with our choir, please contact us at organist@cathedral.net<\/a>\u00a0or viceprovost@cathedral.net<\/a> and we can explore whether it would be the right thing for your child.”<\/p>\n

Young Chorister of the Year was staged jointly by BBC Radio 2 and Songs of Praise. Hundreds of contestants entered this year, aged from 10 years up to and including 16 years. Helen Thomas, Head of Radio 2, said: \u201cTo hear all these young voices perform is mesmerising and I\u2019m sure it was a very difficult decision for the judges. Congratulations and well done from everyone at Radio 2 to all the finalists.\u201d<\/p>\n

The final can be watched again here<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"After reaching the final of the prestigious BBC Young Chorister of the Year 2021 competition, Jake Thomson of St Mary’s Cathedral in Edinburgh gave a performance described by one of the judges as \u201cabsolutely beautiful\u201d but it wasn\u2019t quite enough to land the title. Twelve-year-old Jake, from North Berwick, had reached the last six of […]","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":51634,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-71353","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/hillside.work\/sec\/staging\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/71353","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/hillside.work\/sec\/staging\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/hillside.work\/sec\/staging\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hillside.work\/sec\/staging\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hillside.work\/sec\/staging\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=71353"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/hillside.work\/sec\/staging\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/71353\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hillside.work\/sec\/staging\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/51634"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/hillside.work\/sec\/staging\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=71353"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hillside.work\/sec\/staging\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=71353"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hillside.work\/sec\/staging\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=71353"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}