Grant for two Nelson singers

MARTIN DE RUYTER

HIGH NOTE: Sam Bennett, front, left, and Jontee Bowater with Jonathan Willcocks, top left and Peter Havill, NBS Nelson branch manager. Sam and Jontee have won NBS scholarships for them to travel to England and perform with The National Choir of Great Britain.

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Two bright young Nelsonian singers will soon be packing their song sheets to take to Britain. Charles Anderson reports.

Jontee Bowater and Sam Bennett, both 17, have won a scholarship which has been awarded only twice in the last five years.

It gives the Nelson students the opportunity to travel to Britain and take part in a 10-day intensive school with the National Youth Choirs of Great Britain (NYCGB).

The scholarship started five years ago with the backing of the New Zealand Combined Choir and Orchestra, the Nelson Building Society and the NYCGB.

New Zealand Combined Choir and Orchestra director Carl Browning says only those who show exceptional potential and dedication are awarded the scholarship.

"This year is particularly outstanding that we decided to take two students, but they are particularly outstanding."

Audition judge Jonathon Willcocks, a British composer who was in Nelson for the recent Summer School of Music, says the standard of the NYCGB was "ferociously high" and any winner of the scholarship had to equal that standard.

"It is a wonderful opportunity for them to sing with 130 other terrific singers who are all very talented."

Willcocks says there was no doubt at all about the ability of Jontee and Sam.

"It was unanimous that we should award two scholarships."

Jontee says the experience will change his life. He has been in contact with a past winner who told him how wonderful it was.

Jontee says he is particularly looking forward to working with the choir's director Michael Brewer, a practical celebrity in the classical musical world.

"I have heard that he is very hard, but very energetic but still has a sense of humour about it all."

Sam is just really excited: "It is just a really great thing to be a part of, I can't wait."

The scholarship is open to any singer from 17 to their early 20s, but it was unusual to award two – and both from Nelson.

At the Nelson Summer School of Music the choir and orchestra played an original composition of Willcock's created for the bicentennial of the Battle of Trafalgar. "So it has been a real Nelson extravaganza," Browning says.

Nelson Building Society branch manager Peter Havill says it was great to be a part of young people's success in the region.

Jontee, who had a stint at the Globe Theatre in London last year, says he knows how hard it can be to raise money especially for the arts so the scholarship was particularly appreciated.