Last Friday we had 32 girls involved in chamber music competition at the Raye Freedman Arts Centre for the 2019 NZCT chamber music competition, from our junior through to the top senior groups. All performed superbly, with 7 Dio groups and 4 combined groups with other schools, competing across the region against some 80 ensembles.

Over the weekend they ran the semi-finals and finals on Sunday night 8 finalists having to perform twice on Sunday in a gruelling and highly competitive environment. As usual Dio had some great results – 5 groups with Dio students involved made it through to the semi-finals on Sunday. We were the best represented school at the semi-finals – definitely a first for Dio!

At the awards ceremony we are thrilled to come away with three of the top awards this year:

Aquarelle won the NZ Award (Best performance of a NZ work) and the composer, Mr Ben Hoadley, from whom we commissioned the work, was at the ceremony supporting the girls.
Trinitas won the KBB Special Award
Ronesma Trio won the Highly Commended Award

This is quite some achievement for these 12 outstanding musicians.

You can watch the Dio performances on the video below.