Creek dancers won a Silver award for their number

CBHS Concert Band played for Gold

The CBHS Rock Band has a fan base on the Brac

The Creek and Spot Bay Junior Choir won two Gold awards for their performances of “There’s a Train That’s Leavin’” and “Good Night”, both of which they sang at the National Children’s Festival of the Arts show, which features some of this year’s winners

Children from the Sister Islands won an impressive sixty-three awards in this year’s National Children’s Festival of the Arts Competition, including twenty Bronze, twenty-three Silvers and twenty Golds.

Describing this as “a superb result”, Primary Music Teacher Jocelyn Moss said she thought the standard this year was very high and the performances from students on Cayman Brac and Little Cayman were improving each year.

“Competition is good for children; it motivates and gives them self-confidence,” she said.

The NCFA competition was held over three days, and Brac schools participated in Speech, Dance and Music categories. Little Cayman School entered with four speech pieces.

Among the successes this year were the Junior recorder groups. This reflects an innovation to music introduced by Ms Moss when she began teaching on the Island eleven years ago.

“The recorder is easy to learn and children can quickly learn to play tunes in an ensemble. This way they get a good sense of the enjoyment of playing music together.

“The recorder is a fairly inexpensive instrument, but with them children can learn the rudiments of music – reading the rhythm and notes,” she said.

Of the two recorder groups, West End Primary School (WEPS) Juniors won a Gold, and Creek and Spot Bay School (CSBS) Juniors won a Silver.

The WEPS group was one of the performances at a concert to showcase some of the highlights of the competition on the Brac at the Aston Rutty Civic Centre on Saturday, 25 March.

Brac residents packed the house to hear the performances by the steel pan groups from WEPS and Cayman Brac High School (CBHS), speech choirs, singing choirs, dance groups, the High School Concert Bands, and individual performers.

Electric guitar soloist Michael Manville, who played for Gold in the Festival, was hugely popular with the Brac audience. Michael also played with the Gold winning CBHS Rock Band, another great crowd pleaser on Saturday night.

The band had a good strong brass section, helped along by CBHS music teacher Penny Thompson, and will be among those winning entries that will perform in the NCFA concert on Grand Cayman Friday, 31 March.

Although, there was no judging last year because of Hurricane Ivan, the Brac held its own Music Concert in place of the NCFA annual show.

“This year, the competition was back and it has proved very successful,” said Ms Moss. They only had time for the Gold items in the show with a few Silvers “thrown in”, she said.

Of the twenty-five items billed, twenty were Golds.