Rotary Young Musician - Chelmsford heat

We held the 2025 Chelmsford heat of Rotary Young Musician on the evening of 10 January.As usual, it took place at St Cedd’s School. Also as usual, the Rotary Club of Chelmsford Rivermead kindly handled the catering.

What was not usual was the number of competitors. The standard of young musicians seems to increase each year. We select those to be invited to take part at the Chelmsford Competitive Festival of Music, Speech and Drama when it takes place each November. The high standards achieved at last November’s Festival meant that we invited more than we have in the past. We know that not everyone invited to take part in Young Musician will do so. When we closed this year’s list we had twelve competitors for Young Musician. We had to turn down applications from the few that applied after the list was closed.

The maximum we have had in the past has been ten. To fit in twelve competitors we started at 18:30, half an hour earlier than usual. One of the singers was unwell on the day, so we were able to accept a late entry from another singer, Ann O’Brien.

Five singers and seven instrumentalists took part. For the second time ever in the Chelmsford heat, the instrumentalists included a harpist. The adjudicators were Emma Gibbons, Director of Music at Chelmsford Cathedral, and Tim Worrall, Head of Music at the King Edward VI Grammar School (more commonly known locally simply as“KEGS”).

The order of play had been chosen by lot before the heat started. All participants achieved a high standard, as was to be expected following their performances at the Music Festival. We didn’t envy the adjudicators their task of choosing a winner in each category.

The winning instrumentalist was violinist Amelia Yang. (That’s her in the photograph.) The runner-up was saxophonist Kabir Basra. The winning singer was Alexandra Hopkins and the runner-up was Ann O’Brien. We are glad we managed to fit her in!