Hundreds participate in JCDC's schools music finals

HUNDREDS OF students from more than 100 schools islandwide competed in 15 categories at the Jamaica Cultural Development Comission's National Music Finals, held at the Little Theatre on Monday.

The more than 1,000 participants competed in various classes, according to age group, including creative folk, classroom music-making, recorder music, classical and semi-classical music and gospel, popular music and modern music.

The finals, which began shortly after 2 p.m. ended prematurely because of a power outage.

However, despite the outage, the adjudication continued using lights provided by the theatre's standby unit. This caused much discomfort to the participants and audience, many of who thought it should be continued on the following day.

The day was an excessively long one with mostly entries in gospel and classroom music-making.

Gold medals appeared to be awarded in varying standards. As one parent said: "It seemed everyone who entered the competition received a gold medal".

Joy Northover of Mel Nathan Preparatory School walked away with the award for Best Classroom Instrument Teacher. While the teacher at Teamwork School was voted the Most Outstanding Recorder Teacher.

The Most Outstanding Popular and Modern Solo Presentation went to Shane Wright of Clarendon College and Most Outstanding Gospel Choir went to Sacred Heart Academy, Manchester.

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