The Arts
The arts are co-ordinated by a Head of Art; Directors of Music and Drama; Heads of Strings, Wind and Brass; regular peripatetic music staff; and sometime Artists and Dramatists in Residence. Lamda qualifications are offered as are dance lessons. Culford has around twelve musical groups including two orchestras, a Choral Society, Chamber Choir, Wind Band, Jazz Band and Rock Society. Over half of the pupils learn an instrument. Boys from the Prep School may become choristers at St Edmundsbury Cathedral. Inter-house music competitions and termly concerts are held: recent concerts include Mendelssohn’s Elijah and Britten’s Noye's Fludde at the church in Orford where it was performed originally.
String and Wind Days are held for preparatory schools and the Suffolk Youth Orchestra is a regular visitor. Two major dramatic productions are staged each year, one musical and one stage play. Smaller productions are staged more regularly, including during House drama competitions. The Studio Theatre, the 400-seat Centenary Hall, and the Regency Theatre Royal are used as venues.
2009 saw the restoration of the west wing of Culford Hall to create the Beech Centre for Music and Performing Arts (part-funded by Old Culfordian David Beech). A recording studio in the cellars is to follow.
Recently The Daily Telegraph ran an article on drama at three schools including Culford Prep; and Old Culfordian and BBC Producer Jon Jacobs re-visited the Music School to film for the The Proms.
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Famous quotes containing the word arts:
“So in peace our tasks we ply,
Pangur Ban, my cat, and I;
In our arts we find our bliss,
I have mine and he has his.”
—Unknown. Pangur Ban (l. 25–28)
“No one is ahead of his time, it is only that the particular variety of creating his time is the one that his contemporaries who are also creating their own time refuse to accept.... For a very long time everybody refuses and then almost without a pause almost everybody accepts. In the history of the refused in the arts and literature the rapidity of the change is always startling.”
—Gertrude Stein (1874–1946)