Charity Grade 5-athon Complete

Congratulations to Mrs Nathan who has completed an extraordinary musical challenge this week in aid of the music therapy charity Nordoff and Robbins. During 2024 Mrs Nathan has taken ten Grade 5 ABRSM music exams, nearly all in instruments she has been playing for less than a year:

• Harpsichord (April 2024)
• Treble Recorder (April 2024)
• Bassoon (July 2024)
• Combined Percussion – Snare Drum, Timpani & Xylophone (July 2024)
• Organ (July 2024)
• Classical Guitar (December 2024)
• Double Bass (December 2024)
• Tenor Saxophone (December 2024)
• Trombone (December 2024)
• Voice (December 2024)

As she has already been singing for quite a while, Mrs Nathan decided to up the ante and sit Grade 8 Voice too! While the results are still pending for the December exams Mrs Nathan is crossing her fingers that she keeps up her run of successes. She passed all the exams in the Spring and Summer with at least 130 out of 150!

Mrs Nathan deliberately chose to learn a range of instruments from all the different ‘families’: Wind, Brass, Percussion, Keyboard and Strings, and she focussed on less popular instruments to highlight their appeal. She’s even managed to recruit several new pupils along the way! For any pupils interested in learning an instrument at King’s please do get in touch with the Music Department at music@kings-rochester.co.uk.

There were plenty of different challenges involved in the project, “Harpsichord was probably the easiest exam as I already played the piano, but every instrument had its own quirks. You would have thought playing the bassoon would have been easy for me as an oboist but was actually very different. Double bass was definitely the most fun and I’ll continue to enjoy playing it. I’ll be quite glad to hand back the trombone though – I don’t think I’m a natural brass player!”

If you would like to donate to the Nordoff and Robbins charity, you can do so via Just Giving.