EVERY year the Chingford Festival is held at the Green, bringing together different parts of the community to create a fun-filled day of art, music and food.

This year, Chingford Foundation School was asked to provide some of the day’s entertainment, which allowed the music department, with Head of Music Rachel Barnes and her colleague, Athy Lill, to show off a wide range of the school’s musical talent and entertain the people of Chingford in exciting and original ways.

The school’s turn at the festival began with a powerful performance by Chingford Bateria – Chingford’s very own samba band. Anyone around Station Road during the bateria’s performance would surely have heard the throbbing drums and resonating agogo bells.

Next to play was Big Noise, a band made up of Year 11 students who have now left the school. On vocal duties for Big Noise was Ilona Tyrrell, a talented singer tipped by many to be a vocal sensation sometime in the future.

Chingford’s long-running orchestra then took the stage, adding a more classical flavour to the school’s musical output. About 15 performers made up the orchestra, with instruments like violins, saxophones and flutes contributing to the impressive performances.

Chingford’s choir, comprising of students from years seven to ten, also performed, showing the vocal talent of the school.

The choir sung a variety of pieces, from a range of genres like pop, jazz and classical. The festival was a fun day all about community spirit and entertainment, and Chingford Foundation School’s various musical performances helped to add to this, showing how co-operation and hard work can lead to a brilliant piece of work, a notion core to the school’s working ethos.