The school that rocks: Saint Andrews College’s latest epic prizegiving

A Christchurch secondary school’s end of year prizegiving concert has become a thing of legend.

Saint Andrews College was everywhere on the internet in 2023 with its performance of ‘Stairway To Heaven’, while last year’s rendition of Coldplay’s ‘Viva La Vida’ has been watched more than 42,000 times.

This year’s show stopper was a heartfelt tribute to Aotearoa, with a medley of iconic Kiwi anthems, including Crowded House’s ‘Don’t Dream It’s Over’ – sung in te reo Māori and English – Stan Walker’s ‘Aotearoa‘, Shapeshifter’s ‘In Colour’ and ‘Don’t Forget Your Roots’ by Six60.

The students played to an audience of 3500 people Christchurch’s Woolfbrook arena.

Recently graduated student Miu Kim played the violin solo on the medley and told RNZ’s Checkpoint it was all about the opportunity to play in such a big venue.

“It was really lovely to play in front of so many people. It’s such a special place to play.”

Miu – who started playing the violin and five and also plays the piano, saxophone and flute – said it was nerve wracking with the side of the crowd, but she also had trouble keeping a straight face.

“I actually had a little trip before the camera comes onto me, but I fortunately didn’t fall.”

She is off to study architecture next year, but will continue with music.

The show featured 100 students on stage, including about 60 in the orchestra, and the rest in the choir and rock band. They are a mixture of ages – some of the soloists are year 13, while others like electric and bass guitar are year 12, and the drummer is year 9.

St Andrew College head of music Andrew Ferguson said there was now clamour – both in and outside of the school – asking what song he was planning on well ahead of time, and there was also added pressure to ramp up production values.

He said the school had a couple of years to get used to the attention, but it was still intimidating to come up with something different.

He said there was a “lot of chatting” before settling on a 15-song shortlist.

“It was the middle of year before we settled on it and nutted the arrangement out.”

He said it was important to honour te reo Māori with the performance, but also could not rule out bringing out the bagpipes next year.

“I’m not going to commit to that, I actually have something different at the back of my mind, but bagpipes are a big part of the school.”