The school’s Big Band is formed and big school musical productions start to become a tradition.
1977 The Compton organ was replaced by a Grant, Degens and Bradbeer instrument.
1978 The Big Band was formed by long-serving music teacher Pat Dixon and it gave its first performance on Speech Day, a concert of varied styles of jazz.
1980 1 North stage a house play – Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat – which starts a run of musicals.
1981 In 1981 a vinyl LP was made in the Chapel to record the quality of the school’s music-making. Unfortunately a behind-the-scenes squabble over how best to market it meant it never sold in large quantities.
1982 Guys and Dolls was the first major school popular musical since West Side Story eighteen years earlier, and the first with a primarily school orchestra.
1982 My Fair Lady was a co-production between 1&4 South and the Common Room but the production in the Speech Hall was as good as a full school musical. Julia Ormond played Eliza Doolittle. “Always engaging and singing with a natural warmth and melody, she more than fulfilled the promise she had shown in Guys and Dolls last year, revealing an actress of great accomplishment.”
1983 Twenty-six musicians undertook a fortnight’s tour of the USA giving thirteen concerts in fourteen days in Washington and Philadelphia. This was preceded by a short trip to Jersey for the brass group, string quartet and soloists.
1985 A twenty-four-hour ‘organthon’ in the Chapel saw the whole school take turns in signing their way through Hymns for Church and School. “If at times it sounded more like Cardiff Arms Park, we made up in volume and good humour what we lacked in musical quality,” said Headmaster Tony Hart.
1985 Twenty-three Cranleigh musicians undertook a nineteen-day concert tour of America, giving twenty concerts in Mercersburg and the Washington, Philadelphia and Pittsburg area.
1986 The musical Bugsy Malone, the first junior play, was performed in Speech Hall. The review was less than gushing: “a shambling charade, quite lacking punch.” The next junior play was not risked for another twelve years.
1988 The Mikado, the fifth and to date last Gilbert and Sullivan operetta staged at Cranleigh, was the main production of the Michaelmas Term.
1988 The school orchestra gave the first public performance of a Rhapsody for Piano and Small Orchestra by fifteen-year-old music scholar Daniel Hewson (1&4 South 1991).
1989 A combined Cranleigh-Farlington music tour behind the Iron Curtain to Hungary played to audiences as large as sixteen hundred. Pupil-composer Daniel Hewson, violinist Sarah Ioannides (Cubitt 1990), who went on to become one of the world’s leading female conductors and pianist Paul Miles-Kingston (Cubitt 1990), who premiered the Lloyd Webber Requiem, all took part.
1991 Musicals returned to the Speech Hall with a production of Cabaret followed the following year by Grease.
1992 Three Cranleigh musicians, Caroline Voy, Jennifer Lake and Jonathan Hennessey-Brown, reached the semi-finals of the Chamber Music Competition for Schools.
1993 Cranleigh’s Camerata and Vocal Octet undertook a short tour to Belgium.
1995 Pat Dixon, who had taught music at Cranleigh for over forty years, retired. He played the entire range of woodwind instruments – as was expected of orchestral pit musicians between the wars – and it was a marvellous sight to see him with saxophones at his side, a flute and a piccolo in his lap, and a clarinet at his lips as he jumped from instrument to instrument responding to the demands in the scores of the great musicals.
1995 The massed choirs of Cranleigh School, St Catherine’s and the Cranleigh Preparatory School performed as the opening act for the Mid-Life Crisis Band at the Royal Albert Hall.
1997 Guy Waller became Headmaster and made no secret of his passion for music. Marcus Pashley, the Director of Music for much of his time as head, said Waller supported every musical event. “He relished the big showcase occasions but would also unfailingly be present at the smallest scale lunchtime concert where a fourth former might be nervously running through his grade three piece in preparation for an exam. Not only that, the performer would always receive a handwritten letter of thanks and encouragement which meant so much and which many pupils have kept and treasured over the years.”
1997 Cranleigh School musicians performed with St Catherine’s School, Cranleigh Prep and the Cranleigh Choral Society with the Guildford Philharmonic in the Guildford Civic Hall.
1997 Richard Mayo was appointed Director of Music. “He surmounted all the hurdles placed before him and led the renaissance of the Music department at Cranleigh.”
