MUSON Holds Highscores Concert, Celebrate Success

 By Omiko Awa

THE Musical Society of Nigeria (MUSON), last Sunday, held a Highscores Concert to celebrate students that excelled in the exalted Associated Board of the Royal School of Music (ABRSM) examination held last June and as well showcase their brilliant musical performance.

Tagged ABRSM-June 2011 Highscores Concert, the director of MUSON School of Music, Mrs. Marion Akpata, presented 15 of the students that excelled with distinction in the ABRSM examinations in grades 6, 7, 8 and diplomas.

   The successful students are Ilesanmi Olarenwaju Alaba  (Grade 6), Bisong Ernest Okan (Grade 7), Ayodeji Olufemi, Osazee Omoigui, Etim Daniel Dominic, Oluwaloju Folaranmi Olusegeun, Oluwaseun Oluwabusuyi, Oyewumi Olaide Esther, Omolade Adebimpe Adepeju, Omogbehin Tolulope, Olaadebola Mobolaji, Joshua Tolulope David (Grade 8) while John-Paul Ikechukwu Ochei (Performing Diploma), Oluwatosin Olaniran (Directing Diploma) and Aderayo Abiodun Oyegbade (LRSM performing).

   ABRSM is an internationally recognised educational body and charity that provides examination in Music.  The London-based organisation, which runs examination centres across the world is one of the three examination boards accredited by the office of Qualification and Examination Regulation (Ofqual), to award grades and diplomas qualification in Music on the UK National Qualification Framework, along with the London College of Music and Trinity Guildhall.

   More than 620,00 candidates in 90countries across the world take the examinations each year.

    The body left Nigeria in the 90s and returned with the theory examination only in 2007, making Nigerian students to go to Ghana for the practical during their absence in the country.

   Last year, for in about 20 years of leaving the country, the body brought its personnel to conduct practical examination for its Nigerian students in which 15 passed with distinctions.

   Speaking on the feat Akpata, said, “Aside from having very dedicated and knowledgeable staff, authority of MUSON School of Music select and feature students they are sure can excel in their programmes. Besides, Nigeria is full of talented young people that are waiting to be discovered and encouraged to excel.”

Mrs. Marion Akpata,

  She added: “MUSON school has the skill to groom students to compete with their contemporary anywhere in the world and as well make them sing in any language, French, Italian, Yoruba and others.”

Pirates of Penzance … A showcase of duty, patriotism

By Omiko Awa

 THE Shell Hall of the Musical Society of Nigeria (MUSON), was filled this evening to capacity. A lot of people had come to watch Pirates of Penzance, an opera about a young man, Frederic, apprenticed to a band of pirates in error by the nanny, Ruth.  The nanny misheard Frederic’s father’s instruction of apprenticing the son to a ship’s pilot instead of pirates.  The truth begins to unveil when Frederic is about to reach his 21st birthday and concludes his long apprenticeship to the infamous Pirates of Penzance that his good-hearted and hard-of-hearing nanny, Ruth, reveals how she mistakenly apprenticed him to the Pirates of Penzance, when he was eight years old.

   On the eve of his supposed 21^st birthday and the assumed day of freedom, Frederick tells the Pirate King, who never preys on orphans since he is one, that his freedom will be devoted to exterminating all pirates and it will be better for the pirates to leave before midnight when his indentures are over. The pirates depart immediately and he is left alone with Ruth, the only woman he has seen in years.

   Ruth had made Frederic to believe she is the only woman in the world and may likely live with him as wife. At 47, Ruth is afraid of losing Frederic to younger and more beautiful maidens and does all she knows to keep him away from the world; so, he could marry her. She pleads with Frederic to take her with him wherever he goes.

   However, she loses out when a bevy of young and attractive ladies appear at the sea. Frederic, who had never seen such astonishing young women, admires them. He appeals to the girls to overlook his pirate apparel and his past profession and marry him, but no one listens until the most beautiful of them, Mabel, appears. Frederick and Mabel instantly fall in love. It is love at first sight.

  On the trail of Frederic, the pirates run into the same group of beautiful ladies; charmed by their beauty, they propose marriage to all at once. Though their father, a major general, bluffs and chides the pirates, but the men of the underworld won’t let the girls go.

  When the major general realises his entreaties won’t work, he lies that he is an orphan and would be lonely without his daughters. The pirates, orphans too, take pity on him and let go his daughters.

  Saddened with guilt and shame for lying, Federic his accepted would-be son-in-law consoles him with a promise of rounding up his tormentors and bringing them to book. Assured that Federic would lead a troop of policemen to arrest them, the old soldier livens up. 

  Getting winds of the plot to attack the pirates, Ruth and the Pirate King stop Federic with a most ingenious paradox — Frederic was born on February 29, a leap year and his actual birthdays is only five instead of 21. By this, it means he has 16 more leap year to serve the group.

Slave of duty, Frederic rejoins his former associates to complete his indenture service, leaving the police to attack the pirates on their own.

  Bitten by the bug of love, Mabel pleads with Fredric to stay, but he won’t. He insists that he has to fulfill his duty to the pirates until his 21^st birthday, after which he would return to marry her. They both agree to be faithful to each other until then, though Mabel sees it as too long a time for a lady to wait for a man. She screws up courage and tells the police to go for the pirates.

   Thinking they could overpower the outlaws, the police attack them, but were defeated. Not conceding defeat, the sergeant of police charged the raiders to surrender their arms in the name of Queen Victoria, the reigning ruler of England.

   Filled with awe the pirates succumb to the appeal. Just about taking them away, Ruth appears and reveals that the pirates are in fact all noblemen who have gone wrong. This makes the major general to plead for their release, especially as they promise to lead a crime free life.

    This was obliged to and the pirates let off the hook, but their eyes were never off the major general’s daughters. Aware that the pirates fancy his daughters, the old soldier allows them to marry and live happily afterwards.

   Written by Gilbert and Sullivan, Pirates of Penzance revolves around commitment to duty, family obligation, bonding, patriotism and nationalism. Produced and directed by Emeka Nwokedi, the very impressive opera, aside from showcasing well-choreographed dance, employs recitatives, arias chorused by MUSON choir and dramatisation to pass its message across to the audience.

Kings College Old Boys extol virtues of the Ikemba

By Omiko Awa

TRIBUTES have continue to pour in for the late Biafran former Biafran leader Chukwuemeka Odumegwu Ojukwu, the Ezeigbo Gburugburu, as former students of   King’s College, Lagos, his alma mater, held a forum event his honour.

  Tagged: The Formative Years Of A Great Man; A Tribute To Late Chief Chukwuemeka Odumegwu-Ojukwu, the president of King’s College Old Boys’ Association, Mr. Hakeem Belo-Osagie, who was represented by former Minister of Finance, Dr. Idika Kalu Idika, said, like many Nigerians of his generation Ojukwu was not a tribalist and regarded himself as a Nigerian rather than an Igbo man. He added the former Biafran leader was outspoken, hated injustice and supported unitary system of government.

 “ Chukwuemeka passionately criticized sections of the Richards Constitution of 1946 and the Macpherson Constitution of 1951 because he believed they would unleash the monster of regionalism and fractionate a united country,” he said.

  Eulogizing the dead leader, Kalu noted that Ojukwu was pushed by the surrounding events to declare the Republic of Biafra. 

  The seasoned economist and Nigeria’s four-term Minister of Finance said, “it was the situation that pushed him to declare the Republic of Biafra and I know it must have been a most painful and thought provoking event as the script has shown.”

“ However, the myth where he is cast as a rebel is something historian would continue to explore because you have to re-define the crises and what led to it, to identify who are in fact the rebels to what you might consider the legitimate Nigerian authority. I know him as somebody who was very genial and detribalized. Though, he was a typical Kings College or Lagos boy, he was nationalist and belonged to different ethnic national. He was a true Nigerian, born in the north though of eastern extraction, he spent a lot of his time in the west,” he said.

    The former minister added, “he was a very rounded Nigeria; he believed strongly in Nigeria; he was much more interested in unifying Nigeria and, of course, with his military background, he easily saw the unitary system of governmnet, which was decreed in1966 after the coup as a bond to unify the country. I knew him as a scholar; he was erudite and well spoken. He grew into what one could call a militician or politician, even with his military background, but he never seize to love this nation. I think we really owe him a lot as a great son of this country.”

  Kola Akinselure, another old boy said, “I would want Nigeria to immortalize him by naming one of the national edifies such as an airport or any other amenities after him as was done to other fallen national heroes.”

Dr. Idika Kalu Idika

  He noted, “Ojukwu was rather a renegade than a rebel because the Aburi Accord then called for national unity and provided certain yardsticks for the unity to exist, but unfortunately none of the measures was met; so, he opted to pull out from the Nigerian State because the stakeholders on their own part were not meeting the expectations of the Accord.”

  Ojukwu joined Kings College in 1944 at the age of 10 and the youngest student registered then. He was received into Harman’s House, one of the four houses in the school from where he was groomed for boldness, discipline, sartorial elegance and vision.

  Though he left the school in 1946 for England to continue his education in Epsom College, Surrey, from where he proceeded to the university, Ojukwu upon graduation identified with King’s College till his death.

Ohafia  War Dance

   Unfolding some of the activities planned for his burial, Dr. Leke Oshunniyi, said the association plans to pay a condolence visit to his widow in Enugu and also to use his photograph in his early days in the school for a full-page advert in the papers.

The feast of love, letters

  BY OMIKO AWA

THE Lifehouse on Sinari Daranijo Street, Victoria Island, Lagos, recently hosted a gathering of youths who came to express themselves in written words and celebrate the Valentine’s Day.

   Tagged, A Night Of Love Letters, the event was organised by Beeta Universal Arts Foundation (BUAF).

  The highlight of the night was the reading of love letters by famous and not so famous men to their loved ones.

  Some of the letters read include that of Mozart, Beethoven, Honore de Balzac, Henry VIII, Pliny the Younger, Alexander Pope, Robert Browning, Richard Steele, William Congreve and others.

     Also, the very first love letter Mr. Reuben Abati, wrote to his lover while in secondary school was read to the audience.

  Aside from letters, the night witnessed guests reading poems for their love and those that have impacted on them in life. Mr. Ken Etete expressed how beautiful his wife; painting her in the colours of rainbow in his poem, while ‎Mojisola Fayokun, writer, eulogised her pen, praying for their relationship to last forever.

  Evaezi serenaded guests with her songs while Bikiya, founder of BUAF and hostess of the evening, urged guys to up their “skills of wooing ladies with flowers, gifts, dinners, especially letters with which they could express their feelings as it was done by our parents.”