The St George’s Prep School’s Junior Choir made the Top 10 list of Junior Choirs in South Africa for the second consecutive year. 

They achieved fourth place in the ATKV Applous Competition for Junior Choirs with an average of 87%. The Prep School’s Senior Choir received a Gold Certificate, and the College Choir a Silver Certificate. 

ATKV Applous is the oldest and biggest school choir competition in South Africa, with regional qualifiers in Namibia each year. Eleven choirs from Windhoek, Swakopmund, Arandis, Otjiwarongo and Rundu participated, and the adjudicators were Hannelize du Plessis and Bessie Keun from South Africa.

It is the third time the St George’s Junior Choir has made the Top 10. The last time was in 2015 and 2022. Both times, they achieved sixth place. 

The St George’s Junior Choir, which has now received an ATKV Gold Certificate for the 10th time, has approximately 100 members from grades 1-3. 

Jolanda Amoraal, the St George’s Music teacher who has conducted this choir since 2013, said the support of the school’s principal and staff, a creative approach to music interpretation and hard work are the recipe for success with this choir. 

“There should also always be an element of fun for the students when performing. The choir had such compassion and enthusiasm when expressing the different characters of each song,” she said. 

This year, the St George’s Senior Choir, with about 100 members from grades 4-7, has received an ATKV Applous Gold Certificate for the 10th time. 

Amoraal said the new choir outfits made the students function as a unit. 

“As an English school participating in an Afrikaans choir competition in the Merit Non-Afrikaans category, we still had to sing two Afrikaans songs. I am extremely proud of our choir’s Afrikaans pronunciation during their performance,” she said.