House Music 2025
Published by Christ College on Wednesday 15th of October 2025
Last weekend, we held our annual House Music Competition, and we were once again blown away by the outstanding talent here at Christ College.
The competition began with the instrumental element on Friday evening. Three musicians from each senior house performed a solo, with performances on cello, piano, French horn, drums, bassoon, flute, guitar and violin.
Each house then took to the stage for their ensemble performance, choices included ‘The House of the rising sun’, ‘The Pink Panther’, ‘ABBA medley’ and ‘Bittersweet Symphony’.
We were delighted to welcome back OB, Tim Lewis, as this year’s adjudicator. On leaving school, Tim trained as a Registered Mental Nurse at a hospital in Basingstoke. He worked as a staff nurse for five years at a hospital in Bridgend whilst also training to be a piano tuner and restorer at Ystrad Mynach College of Musical Instrument Technology.
In 1983, having been a client at Loco Studios in Caerleon, Tim was asked by the studio manager to give up his job in the NHS and become a recording engineer. He then worked at Loco Studios until 1995 as both the house engineer and eventually the studio manager. Clients there included many famous names including Oasis, The Verve and The Stone Roses.
One of the clients at Loco, Julian Cope, asked Tim to join his group as the keyboard player, when they led to him being asked to join the groups: Spiritualized and Coil, both of which Tim recorded and toured with until 2008. During this period, when not touring, he undertook much work as a freelance recording engineer and producer, working at studios such as Abbey Road, RAK, Real World and Rockfield.
Tim still works at Rockfield Studios as one of the house engineers and teaches recording and synthesizer masterclasses to students from schools and universities. He is also currently the keyboard player in the group Hawkwind, plays with Tim Burgess from The Charlatans on his solo projects, and releases his own records under the name Thighpaulsandra.
On Saturday morning, we held the singing element of the competition and friends and family were invited to attend. Each house performed a Unison Song, involving every member of the house, and a Part Song, which includes at least three performers.
We have been so impressed by each house’s commitment to their practices at breaktime and lunchtime and you could really see this shine through in each performance.
Well done to all houses for their incredible performances and thank you to our Prep School choir and the St Nicholas House Choir for singing during the interlude.
Our thanks also to the adjudicator, Mr Richard Dacey. Richard studied at the Royal College of Music and the University of London and has enjoyed a varied career as a teacher and freelance musician both in the UK and abroad.
Mr Dacey’s freelance work included chorusmaster of the Leicester Philharmonic Choir, conductor of the Derby Choral Union and MD and accompanist for the NYMT. Additional school productions have included Guys & Dolls, West Side Story, Oklahoma, Sweet Charity, Thoroughly Modern Millie, In the Heights, Little Shop of Horrors, Grease, Half A Sixpence and Crazy for you plus Les Miserables, 13 and Cats for Leicester Theatre Group. In retirement, Mr Dacey enjoys adjudicating music competitions, playing the organ in an historic 10th century church near Guildford and singing bass in the Vivace Chorus.
