Dear Teachers in Charge of Music,
RE: For the Love of Music Competition
I am writing to you with a fantastic opportunity presented by Andrew Beer; the APO’s
outstanding Concertmaster.
Andrew is inviting letters from your students to win the chance to attend, with their
family or up to three guests, one of the APO’s fantastic mainstage series concerts. In
order to be in with a chance, all they need to do is write a letter that describes what they
most like about one of the following pieces:


High School Students
o Stravinsky – Rite of Spring
o Shostakovich – Symphony No. 10
Primary and Intermediate
o Handel – Zadok the Priest
o Greig – Peer Gynt: Suit No. 1
This need not constrain them and if your students can find another piece from this
year’s concert programme we would equally welcome letters about those.
This is a wonderful opportunity to involve students in a letter writing competition to
enable them to stretch their creative writing skills with a tangible end goal and great
reward. To assist you in planning this activity with the students we have attached last
year’s winning entry as a guide and a pro-forma to give to interested young people.
Further to this we have links to the music on our website in the Connecting section.
Letters should be marked For the Love of Music and posted to Auckland Town Hall,
Level 1, 301-302 Queen Street, Auckland 1010, and we are welcoming e-mails at the
following address [email protected] For a real challenge we would also love
to see a video message sent to the address above. The deadline for applications is
Monday 1st May.
The winning family will be invited to attend the concert in the balcony seats with other
APO guests and will have the chance to meet Andrew and other members of the
orchestra during the interval.
We hope that you may be able to find a way to embed this in your schemes of learning or
pass onto your students as a chance to extend their writing or media skills.
I am very much looking forward to reading and seeing this year’s applicants,
Thomas Hamill
Director of APO Connecting