Celebrating the Girls’ Schools Association 2025 Choir of the Year Finals
On Sunday 16 March, The Girls’ Schools Association was proud to bring together hundreds of choristers from across the country for the 2025 Choir of the Year Grand Final.
Held at one of the GSA’s leading schools for girls, King’s High School, Warwick, the day showcased the incredible musical talents of young women as they competed in a friendly ‘battle of the choirs’ to claim the winning crowns for Junior and Senior choirs.
The GSA received thousands of brilliant entries and whittling them down to the finalists was no easy task as the calibre was outstanding. On the day, 12 choirs took to the stage raising the roof with young women’s voices; each performance was filled with passion and extraordinary vocal skill.
Hundreds of girls, with parents and carers, journeyed from far and wide with their passionate music teachers for the Grand Final to play their part.
Finalists
Junior Finalists
Blackheath High Junior School GDST
Burgess Hill Girls
North London Collegiate School
Putney High School GDST
The Old Vicarage School
Senior Finalists
James Allen’s Girls’ School
Malvern St James Girls’ School
Queenswood School
Sherborne Girls’ School
Sutton High School, GDST
The judging panel of Dr Charlotte Exon, Tori Longdon and Katherine Dienes-Williams were treated to a cornucopia of songs that included: A Magpie Sitting on a Broken Chair by Hilary by James and Simon Mayor arr. Lin Marsh, Truly Scrumptious by Richard M. Sherman and Robert. B Sherman, Blackbird by John Lennon and Paul McCartney, arranged by Jonathan Wikeley, Do Re Mi by Rodgers and Hammerstein, arr. Nicola Hickey, Defying Gravity by Stephen Schwartz, arr. Roger Emerson, Take on Me by Ah Ha arr. R Emerson, Agnus Dei (from Jazz Mass) by Bob Chilcott, and many more.
Winners
Badminton School – our Senior Choir of the Year 2025!
St Mary’s School, Cambridge – our Junior Choir of the Year 2025!
The GSA would like to thank the dedicated teachers and supportive families, carers, and friends that travelled far and wide to take part in this unique event; one that brings communities, girls, and schools together. Thank you, also, to the event sponsors The Associated Board of the Royal Schools of Music (ABRSM) for lending its invaluable support to this one-of-a-kind event that celebrates young women’s voices.
Follow along on GSA’s social media channels to hear a selection of the songs
The Judging Panel
Tori Longdon
Associate Chorus Director of the London Philharmonic Choir, and Principal Conductor of the Covent Garden Chorus. She is in demand internationally following her work on the King’s Coronation Concert in May 2023 when she coached eighteen choirs from around the United Kingdom to perform for the King.
Tori is currently a conductor for Songs of Praise on BBC1, as well as an adjudicator for ‘Young Choir Of The Year’ and ‘Young Chorister Of The Year’. She appeared on BBC2 as a judge on two series of the ‘The Choir’.
Dr Charlotte Exon
A past GSA Director of Music, Charlotte was the musical director at Downe House a previous winner of the Choir of the Year Competition. Charlotte is a gifted conductor. Her choirs have won Barnardo’s National Choir of the Year, twice, which has never been done before, or since. She is now an adviser for the GSA competition and is much in demand as an adjudicator.
Katherine Dienes-Williams
Appointed Organist and Master of the Choristers at Guildford Cathedral in January 2008 following six years as Director of Music at the Collegiate Church of St Mary, Warwick. She was the first-ever female member to be elected to the Cathedral Organists’ Association, and on her appointment to Guildford, became the first ever woman to hold such a post in the Church of England.