By Maddison Pauly and Ashleigh Leck
The Music Festival has been a very significant event at Loreto Normanhurst for numerous years. The very first Music Festival dates back to the year 1972, meaning that it been around for 47 years. For the first couple of years there was only Barry, Mornane, Mulhall and Ward competing as the other four houses had not yet been created.
As the number of students has increased over the years, Loreto has had to move the venue of Music Festival to several different locations in order to accommodate for the school students and larger audiences.
Venues Over the Years
In the first year of Music Festival, 1972, Music Festival was held at Loreto Normanhurst in the gymnasium. It was held there for the next twenty-two years until 1995.
In 1995, the venue of the Music Festival was moved to the Hills Centre. It was only held here for six years.
In 2002, Music Festival was held at Sydney Town Hall and was held there until 2008.
Music Festival was then held at the Homebush State Sports Centre in 2008, and as most of us remember was held there until the end of 2016.
Today, Music Festival is held at the International Convention Centre (ICC) in Darling Harbour and has been since 2017.
Winning Houses Over the Years
As most of us know, there are two major awards for houses on the night; Spirit Cup and Best Choir. Spirit Cup was not introduced until the early 1990s.
Below is a very rough estimation of how many times each house has won:
Aston has won Best Choir four times and Spirit Cup twice.
Barry has won Best Choir four times and Spirit Cup five times.
Kendall has won Best Choir once and Spirit Cup four times.
Kuring-Gai has won Best Choir twice and Spirit Cup once.
Maye has won Best Choir four times and Spirit Cup three times.
Mornane has won Best Choir fourteen times (the most of any House) and Spirit Cup twice.
Mulhall has won Best Choir six times and Spirit Cup seven times.
Ward has won Best Choir ten times and Spirit Cup twice.
Keep in mind that Aston, Kendall, Kuring-Gai and Maye were introduced later on, so they have not had as many chances to win.
Good luck to every House and congratulations to everyone for all of the hard work that has gone into this year’s Music Festival!
