One of the North West's most musical schools will have a new ‘maestro' next term.

Andrew Byers has taken over as Director of Music at St Mary's College in Crosby after 11 years as Assistant Director.

As well as his teaching duties, Andrew will co-ordinate the activities of the wide range of choirs, orchestras, concert bands, jazz bands and other musical groups at the college and its prep school, The Mount.

He takes up the baton from Simon Emery who has moved on to become Head of Music at Liverpool's Blue Coat School.  Simon - who is also Musical Director of the Liverpool Philharmonic Youth Choir - had been at the Crosby school for 16 years.

Passing the baton - Simon Emery (left) hands over to Andrew Byers.

Andrew Byers commented: "It has been a great pleasure to work with Simon over the past few years so we were all sorry to see him go.  However, we wish him every success in his new job.  I am very much looking forward to my new role at St Mary¹s and to making our musical programme even bigger and more wide ranging in the future.  For example, I will be looking at the possibility of introducing new events such as a fireworks concert and masterclasses with members of the Halle Orchestra and the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra.  These will be exciting additions to a programme which already includes traditional favourites like our annual festival of music at the Philharmonic Hall and our Last Night of the Proms event."

Andrew will also be continuing the St Mary's tradition of musical tours.

After visits to Australia, Hong Kong, Canada, Italy and Austria he will be taking a party of 70 young musicians to perform concerts in Geneva in July next year.

Andrew added: "There's such a wealth of musical talent at St Mary's that it will be a real pleasure to head up the music department, and to organise tours like our Swiss trip, which enable us to bring the skills of our pupils to a wider audience."

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