An ex pupil of Istead Rise Primary School, Hannah Runting, is already carving a big name for herself in the world of classical music.
Whilst a 7 year old at Istead Rise Primary, Hannah took up the harp. Ten years later, and with several scholarships offered by the most prestigious music schools, she’s about to join the Royal Academy of Music
On the way Hannah has achieved numerous accolades, including the musical achievement award in Kent’s Try Angle competition, as well as the Maidstone Young Musician of the Year for 2021. Hannah was also recent winner for her composing skills in a Haberdasher Aske’s national competition. The music she wrote for this has subsequently been played at St Martin in the Fields.
Istead Rise Community Centre was used on Thursday 18th February 2021 for the Try Angle Awards ceremony. This competition is an annual event which encourages young people in Kent to achieve their particular goals in a number of different categories. The large number of this year’s participants certainly showed that Kent has some extremely gifted youngsters. Hannah played her harp to entertain the audience, and was delighted that the whole ceremony was filmed.
She said: “It was quite surreal being followed around by a camera. It was such a fantastic opportunity, and it was incredibly lovely to play to real people again. Hopefully there won’t be too much time to wait before the next concert”.
Local councillor, Dakota Dibben, who played a large part in organising the event, said: “I was so glad our community centre was used to host the ceremony for this year’s awards. It was truly amazing to see so many young people from our community who had achieved so much”.
You can enjoy more of Hannah’s classical pieces at her YouTube channel here.