The video footage below is from 1966 at our Soi Ngam Duphli campus; it captures students singing and learning their instruments in the school’s early years. The film may have no sound, but it tells a clear story about how long music has been part of a Patana education.

In the early days, lessons took place in modest spaces: an open wooden building with a piano and an overhead fan, and an assembly hall with a set of traditional Thai angklungs (Traditional bamboo percussion instrument). Music continued to be a big part of the curriculum when the school moved to Soi Navin.

The move to our Soi Lasalle campus in 1990 allowed music to grow into a full programme. Over the years this has included specialist instrumental teaching, a Key Stage 3 ensemble programme in which every student learns an instrument, regular school musicals, an established concert series, music camps and performances with the Bangkok Symphony Orchestra.

Today, there are many Bangkok Patana grads going on to study music at leading universities in the UK, US and beyond. Patana alumni can be found across the music world, from classical performance and composition to popular music including:

• Somtow Sucharitkul (S.P. Somtow), internationally renowned composer, conductor and novelist, and artistic director of Opera Siam (formerly Bangkok Opera);
• Paul Sirisant, former Managing Director of Universal Music Thailand;
• Joni Anwar (Grad’00), singer and actor who rose to fame in the 1990s as one half of the iconic Thai pop duo Raptor;
• Harry Mills (Grad’16), a touring West End performer who plays the Phantom in The Phantom of the Opera;
• Andrea Gatchalian (Grad’19), a graduate of Mountview Academy of Theatre Arts in London who has performed with the Royal Shakespeare Company and
• Chopin (Nanan Indra-Payoong), who studied at Berklee College of Music and came back to Patana as a teacher to influence a new generation of musicians.

As we celebrate our 70th anniversary, we’re grateful to the teachers, students and families who have kept the beat and made music a big part of school life for seven decades.