A Christchurch school performance of Stairway to Heaven has wowed the crowd so much it led to a flood of requests for the footage, and has now been viewed more than 150,000 times.
St Andrew's College included the classic Led Zeppelin rock song as part of a prizegiving ceremony on 26 November, with about 3500 people in the audience watching.
The school said it "became the canvas for a showcase of the extraordinary talent within our school community", and the video was compiled "in response to high demand".
"The 100 performers on stage poured their hearts into the performance, leaving the audience in absolute awe. The standing ovation from many parents echoed the sentiment-truly a performance to remember," a school spokesperson said on its Facebook page.
More than 100 pupils took part in St Andrew's College's performance of Stairway to Heaven, on 26 November, 2023. Photo: Supplied/ St Andrew's College
The school rock band and orchestra contributed, and a light show was choreographed.
Centre stage were year 13 pupils Grace Burnett who sang lead vocals and Mia Fraser as lead guitarist, as well as year 12 James McIver on the acoustic guitar.
McIver told Checkpoint : "It was an amazing experience".
Each group that participated had been rehearsing separately, and they only tried it out all together just three days before the event.
Grace Burnett, backed up by a school choir, have turned heads with their rendition of Stairway to Heaven. Photo: Supplied/ St Andrew's College
"I was pretty nervous in the rehearsals, but it felt pretty natural to get up there and just play on the night," McIver said.
The school's head of music Duncan Ferguson said the school likes to go big with its performances and he was pleased that it had gone down well.
"The response has really blown us away ... It's surprising how many people overseas are commenting on it, and we're hearing from other people not connected to the school, in the different countries, that are really blown away by it."
The school orchestra and choir took part. Photo: Supplied/ St Andrew's College
The song had made sense for this group of pupils, he said.
"This year's particularly year 12s and 13s, a lot are good guitarists and drummers, and there's really an emphasis on rock with them. So we wanted to do something which could blend that and use our school orchestra and our choir.
"This arrangement that we came across which is by the band Heart, who did it as part of a tribute concert to Led Zeppelin, ... we got it arranged for our orchestra and it was the right piece of music for the right year group, so it came together really well."
Once the event was over, and requests for the recording began to flow in, Ferguson said they scrambled to edit the video together, but found a hard drive that had all the wide angle footage on it had been corrupted and those shots were not longer accessible.
So an appeal went out to anyone from the audience on the night who had wide angle video - and those tapes were added to the edit.
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The school posted on its Facebook page thanking those who had shared the video, and said its success was down to "the exceptional talent within our team of staff and students".
"We feel incredibly fortunate to have such a dedicated and skilled group, and we thank you once again for acknowledging and directing credit where it truly belongs."
