One Night at the Summit: The Seventh Voice of HFLA

Dec 6, 2024

By ten o’clock the hall had stopped behaving like a school hall. There was confetti in the lighting rig, a queue at the side of the stage waiting to congratulate someone, and a noise level that made the host wait four seconds before every announcement.

The occasion was the seventh edition of the Voice of HFLA, the school’s annual singing competition, whose final was held on 28 November 2024. Contestants came from both campuses, Haidian and Jingbei, and the running order mixed a Peking opera number with a rap set, a folk song with a Disney ballad, a father-and-daughter duet with a rock band. The categories — best voice, best cover, best group, hottest stage, most dynamic, rising star — exist mostly so that a night with forty singers can reward more than three of them.

The winner holding a trophy and certificate on stage with other finalists — The trophy, the certificate, and the moment the result stopped being a rumour.

The title went to Fan Xinyu, a Grade 10 student, for China in the Lights — a song about ordinary city windows at dusk, which she sang with a guest soprano, Wen Yaxin, and a dozen junior-high dancers in red. It was the least flashy arrangement of the night and the one that filled the room most completely. Second place went to Ma Yiming, Grade 12, with Never Left; third to Qian Yinuo, Grade 11, who sang Ajielu with her father, Qian Jun, on the second microphone.

The guest list was not the usual local arrangement. Ulan Tuya, one of the best-known voices in Mongolian-language pop in China, sang Tao Ma Gan and then joined a student on Standing on the Grassland, Looking at Beijing, with dancers from the Minzu University of China behind them. Li Qi, who reached the televised rounds of The Voice of China, coached and performed with a pair of contestants on Moonlight. Two alumni, Min Haoyang and Yang Xinyu, came back to sing: Yang with the northern ballad Chile Song, accompanied by students from the Central Conservatory and dancers from the Beijing Dance Academy.

A singer in a white gown performing with dancers in red dresses — *China in the Lights*: the winning performance, built around a dozen dancers from the middle school.

Between the competitive sets the programme kept changing shape. A dance crew performed; a student rock band, Mouse Trap, played It’s My Life and then a Chinese song with the whole hall shouting the chorus; a soprano from the Central Conservatory sang; five kindergarten children came on in sequence and stopped the show entirely. The hosts, Lu Lu and Wen Duan, ran the transitions like a variety broadcast, which is more or less what the evening has become.

What makes the format work is the age range. A kindergarten singer and a Grade 12 student can end up in the same category, judged by the same panel — this year a mix of conservatory teachers and working musicians. The youngest contestants are not filed away in a separate children’s section, and the oldest are not automatically favoured. The result is a night where a twelve-year-old can beat an eighteen-year-old on phrasing, and does.

A performer in Mongolian dress on stage with dancers in blue light — The folk set: minority costume, pop arrangement, and a hall that knew every word.

Seven years is long enough for a school competition to develop a house style. The Voice of HFLA is loud, technically ambitious and unusually willing to let students curate their own material: the set list this year included Peking opera, Mongolian folk, folk ballads, American musical theatre and rap, chosen by the performers rather than the teachers. The staging is professional — moving lights, a live band, camera positions for the stream — but the decisions stay with the students.

After the confetti, the winners were photographed with arms full of flowers while the crew began striking the set behind them. The last thing the audience saw was not the trophy but the whole company — dozens of singers, dancers and musicians from two campuses — standing in a line at the front of the stage, singing something none of them had rehearsed together.

The full company of the Voice of HFLA final lined up on stage under red lights — The company at the end of the night, after the result and before the lights went out.

The eighth edition will audition in the autumn. By then some of this year’s finalists will have graduated, some will have moved up a year group, and the kindergarten choir will have produced another four singers who cannot yet see over the monitor. The format has proved it can survive that turnover. It has also proved, seven times now, that a school with a serious music programme does not need to import an atmosphere for a night like this — it only needs to hand over the stage.