The Leng Medal made a triumphant return on Wednesday evening, after a two-year absence due to the pandemic.
The event, run by the Sir John Leng Trust, is a competition for the children of Dundee schools.
Pupils compete to win the gold medal for singing a Scots song, unaccompanied.
This year’s male winner was Archie Turnbull from Morgan Academy, singing The Bonny Ship the Diamond.
While the female winner was Emily Baptie of Dundee High School with her rendition of Fear a Bhata.
The competition, hosted in the DC Thomson building at Meadowside, saw 20 young people perform in front of their families.
“We were delighted to be back,” Donald Gordon, clerk of the Trust, said.
The competition was suspended during the pandemic.
Donald continued: “We have missed two gold medal competitions.”
“We thought that doing this sort of thing by Zoom simply wouldn’t work.
“I think that was the right decision.
“And as the schools were off for a lot of time, there couldn’t be any rehearsing or training or teaching of the students.
“We’ve just done nothing for the past two years, so it is very nice to do it in person.”
Continuing Scottish traditions
The Sir John Leng Trust has supported and encouraged Scots singing in schools across the city for over 100 years.
Donald said: “It’s very good for school children to be able to know Scots songs.
“And not just Burns, any Scottish songs.
“It’s important to know because it’s part of the Scottish history.
“It’s important to be able to perform those songs – they perform completely unaccompanied, which makes some of them quite nervous.
“But that’s a good life training as well. It’s the sort of thing no one else does.
“It encourages school children who do this to go on and join things such as the school choir and National Choir of Scotland.”
To enter into a gold Leng Medal competition, each singer has to have won a silver medal in their own schools.
Donald said: “It’s really still quite an accolade to be a gold medal winner, in a music context.
“There is still very much an appetite for this competition. Okay sometimes it has to be encouraged slightly by the music department, but I’ve never found anyone who has regretted taking part.”
