ADULT MUSIC

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10 Goose Gate | Hockley | NG1 1FF

#MfEMondays are Music for Everyone’s weekly emails designed to keep you up to date with MfE events & to circulate interesting finds, special features, and motivational moments for your Mondays! We are aiming to send out something new each week.

#MfEMonday – 6th June 2022

6th June 2022 Music for Everyone

We hope that everyone had a wonderful long-weekend (and take our hats off to those who had to work) celebrating the Platinum Jubilee. If the weekend’s festivities got you in the mood for all things royal and musical, there is still time to sign up for our Celebrate the Jubilee – Come and Sing event on 25 and 26 June. You can find more details and a booking link here. If you sign up before this Friday you will be able to take part in an extra zoom rehearsal too!

Mussorgsky, Dvorak, Elgar, Mozart, Bacharach… this Saturday 11th June will see the return of our ever-popular Blow The Dust event, where players of all abilities come together to form a huge symphony orchestra, wind band and string orchestra. It’s set to be a wonderful day! With a few places still available for players of orchestral instruments Grade 2+, it’s not too late to get involved. But hurry! Only a few days left to book! All info is here.

Organ Looking for New Home!

An MfE member is looking for a new home for this vintage Hammond organ… please let us know if you are interested or think you can help, and we’ll put you in touch! Picture is available here: https://www.music-for-everyone.org/instruments-for-sale/ (scroll to bottom of page)

June is LGBTQ+ pride month and we are celebrating, even more so than the rest of the year, all of the lesbian, gay, bisexual, trans and queer composers and musicians who bring joy, richness and diversity to our musical lives. If you’re looking to make your own playlist of LGBTQ+ Classical Music, check out this article for inspiration!

Last Wednesday was 1^st June, which always makes us think of Leslie Uggam’s iconic and hilarious performance of Rogers and Hammerstein’s ‘June is Bustin’ Out All Over’ from Carousel – it reassures us that even the greatest Broadway divas sometimes forget the words… enjoy it here

Have a good week!

Your friends at MfE.

06/06/2022

www.music-for-everyone.org | 0115 9589312

10 Goose Gate | Hockley | NG1 1FF

#MfEMonday – 30th May 2022

30th May 2022 Music for Everyone

Things are a littler quieter this week as it’s the half term holiday – all regular rehearsing groups are having a break, it’ll be back to business as normal next week!

Preparations are underway for our next concert, a Jubilee Celebration with the Nottingham Festival Chorus and Concert Orchestra. Filled with music for royal occasions, this concert is on Sunday 26^th June, 3.30pm at the Albert Hall, Nottingham. Tickets are now on sale! https://www.music-for-everyone.org/event/jubilee-celebration-concert/

With all the excitement around Nottingham Forest this week (ask the football fans!) you may have forgotten that this week is the celebration of the Queen’s Platinum Jubilee!

There is so much music to choose from to celebrate these royal occasions that we didn’t know where to start! Thankfully, Classic FM have done the hard work for us and put together a list of the top 15 for the Platinum Jubilee, guaranteed to not just motivate your Monday, but take you all the way through the Bank Holiday weekend… enjoy: https://www.classicfm.com/discover-music/best-platinum-jubilee-classical-music/

We particularly like the new commission by Thomas Hewitt Jones, especially for the Platinum Jubilee (no.14 on the list) ‘In Our Service’ and Holst ‘I Vow to Thee My Country’ (no.1 on the list) Which is your favourite?

Sticking with the royal celebration theme, here is an ‘alternative’ version of the Hallelujah Chorus, as performed by ‘silent monks’ AKA High School students! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZCFCeJTEzNU

Have a good week!

Your friends at MfE.

30/05/2022

www.music-for-everyone.org | 0115 9589312

10 Goose Gate | Hockley | NG1 1FF

#MfEMonday – 23rd May 2022

23rd May 2022 Music for Everyone

From little alien Bumblesnouts saving the planet, to trekking through the jungle, to sailing across the ocean with Moana and Maui, Saturday’s Vocals concert had it all!

Conducted by Alison and Rachel, accompanied by Angela on the piano and Alex on the drums with fantastic narrator Mark, the children showed off their hard work from the weekend before and put on an amazing performance. Here are some photos from the concert…

Coming up next… for the adult instrumentalists and singers, Blow the Dust is on Saturday 11 June and Celebrate the Jubilee with Nottingham Festival Chorus on 25/26 June, places are still available on both courses! Find out more and book on our website: https://www.music-for-everyone.org/

Occasionally there are days when we struggle for inspiration for our Monday Motivation, so this week we thought we would hand it over to you, our lovely MfE family! We would love to hear from you about what musical moments have inspired or motivated you. Email us with your heart-warming, funny or even embarrassing stories and we will share them over the next few weeks!

Speaking of embarrassing moments, here’s a round-up of ClassicFM’s followers’ most embarrassing musical moments. https://www.classicfm.com/discover-music/humour/musicians-share-embarrassing-things-happened-live-concert/

Have a good week!

Your friends at MfE.

23/05/2022

www.music-for-everyone.org | 0115 9589312

10 Goose Gate | Hockley | NG1 1FF

https://youtu.be/VviWab5J2ao

#MfEMonday – 9th May 2022

9th May 2022 Music for Everyone

If you follow MfE on social media (Facebook, Instagram and Twitter) you may have seen a lot of activity last Thursday when we spent a ‘Day in the Life of…’ following Josh on his busiest day working for MfE. Josh conducts the Daytime Orchestras, Thursday youth bands, Strictly Strings groups and accompanies the Lunchtime Voices – a total of six groups! Four of these groups meet on a Thursday and we posted regular updates so everyone can see a typical day in the MfE world!

Here is a recap of his pictures for those that missed it or were not able to see it. In between many rehearsals, Josh pops into the office for an admin catch up and a trip to Windblowers to collect some music!

If you don’t already follow us, all the links to join Facebook, Twitter and Instagram are at the bottom of this e-newsletter.

As we move into May with the first glimmers of summer on the horizon, surely we should have a spring in our step and joy and hopefulness in our hearts? Unfortunately with the cost of living crisis, the various debacles in Westminster and ongoing situation in Ukraine, you might be feeling less than positive at the moment!

However, here at MFE, we firmly believe in the life changing and affirming power of music, and it would seem that we are not alone in this thinking –

“Life seems to go on without effort when I am filled with music”. – George Eliot

“Music gives a soul to the universe, wings to the mind, flight to the imagination, and life to everything”. – Plato

“Music produces a kind of pleasure which nature cannot do without”. – Confucius

“As long as we live, there is never enough singing”. – Martin Luther

Most of us will have experienced a situation when listening to music or participating in music-making has brought much-needed relief or sense of perspective back into our lives. When we came across this video of the Kiev Symphony Orchestra playing Ukrainian composer Maksym Berezovsky’s Symphony No. 1, it certainly blew away some of the storm clouds away and let the warmth of the sunshine appear again. Enjoy!

If you have a spare few minutes, why not try your hand at this Guess the Classical Composer quiz? Let us know if you get them all correct. Good luck! https://youtu.be/H2H0IoBB5os

Have a good week!

Your friends at MfE.

09/05/2022

www.music-for-everyone.org | 0115 9589312

10 Goose Gate | Hockley | NG1 1FF

#MfEMonday – 25th April 2022

25th April 2022 Music for Everyone

Greetings after yet another wonderful weekend of MfE music-making!

Saturday and Sunday saw the massed forces of the Nottingham Community Voices (featuring singers from our various daytime voices groups plus members from the Lunchtime Voices, Nottingham Chamber Singers and various other community choirs around the county), combining in a truly stunning ‘chorus line’ for our West End to Broadway musicals course.

Our singers worked hard on their renditions of the romantic and sumptuous scores of My Fair Lady and The King and I, along with smooth and sensual excerpts by the legendary Irving Berlin, before rounding it all off with their riotous rabble of revolutionaries in Les Miserables! They were accompanied by the stunning Nottingham Concert Orchestra, who serenaded us with a string of Broadway hits, including a heart-rending suite from Bernstein’s West Side Story. It was an absolute treat. Adding a little extra shimmer and sparkle to all of this, were the fantastic talents of Simon Theobald and Kate Taylor, whose performances left us simultaneously rolling in the aisles and weeping into our programmes. It was a triumph – huge congratulations to everyone involved!

Our Vocals weekend is next. With expert tuition from Alison Bennett and Rachel Parkes, this is an absolute steal at only £15.00 for the entire event (two workshop afternoons and a concert afternoon). Please tell all the young people (of primary school age) in your lives that it will be a wonderful chance to learn some new and entertaining music, as well as some well-known Disney tunes from Moana. These massed musical events tend to be formative in our experiences and memories, so help us to spread the word. We know you will want to come and support them in their concert on Saturday 21^st May – tickets are available on our website.

Finally for those instrumentalists amongst you, our Summer Blow the Dust day is fast approaching. Tell your friends, or even bring someone along from out of town … it’s a wonderful day to relax, enjoy and bond with other like-minded orchestral players out there! If you fancy an extended chance to waggle those clarinet keys or refine your ‘ricochet’, then our Summer School is for you. More details available at www.music-for-everyone.org

With the sun shining, our minds at MfE are turning to our Summer School. We are really looking forward to returning to Trent College and hopefully enjoying their lovely grounds in the sunshine. If you haven’t yet decided whether to come along, let us motivate you with a few facts about Vaughan William’s, who’s music we will be exploring to mark the 150^th anniversary of his birth:

He was well connected; His great-uncle was Charles Darwin, and ceramics magnate Josiah Wedgewood was his great-great-grandfather.
During the Second World War, he is rumoured to have done a stint of cleaning at the local public toilets in Dorking.
The composer never took his privileged background for granted and worked all his life for democratic and egalitarian ideals. He viewed music as being part of everyone’s everyday life, rather than being the preserve of an elite. Something we wholeheartedly agree with at MfE!

As the French Presidential Elections closed yesterday, we found it fitting that the French national anthem was composed on this day in 1792, here is Berlioz’s arrangement ‘La Marseillaise’ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LZWabwLPUXc

Have a good week!

Your friends at MfE.

25/04/2022

www.music-for-everyone.org | 0115 9589312

10 Goose Gate | Hockley | NG1 1FF

https://www.music-for-everyone.org/

#MfEMonday – 11th April 2022

11th April 202211th April 2022 Music for Everyone

The MfE groups are taking a well-deserved break for Easter after a busy Spring term.

While the groups are off, the artistic and office team are busy prepping for a wonderful summer term full of music – all the details can be found on our website, below is a quick overview of what is coming up!

Musicals course and concert – 23/24 April
Vocals course and concert – 14/15 & 21 May
Blow the Dust playing day – 11 June
NFC Jubilee workshop and concert – 25/26 June
Summer School – 8/9/10 August

We’re sure you are all familiar with the traditional Easter Egg (painted/decorated/chocolate/etc!) but we’ve found out some interesting facts about the ‘other’ type of easter egg… the ones that double as secret or hidden messages in music.

One of the first composers to do this was J.S. Bach and he hid one Easter Egg so well, it wasn’t discovered for 250 years in his Mass in B
Minor!

He would often sign his name into his music B A C H as an ‘easter egg’ (in German notation, the letter H is used for B natural, and B is used for B flat). Whether these were always intentional will never be known, but it seems to most experts that he would add them to the beginning or end of a piece as a ‘signing off’.

Do you know of any others that he hid his name in?

Bach: Mass in B Minor – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3FLbiDrn8IE

And for Easter, here is Bach’s St John Passion, composed in 1724 for the Good Friday Vespers service in the same year – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zMf9XDQBAaI&t=4s

Happy Easter from the MfE Team!

Quiz time! Can you work out the John Williams film from these emojis? Some are easier than others… https://www.classicfm.com/lifestyle/quizzes/john-williams-film-score-emojis/

Have a good week!

Your friends at MfE.

11/04/2022

www.music-for-everyone.org | 0115 9589312

10 Goose Gate | Hockley | NG1 1FF

#MfEMondays – 4th April 2022

4th April 2022 Music for Everyone

Congratulations to both Daytime Orchestras (Loughborough and Nottingham) for their fantastic end of term performances last week. Josh is incredibly proud of you all and looking forward to attacking the new repertoire in the summer term. New players are always welcome, especially in the string and brass sections!! If you know of anyone who might be interested please let them know. For more details visit: https://www.music-for-everyone.org/whats-on/adult-music/daytime-orchestra/ or email josh@music-for-everyone.org

The Lullaby Bank has also had another successful term. Working in partnership with Inspire, Rachel Parkes has been leading the sessions for babies aged 0-9 months and their parents in West Bridgford and Beeston libraries. The groups offer the chance to sing and listen to melodies from around the world and provide a calm space for parents to bond with their babies. More details about the groups can be found via this link: https://www.music-for-everyone.org/health-well-being/the-lullaby-bank/

Musicians worldwide have been joining forces to show their solidarity with the people of Ukraine.

Violinists from around the world have joined together to perform the Ukrainian folk song “Verbovaya Doschechka”. Illia Bondarenko a violinist in Kyiv filmed himself playing in a basement shelter along with nine other young violinists sheltering in Ukraine. They were accompanied in harmony by 94 violinists from 29 countries. He had to film in between the explosions because he could not hear himself play. https://youtu.be/mQSIeD-x6dQ

The sheet music is available to download here for anyone on any instrument who wishes to create their own recording to raise support for those affected by the crisis.

In Nottingham last weekend members of the Nottingham Philharmonic Orchestra and friends joined together to play at the Brian Clough statue just off the Market Square. They performed the Ukrainian National Anthem and You Will Never Walk Alone to raise money for Ukrainian refugees.

If you’re in need of a soothing lullaby here is a jazzy take on the classic Brahms Lullaby by legendary pianist Dave Brubeck recorded as a gift to his grandchildren: https://youtu.be/fzLDcX-lG98

Have a good week!

Your friends at MfE.

04/04/2022

www.music-for-everyone.org | 0115 9589312

10 Goose Gate | Hockley | NG1 1FF

#MfEMonday – 28th March 2022

28th March 2022 Music for Everyone

A wonderful time was had by all on Saturday at our Family Sing day! It was a great turn out, in spite of fears that the glorious weather may tempt people away from singing and into the garden! A huge thank you and well done to all the children, parents, grandparents, friends and families who came along. We hope you enjoyed it just as much as we did!

Daytime Concerts!

This week our fantastic Daytime Orchestras are both giving informal concerts under the baton of our Principal Instrumental Animateur Josh,

to mark the end of the Spring term. Do come along to All Saint’s Church, Loughborough to hear music by Dvorak, Coates, Strauss and more on Tuesday 29th at 11am, and to St Martin’s Church, Sherwood, to hear works Schumann, Sibelius, Mendelssohn and more on Thursday 31st at 11am.

Beethoven lovers – Bookwise still has the Beethoven Book list available and the CD list is now also available from the donation of the gentleman lover and devotee of Beethoven who is terminally ill. Please email Jane McDermott at jachmcd@gmail.com and she will email you lists – available on a first come, first served basis.

As the end of our Spring Term nears, and we complete our regular groups’ end-of-term concerts this week, we are reminded of our favourite Leonard Bernstein quotation:

“To achieve great things, two things are needed: a plan, and not quite enough time.”

Tomorrow, 29^th March, marks 120 years since the birth of celebrated British composer William Walton (1902-1983). We are delighted to be including his rousing Agincourt Song in the programme for our summer school, for which places can be booked here. In case you need a bit of get and up and go this Monday, here’s his equally rousing Spitfire Prelude and Fugue — guaranteed to help you attack this week’s to-do list!

Have a good week!

Your friends at MfE.

28/03/2022

www.music-for-everyone.org | 0115 9589312

10 Goose Gate | Hockley | NG1 1FF