Our ‘Folk Song Challenge’ – has been a great success with 32 videos published so far, everything from unaccompanied traditional songs to contemporary folk music, tunes played on instruments, grandchildren and grandparents performing – so much talent out there.
Now to our next challenge! Many of you will know that this coming weekend should have been our West End to Broadway course and concert. We know how much many of you were looking forward to it, so what better challenge to follow Rachel’s Folk Song Challenge than Rachel’s Musicals Challenge!
Backing tracks for many well known songs can be found on Youtube – for example, type in Backing track for Memory from Cats and you’ll see lots of versions come up. And, of course, you can always simple sing or play a melody without accompaniment. Instrumental renditions are just as welcome as vocal performances.
In this video Rachel introduces the challenge and there’s a ‘taster’ of a musicals video created by some familiar faces (from the comfort of their own homes, of course) to set the ball rolling.
Be brave and be creative, just record yourself on your mobile phone, computer or tablet and contact angela@music-for-everyone.org to find out how to upload your videos. GOOD LUCK!
We’re sure you’ll enjoy this wonderful video too. Ellie Martin is a great friend of MfE and the conductor of our Sherwood Daytime Voices. Here she is performing her own composition – Corona Loner – the perfect ‘lockdown’ song!
Here at MFE we are hoping that you are coping with the extremely strange times we are all experiencing at the moment. It is very odd to have no weekly groups running and we are sure, for those of you who participate in them, very sad not to be able to not have your usual musical rehearsal. That is why we are looking at ways of continuing to make music virtually with you all. We hope most of you have seen Angela’s video on You Tube, if not, here’s the link to watch it –
We will continue to update you as we produce other videos for you to watch and hopefully sing or play along to. However, we are sure some of you will be making music at home either with your families or on your own. If you’d like to send a photo of what you’ve been doing via email and are happy to share with others in MFE, we can then post them online. We feel it is really important that we try and maintain a sense of community in these days of isolation.
Monday March 30th is a date with a number of national days associated with it. Not only is it Doctor’s Day, whom we are sure everyone would want to celebrate and take a moment to thank the fantastic job doctors (and all other health workers) are doing at the moment, it is also Pencil Day!
For those of you who have been associated with MFE (or NCT, as it was originally) for any length of time you will know that the humble pencil is an essential part of any musician’s toolkit. We know that many of you prize your MFE pencils, denoting which courses or concerts you have participated in and some of you have quite a sizeable collection. We wondered who has the most number of MFE pencils and if anyone has one from the first NCT course, the Verdi Requiem in 1983? Do let us know.
Knowing how important music is to all of us and how much we are missing experiencing live music making Classic FM has curated a daily calendar of music being streamed daily around the world. – https://www.classicfm.com/music-news/live-streamed-classical-music-concerts-coronavirus/
Hopefully you can find something here to uplift you as you are confined to barracks!
#MfEMondays are Music for Everyone’s new 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.
Congratulations to all those involved in last Saturday’s performance of the Brahms Requiem at the Albert Hall. Thankfully the Nottingham Festival Chorus’ performance was more successful than the work’s premiere in which the timpanist apparently misread p (quiet) for ff (very loud) and drowned out the rest of the orchestra!
Click here for William Ruff’s 4* review in the Nottingham Post.
Our Nottingham Youth Bands and East Midlands Youth String Orchestra have been successful in an application to take part in the Music for Youth Festival in Sheffield on 17 March. This is a prestigious, nationwide event and it is a great achievement to have been selected to perform. Watch this space for more information on how the groups get on.
While we’re still in a Brahmsian frame of mind (yes, it’s a real word!), check out this Fast and Friendly guide to Brahms, or if you’d prefer something a bit more relaxing watch this video of a cellist soothing fellow transatlantic passengers to sleep with his rendition of Brahms’ Lullaby!
#MfEMondays are Music for Everyone’s new 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.
Hello again and Happy New Year to you all! Here is a fun fact about celebrating the New Year to get us started!
Did you know that new year is celebrated 39 times in different time zones during the span of 26 hours around the world? If you want to be the first to say Happy New Year on dry land though, you will need to make your way to the Kiritimati atoll in Kiribati… or to be the last 26 hours later, Baker Island is the place to be!
2020 is off to a musical start at MfE with our first Blow the Dust off your Instrument event of the year taking place this past Saturday. Over 150 string, wind, brass, percussion and recorder players came along to the Albert Hall in Nottingham for a superb day of music-making, all rounded off with a fantastic concert for family and friends! Here are a few pics from the day…
#MfEMondays are Music for Everyone’s new 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.
Notts TV recently visited our fantastic Sherwood Open Voices group. Watch them in action practicing for their Christmas performance here.
We are enormously proud of the positive impact our Open Voices sessions are having on people’s lives, so we thought we would share some heart-warming quotes from our members to demonstrate just how much the sessions mean to them:
“I love being with Open Voices on a Friday morning, I really do. I have come on leaps and bounds. I used to be shy but I am not now. I really enjoy it.”
“I like the Open Voices, we are like a family. Everyone enjoys it. It is definitely the place to be every week.”
“This group has given my husband and myself great joy. My husband has severe dementia but comes to life when singing at the choirs.”
“Thank you for this amazing group. It has been a privilege to come along and enjoy this time with my mum. It’s such a joyful time. You are BRILLIANT!”
#MfEMondays are Music for Everyone’s new 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.
There was a buzz in the air all day in anticipation of the evening’s performance. Morning and afternoon, instrumental and choral pieces were given a final polish in both the individual and combined groups.
The lunchtime recital was a real treat, given by professional guitarists Saki Kato and Hugh Milington – the Miyabi Duo. Their performance of music spanning several centuries revealed the variety of styles and sounds possible from the guitar, including the use of both body and strings as percussive elements. Like other performers at previous Summer Schools, Hugh had participated in MfE activities as a youngster, though not as a player but a singer!
As you can imagine, arranging a hall to accomodate 150+ performers in wind band, string orchestra, full orchestra and choir formation, with three conducting points, four conductors, two pianos, an organ, two sets of timpani, lots of percussion and a table for tuned wine glasses, while still leaving space for a solist and audience of family and friends, takes some time and is no mean feat, but we did it.
Getting ready for the final rehearsal.
The performance of music reflecting this year’s theme of ‘Voyages of Discovery’ – both in space (Now you understand this blog post’s title!) and at sea – was well received. Everyone sang and played with great enthusism. It’s amazing how much can be accomplished in three days of intensive rehearsal with great tutors and conductors. Of course there were a few wrong notes, but there was always the right spirit in the music and the opportunity to perform, which is what Music for Everyone is all about.
The String Orchestra enjoyed a rare opportunity for an amateur group – playing a concerto with a professional soloist. Conductor Abi Smith and leader Isobel Bounford ensured a wonderful balance between orchestra and soloist, Hugh Millington, leading to a beautiful performance of Vivaldi’s Guitar Concerto.
The concert ended with a mighty fine I vow to thee my country by all performers and audience – this was within the full orchestra’s rendition of Holst’s Jupiter, which included particularly splendid horn playing.
At every great event, much goes on behind the scenes to ensure everything runs smoothly and each participant has a great experience. MfE office staff Amy and Kirstie packed away the urns after the final break having made and served several thousand cups of coffee and tea. (Not forgetting putting out hundreds of biscuits that always disappeared within a few minutes.) They then turned their hands to playing percussion in the evening concert, alongside ‘Events’ Anne tootling her flute and Executive Director Robin compering the evening. And somehow, inbetween and after all that, they collected, set up and served the farewell buffet, then cleared EVERYTHING away until the High School was as though we had never been there.
Huge thanks go to them all, and to conductors Hilary Campbell, Gill Henshaw, Angela Kay and Abi Smith, recitalists and workshop leaders, Richard Cox – THE most amazing accompanist, Nottingham High School for being such fab hosts, and to every participant. We hope you had a great time.
Hilary encouraged the choir to ‘be more Hollywood, less British’, so it seems fitting to say ‘It’s a wrap’ for Summer School 2019! We’ll be back next year with Summer School 2020.
Rehearsals for all groups continued throughout the day. Hilary Campbell had the singers drawing the Z of Zorro with imaginery swords – one swiped line for each triplet note to ensure the perfect rhythm of three against two.
Hilary also rehearsed the string orchestra for the works accompanying the choir, with MfE’s Abi Smith taking and inspiring the group’s other rehearsals.
Today’s recital, given by Zephyr Winds – five professional players with national and international careers – was a virtuosic display of the colour and versatility of flute, clarinet, obe, horn and bassoon. The playing was by turn dramatic, tender and comical – particularly superb were the animal sounds in Jim Parker’s Les Animeaux. Director Chris Swann dazzled on clarinet in the world premier of an arrangment by Matthew Lax (MfE’s Treasurer and Trustee) of Rimsky-Korsakov’s The Flight of the Bumble Bee. Phew!
Lunchtime recital – Zephyr Winds
Each member of the quintet led a workshop for small groups of Summer School players – brass, oboes, bassoons, flutes, clarinets and saxophones. These groups then performed their workshopped pieces to each other. This was in addition to the players rehearsing as a windband with MfE’s Gill Henshaw, and then with the strings in the full orchestra.
The visiting professionals offer Summer School participants unique access to leading players, singers and conductors. There are opportunities to ask them for advice about individual issues or technique in general. But the days are not all work – there are refreshment breaks morning and afternoon, and today’s sunshine meant outdoor lunch for many. There is time to chat with friends, meet new people and browse the stalls, including Windblowers’ array of instruments.
You can hear the improvement all the tuition and rehearsing is bringing about. Players and singers are developing confidence in performing their own lines, listening more carefully to each other to create a blended sound, and adding in not only the dynamic and expressive effects written into the score, but the emotion that turns notes into music and a collection of individuals into a band, orchestra or choir. Tomorrow’s concert audience is in for a treat.
Today’s interesting fact: Oboes are not automatically always in tune! An oboe gives the note for the band or orchestra to tune to because its sound is clear and carries. To enure the note given is spot on, the responsible oboist must first warm their instrument and tune to a perfect A by using a tuning fork.
This morning Music for Everyone’s three-day Summer School got underway once more, but at a new venue – Nottingham High School. About 150 instrumentalists and singers arrived looking cheery, pleased to have overcome the absence of trams and the road closures. Or perhaps at the prospect of fresh coffee and pastries…
The day was filled with a rich variety of rehearsals and workshops in preparation for Wednesday’s concert performance. The repertoire for all groups has been themed to complement the 50th anniversaries of both the moon landing and Sir Robin Knox-Johnson’s circumnavigation of the globe.
Fly me to the moon, and let me play among the stars!
More about the wind band and strings tomorrow – today’s focus is on the choir. Angela Kay, Music for Everyone’s founder and artistic director, led the singers through warm ups and into Ola Gjeilo’s Across the Vast Eternal Sky (one of her favourites, apparently). Then she had everyone swinging Fly me to the Moon before ending the morning with a first go at Handel’s Let their celestial concerts, superbly accompanied by Richard Cox.
Lunch was followed by a recital and workshop with mens’ vocal quartet Scaramella. They entertained us with snatches and glees from 18th century gentlemen’s clubs – as you might imagine, the lyrics featured much wine and were at times on the naughty side! The workshop stretched the singers physically and vocally, and everyone enjoyed exploring Pearsall’s poignant Lay a Garland.
After a cuppa, Jane McDouall, fresh from the south, returned to a warm welcome and led a singing technique session followed by a Q+A. Everyone will be breathing (inhaling, Jane prefers) with shoulders down and the right muscles in play tomorrow. ‘Basically,’ Jane said, ‘there’s no point trying to hold your tummy in and look good if you want to have breath for singing!’ The choir is looking forward to Tuesday’s arrival of visiting conductor and choral director, Hilary Campbell.
The third and final day of the Summer School saw all groups putting finishing touches to the pieces they would be playing in the evening Showcase Concert, open to friends, family and members of the public. This meant some joint rehearsals with choir and orchestra; percussion, piano and choir; orchestra and soloist etc. Brass, as requested by players attending previous Summer Schools, was also a feature of the day. Many music groups and organizations run Summer Schools but we think ours has a pretty unique offering. Not only do we ask top professionals along to give short concerts, but we also ask them to give workshops or masterclasses for appropriate delegates, today being the brass section. Any delegate can come along and listen in, and delegates often say they learn aspects of performance or about music that they can apply to their own but different instrument or voice.
Tim Thorpe (horn) and Simon Baker (trombone) have played in more professional orchestras than we have space to mention. Simon is currently playing in the West End show Kinky Boots! Each of them performed several pieces in the showcase concert, admirably and sensitively accompanied by our répétiteur for the School, Richard Cox. Simon opened with Kenny’s Fanfare and then spoke about his Nottingham roots, being a trombonist, the types of music he enjoys playing, and his friendship (and golfing rivalry) with Tim. Tim’s varied selection included a beautiful arrangement of Erik Satie’s Gymnopedie No 1. In both performances we were treated to the colours, ranges of sound and technical expertise of two wonderful performers.
The School’s brass section was joined by a few other players, including youngsters, for a workshop that led to a performance in the Showcase Concert. The importance of listening while playing (or singing) has been a thread running through all the workshops this year. Simon talked about the need for each player to listen out for when they had the tune, bring it out but ease the sound back when the tune passes to a different instrument. His top tip: Play confidently when sight-reading – blow through the notes – and don’t worry about the odd wrong one! He and Tim discussed the difficulties of finding a balanced the sound in a brass group given the different directions instrument bells point in – up the tuba and baritone etc, behind for the French horn, in front for trombones and trumpets.
We discovered on YouTube that Tim had performed an arrangement of Bernstein’s Somewhere from West Side Story. He very kindly supplied the orchestral parts and performed it with the orchestra in the Showcase Concert, picking up this year’s theme of Music from the Americas. And what a showcase it was of music spanning north and south America, from the 1600s right up to the present! Two of our young volunteers joined the party that was the percussion section in Sparkling Samba, conducted by Gill Henshaw. The Amercian theme opened the concert with a lively and fun performance of The Liberty Bell and closed it with the choir and orchestra thrilling the audience with a chorus from Bernstein’s Candide, conducted by MfE’s artistic director, Angela Kay MBE. There was much applause and appreciation from both audience and Trent College staff.
We were sorry to say goodbye to two tutors who have been very much part of the MfE family but are now moving on to pastures new – Victoria Barlow (choral) and Ann-Marie Shaw (strings). Thank you so much, and all the very best!
This year’s School came to a close with a social time over a hot buffet cooked by College staff. Trent College made us feel so welcome and facilitated what we hope was a great experience for all.
Notts TV recently visited our fantastic Sherwood Open Voices group. Watch them in action practicing for their Christmas performance 
