Welcome back! We hope all that attended the Summer School last week enjoyed it as much as we did – what a Voyage of Discovery we had! If you missed any of the action, we had a blog running over the 3 days which can be seen on our website – lots of great photos too! http://www.music-for-everyone.org/about-us/blog/
After a few days off, the MfE team is back and looking forward to the next season of music-making, we will be bringing you full details very soon!
In the meantime… why don’t you check out some of the other musical events happening in the East Midlands? We regularly promote 3rd party events and opportunities through a special page on our website – take a look for yourself, or perhaps a family member, there are opportunities for adult and youth alike!
#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.
No particular theme for today’s #MfEMonday, just another place to share some news!
As always, please continue to send through your events & happenings to admin@music-for-everyone.org as would love to feature them.
Summer School You can now book your lunchtime recitals and concert + buffet tickets online and through the MfE Box Office.
Open Voices At Friday’s Open Voices Les Misérables concert over £200 was raised through generous donations. Thank you so much, and huge congrats to Open Voices. Here’s to your future!
Third Party Events page Playing in any concerts? Looking for new members for your group? Want to see events happening near you? Our Third Party Events page on our website is chock-full of upcoming concerts and opportunities. Email admin@music-for-everyone.org if you have anything you’d like to advertise for FREE!
My last #MfEMonday… “It has been my absolute pleasure to work for MfE as Adult Programme Assistant/Marketing Officer for the past 6 months. Angela + the office team have made me feel so welcome and I will forever be grateful for my time here! Rest assured I will continue to be a part of the excellent courses + concerts for as long as I can, but oh, how I will miss writing the #MfEMondays!!! All the best for the future, see everyone at Summer School!”
#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.
A Tuesday #MfEMonday for you (it’ll make your week feel shorter!)…
Yesterday the MfE Office was dominated with the upcoming Summer School– music has been sent out to 150 excited participants, in preparation for three glorious days of music-making at Nottingham High School this August!
I’m sure you’ve all heard about our Summer School, and this one certainly is not one to miss. Celebrating the 50th anniversary of the Apollo 11 moon landing, we have a stellar repertoire list everyone can enjoy, including Strauss’ Also Sprach Zarathustra, the theme from The Onedin Line, an arrangement of Jupiter, Ola Gjeilo’s Across the Vast, Eternal Sky, the classic Fly Me To The Moon and more!
We also have talented special guests Scaramella, Hilary Campbell, the Miyabi Duo and Zephyr joining us to take workshops and recitals.
There is more information with a full repertoire list on the Summer School website. We are super excited for our 5thSummer School and hope to see you there!
On another equally as exciting note, Music for Everyone is delighted to announce that we have received a grant for our Open Voices initiative, all thanks to The National Lottery Community Fund!
This grant will support the group as it grows and continues to enlighten the lives of individuals and their communities.
Keeping the space-theme, we are OVER THE MOONto accept this grant!
#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.
Well we can hardly believe a year has gone by since the last Summer School, but it has! This year we’ve moved from the University of Nottingham to Trent College. We wondered if those few extra miles out of Nottingham might put people off, but no! Bigger and hopefully even better than ever. A choir of 70+ and an orchestra of 80+ meeting together for three days of rehearsals, specialist workshops, Music in the Chapel concerts by visiting professionals, and the delegates’ showcase concert on Wednesday. With Trent College offering B&B, some folk have opted to stay over even though they live locally, making a mini holiday of it. Accommodation has also enabled others to come from further afield. There’s a cooked lunch for any who would like it and plenty of parking. We hear at least one person is staying not far away in a caravan. We’ll leave you to guess who…!
The guest tutors today were choral specialists Blossom Street. Tomorrow there is a violinist, and on Wednesday two brass players. Blossom Street, a chamber choir, formed 10 years ago when the singers were still students. They are now a London based and much praised choir, usually of 8, but sometimes 16 or even only four, directed by one-time singing member, Hilary Campbell. Another member is local Ellie Martin, who conducts one of our Daytime Singers groups. Five members gave a lively workshop that proved entertaining and informative. It improved the choir’s sound by helping singers give a more nuanced performance. Hilary spent a few minutes talking about the importance of diction, that it is part of the music, and just as the choir blends the pitch and timbre of its notes, it needs to do the same with pronunciation, matching vowel and consonant sounds not only within a section, e.g. tenors, but between sections when singing the same words at the same time. It’s all in the listening, just as it is with the notes themselves. Blossom Street also had delegates singing rounds. Not, however, a round of the same tune, rather five different tunes and from memory! Three other members arrived in the late afternoon to bring the first day to a close with a beautiful concert, picking up this year’s Summer School theme of music from the Americas. We went home uplifted and relaxed. Their interpretation and rendition of Holst’s I love my love and Whitacre’s Sleep were sublime.
And for the others… there were rehearsals for the full orchestra, string orchestra and windband with a variety of tutors. More about those groups in the coming days. Two more Music in the Chapel Concerts, open to the public, take place tomorrow and Wednesday. Tuesday, 5.15pm, Owen Cox, violin, and Hilary Suckling, piano perform a programme that includes Copland’s Appalachian Spring and Elgar’s Sonata. Owen is a great favourite at the Summer School. As a boy he played in MfE’s Stringwise, he now teaches at Cheetham’s School of Music and performs around the world. You don’t want to miss it. Nor Wednesday’s concert by two superb brass players at lunchtime 1.30pm. Click here for details.
140 singers and instrumentalist arrived at the Music Department, University of Nottingham, for the first day of the three day School, now in its third year. After a welcome to all, the players went off to rehearse, and the singers began with a brighten-the-day burst of Haydn’s The heaven’s are telling the glory of God, from his oratorio Creation. Later the strings rehearsed separately, working on Vaughan Williams’Lark Ascending, while the windband made a great sound with their own repertoire.
The rain dampened the coffee preparations but dried up in time for to the morning break to happen outside, as did drinks and nibbles followed by lunchtime picnics. John Hess, Chair of Music for Everyone, gave a short talk to begin the afternoon – more about that to follow.
In the afternoon, choir and orchestra put together the instrumental and vocal parts of The heavens are telling. This was a new experience for some of the players, accomapanying asks for different listening and sensitivity skills. There were a few empty chairs in the orchestra as the flute choir – 15 in number – attended a separate workshop with one of the School’s guest musicians, flautist Rachel Holt. She helped them to focus on the detail to be found within the music, sometimes not by actual markings but by what can be felt as the composer’s intention. She highlighted technical aspects of pitch for certain tricky to tune flute notes, articulation and expression.
After further rehearsals, the day ended with a short concert given by Appasionata, flute and harp duo Rachel Holt and Anna Christenson. Both have played for leading professional orchestras, and the programme included pieces that showcased each instrument. They delighted us all with music from the baroque Benedetto Marcello to the more modern John Marson, himself a renowned harpist.
Rounding off the splendid 2017/18 MfE season was a Festival of Summer Music. Groups of all ages took part: Nottingham Youth Band, East Midlands Youth Windband, Girls Voices, Young Voices, Nottingham Youth Voices, Stictly Strings, East Midlands Youth String Orchestra, Adult Flute Choir and Swing Band. (Apologies if I’ve missed anyone!) There was a relaxed atmosphere and the audience enjoyed stawberries and cream while the music played on. Spot the clothes pegs securing music to stands! It was a windy day, but the challenge of hanging on to the copies added to the fun.
Thank you to everyone who made a donation during the season to enable MfE to set up new singing projects for people with learning difficulties. It was much appreciated. The 2017/18 focus will be The Year of Youth. We want to make it possible for as many youngsters as poosible to experience the joy and friendship that comes from making music together. More to follow.
The Music for Everyone Summer School begins at the University of Nottingham tomorrow and ends with a concert on Wednesday evening. We’ll be blogging about it each day. Also catch the news on our social media @mfenotts #mfesummerschool
Rehearsals over, and before the Showcase Concert, the delegates, tutors and volunteers enjoyed cheese and wine on a glorious summer’s evening. The University of Nottingham has been a generous and helpful host of an amazing few days of music making. What a rich experience has been had by all – rehearsals of repertoire perhaps not encountered before, small ensemble workshops for instrumentalists, a singing masterclass with Carris Jones followed by a recital, insights into ensemble playing from the Cox Quartet and Equinox Saxophone Ensemble open rehearsals and concerts by both groups, a fascinating talk about Shakespeare and music by John Florance, developing technique sessions, the opportunity to ask advice from the experts in voice and instruments, making new friends, and performing in a concert.
The concert gave each group an opportunity to showcase its Shakespeare inspired repertoire to the other delegates of the School and a small audience (fire regulations limiting the number of people allowed in the space). A slight hiccup preceeded the concert, which led to some relieved and kindly singing fun – Oh dear, what can the matter be… etc etc!
The full orchestra played a medley from Kiss me Kate, Mendelssohn’s incidental suite A Midsummer Night’s Dream (often known as The Wedding March, sometimes played as the couple leave the church), music from William Walton’s Henry V suite (for the Olivier film of the same name, and with a movement for the String Orchestra only), and Vaughan Williams Serenade to Music. The last two pieces included the choir. The windband played both within the orchestra and on their own with a lively performance of a medley from Westside Story, Bernstein. As well as singing both the choir and solo parts of Serenade to Music, the choir performed two of Rutter’s Birthday Madrigals, Emma Lou Deimer’s Three Madrigals, The Agincourt Song from Walton’s Henry V and William Harris’s tender and poignant And Will A’ Not Come Again.
We hope all the delegates enjoyed the Summer School as much as we all did. Thank you for your hard work, friendliness and for making it such a wonderful few days. Here’s to the next one!
If you use Facebook, you’ll find more photos and videos from the Summer School on the Music for Everyone Facebook page. ‘Like’ us, and news will pop up in your feed. You can also sign up to follow this, the MfE blog, by email (see box to the right).
And so to the final day of the MfE Summer School 2016. For the choir, full and string orchestras and windband, today was a day of polishing in readiness for the evening showcase concert. The saxophones were in for a added treat.
The Equinox Saxophone Ensemble, led by Alistair Parnell and founded by him in 2005, gave an open rehearsal masterclass. There were many similarities with the points made in Owen and friends’ string quartet rehearsal – listening, discussing, resolving and settling on a way to perform a piece and convey it to an audience. Alistair spoke of the time needed to warm an instrument properly, how the duration of that period increases with the size of the instrument. This is key to tuning and intonation, both of which are notoriously difficult with the saxophone. We marvelled at the six sizes of sax played – two other sizes exist, the contrabass (very low) and soprillo (very high).
After a quick change, Equinox entertained us with a concert that both astonished and inpsired. It converted saxophones sceptics to huge admirers. The ensemble showed the versitility of the instrument through their wonderful playing of arrangements of music from Mozart to Ravel to Oscar Peterson, arrangements made by Alistair and other members of the ensemble.
Members of the group then led a workshop with the saxophone delegates of the Summer School. They provided the players with either the Ensemble’s normal parts or simpler parts. A hugely inclusive approach that led to a rich sound in a very short space of time. Later, the combined ensemble performed to an appreciative audience – the rest of the Summer School.
“If you like an instrument that sings, play the saxophone. At its best it’s like the human voice.” Stan Getz
Well that was quite a weekend! String, reed, brass and recorder players spent a fun Saturday learning and playing new pieces, which they later performed for family and friends. It was a great day for discovering more about playing in an ensemble, band or orchestra, and making music together. MfE’s Blow the Dust (off your instrument) day will be back early next year.
If you came along, or it sounds like something you would enjoy, the Music for Everyone Summer School might be just what you’re looking for. There is a singing option as well. After last year’s successful first School, we listened to participants’ feedback and have made some changes – longer breaks, opportunities to listen to other groups, and less repertoire so that it can be honed to a nuanced performance standard. The hour-long closing concert will showcase the best of the pieces worked on during the time together.
The heavens opened on Sunday, but that didn’t deter a group from the East of England Singers from going along to sing in Pat Collings beautiful garden. Thank you, Pat, for all your hard work to put on the event and raise money for Music for Everyone. And thank you to everyone who came along, armed with brollies, to look and to listen.
