New London Orchestra in Musolife

Just thought we'd let you know that our Polska Music concert has been featured as a latest headline on the MusoLife website. You can read the story here. We're pleased to see other people are picking up on the exciting story that Bacewicz has to tell. If you haven't yet, you can order your tickets for the concert online by clicking here.

Polska Music and September Newsletter

The NLO blog has been quiet for a while as we have been working really hard promoting our Polska Music concert, coming up on the 14th October. Last week I went on an absolutely fantastic ABO Brass Tacks course all about Press & PR, and learnt how to write a really good press release and create an interesting story, out of what would otherwise just be another concert. We got taught some really fundamental things which are probably obvious to those of you out there in the world of PR, but were news to me! Things like don't write 'Press Release' as the subject of your email, and use a file sharing website for access to high resolution photos... so now we're on Flickr too.

The story I've created is all around our featured composer, Grazyna Bacewicz. After doing my research (I also write all the programme notes for the orchestra's concerts), I've discovered some fascinating things about her - such as the fact she played secret concerts to the Jewish Relief Council during WWII, and how she was involved in a terrible car accident which turned her attention to composing. The work we are featuring in our concert is called Simfonietta (and no, that's not a typo!), and was written in 1935 when she had just returned from her first visit to Paris, somewhere that really inspired her compositions. Her early music is rarely heard (in fact, she deliberately didn't put some of them in her list of works, or refused to have them published), and so our performance will be the UK premiere.

I hope that's given you a flavour for the excitement we're feeling for her music. It's also been great to listen to our new recording of the piece, and other string works. We'll be selling CDs at the concert, so make sure you're there by buying tickets here.

You can also read this quarter's Newsletter which we've posted out to our friends online, by clicking here. Happy reading!

Young Performers Concert Series

Today was September’s Young Performers concert at the Foundling Museum and this month’s performers were AccordDuo (Miloš Milivojević and Zivorad Nikolic) who were absolutely brilliant.

They played a really varied programme, with 3 duets and 2 solos each:

Adios Nonnino Astor Piazzolla
The Ruined Cathedral Vaclav Trojan
Don Rhapsody No.2 Viaceheslav Semionov
Concerto No. 4 in F minor Antonio Vivaldi Op. 8, RV 297
"L'inverno" (Winter)
Sonata Franck Angelis
Five sights on country Gulag Viktor Vlasov
3 3 2 Bogdan Precz

I love Piazzolla but it was also great to hear some music by composers that I didn’t know – the Trojan and Angelis were particular favourites that I’ll be downloading later. Five sights on country Gulag was especially interesting, with Miloš using the accordion to make a variety of percussive and other sound effects as well as singing and whistling, while their transcription of "Winter" from The Four Seasons was, as always, a crowd pleaser!

Milos & Zivorad got a wildly enthusiastic reception from the audience (unsurprisingly of course!) – you can watch a clip of their encore below



You can read Miloš & Zivorad’s biographies in the programme here and read more about the pieces in the programme notes here. If you’d like to catch them again soon you can always check out Milos’s website http://www.milosmilivojevic.com to keep up to date with what they’re doing.

As always our thanks go to the Foundling Museum for hosting the concerts and of course to the Musician's Benevolent Fund who support the series. Thanks also to everyone who came along!

Looking forward to seeing you at the next concert – Colette Boushell, 1 October, 1pm as usual!