Tuesday, November 24, 2009

The Snowman - almost sold out already!

Thought I'd let our blog followers know about the huge success we're having with our latest East London Concert Series - our performance of The Snowman has already sold over 200 tickets. Looks like our mission to create concerts that are family friendly and accessible to everyone is starting to gain followers. We're also excited that the highly popular text voting will make a come back, so that audience members can select one of their favourite pieces to hear again at the end of the concert.


Here's an extract from the press release I've sent out:

The New London Orchestra returns to Stratford Circus on the 6th December to perform a pioneering interactive Christmas concert for families in East London. Featuring innovative audience text voting during the concert, and introductions from the stage by Artistic Director Ronald Corp, the concert will attract new audiences in East London that rarely get the chance to experience an orchestral performance up close.


Continuing its presence in East London, The Snowman concert will be the fourth orchestral performance the New London Orchestra has given in Stratford this year, designing concerts and programmes specifically to make orchestral music as accessible as possible in an area underserved by professional ensembles.
To headline the round-up of festive favourites, the Orchestra will accompany Raymond Briggs’ hugely popular film The Snowman, which will be shown on screen above the orchestra as they play the well-loved soundtrack by Howard Blake, live.

Artistic Director Ronald Corp explains: “Together with The Snowman, I have chosen a fantastic range of festive and fairy-tale themed music for this concert. Our events are always fun and informal which is what has made them increasingly popular in East London. Our audience text-voting initiative is completely different from anything other orchestras are doing at the moment. It’s fantastic to give the audience the responsibility for picking part of the programme and always fascinating to find out what people like best – it’s not always what you expect!”



Stratford Circus Events Manager Gary Wilson agrees: “We received excellent feedback from our audiences that attended the New London Orchestra concert here in May and knew that when they returned we would have a great response. That’s already proving the case, with the concert selling phenomenally well. Our family audiences recognise these concerts are a fantastic opportunity to engage with a live orchestra, something that rarely happens in East London.”

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If you want to get your hands on tickets, you'd better be quick, click here to go straight to the Box Office.


Monday, November 9, 2009

Michael Hurd recording sessions

I don't know how many of our blog followers are of the same generation as me, but I certainly have fond memories of my youth in choirs singing the works of Michael Hurd - primarily the fantastic Jonah-Man Jazz - anyone else?!

So I was absolutely delighted to find out when I started the job here that the New London Orchestra would be providing our principal players to record some of Michael Hurd's best known works - Jonah-Man Jazz, Captain Coram's Kids, Swingin' Samson and Rooster Rag. The music is a fantastically catchy mix of jazz and pop, and during the recording session that happened this Sunday, the New London Children's Choir obviously really enjoyed a lot of the choruses which had great tunes.

The recordings took place once again in the freezing cold St Jude's on the Hill, Hampstead Garden Suburb. Whilst being a beautiful building, it's absolutely chilling in the winter months, which seems to be the only time we book recording sessions there! So I spent the day wrapped up in my coat, plying the players with hot tea, coffee and a good tray of M&S chocolate biscuits that were appreciated (so much so they were all gone by the end of the first session, sorry Nick and Dave!). We'll let you know when the disc is due for release, on Naxos - hopefully early next year. In the meantime, enjoy this snippet I caught on my iPhone of Jonah-Man Jazz.


Young Performers - November

Our Young Performers Series continued on Thursday with a concert from cellist Evva Mizerska accompanied by pianist Emma Abbate at The Foundling Museum. We saw one of the largest audiences yet with an almost full house treated to a completely Polish programme, including Orniphania for cello and Piano by Bujarski, Sonata for Cello and Piano No. 1 Op. 18 by Stojowski and Canzona op. 56 by Kryzsztof Meyer. Vicky even had the responsibility of turning the pages at the concert - see the concentration on her face in the video, so many notes!

Though challenging, Meyer’s Canzona proved very popular with the audience - and is a piece that also features of Evva's new CD release (see her website for more details). Click here to watch a video clip from the concert.