Music & Literacy - Lucy's blog

Our Music & Literacy project Moving on with Music started this week at Stewart Headlam Primary School in Tower Hamlets. Here's what Lucy had to say about day three:

Day 3 and our noses are raw and our hands are sore... not from the dreaded lurg but from the continuous applications of anti-bacterial gel we are glooping on ourselves, and yes, we received medical advise to put it round our noses!

The temperatures are soaring but despite this we are piecing together several glorious creations to perform at tomorrow's leaver's assembly.

The original plan was to work with the children for five days, but this got reduced to four in both schools due to outside visits. There is always a dilemma when planning a series of workshops, whether to be performance driven or enjoy the journey rather than the arrival. We hoped to keep this as creative and free as possible because the year 6 children are at the end of their curriculum driven timetable, but having a big assembly to prepare for and a reduced time to work with, we have had to be more prescriptive than we had hoped.

We have had a wonderful new song written for us by guitarist/songwriter Pete Walton called "Moving On" which will receive its first ever performance tomorrow at Stewart Headlam, and a second version next Friday at Redlands School. We are putting together a school riff by collecting phrases straight from the classroom floor, throwing them up in the air, and catching them on drum beat. There are some mighty clever rhythm tricks and a "Hello" song neatly turned into a "Goodbye" one to bookend the assembly. And there is so, so much more we could have done if we had had another week.. but that is for another time.

Probably more children will return from their sickbeds tomorrow, and we have two extra musicians joining us, Viking Karl Sorrenson on clarinet and sax, and multi instrumentalist and maverick, Dave Powell on tuba/accordion and...... well, the other instrument is a surprise!!! You'll see the photos tomorrow.

Sadly, due to the day being knocked of the timetable for us, we are losing Baden tomorrow, our word magician. We'll try to persuade him to put one of his favorite poems online, the one the children liked best. After much noisy persuasion he even sang a verse of it!

Music & Literacy - Baden's blog

Our Music & Literacy project Moving on with Music started this week at Stewart Headlam Primary School in Tower Hamlets. Here's what Baden had to say about the first day:

The early hours of Monday 29th June 2009.

A day that started like any other. The sun rose in the sky. Important news from around the world reported "resounding triumph" (Brasil, football); "heroic failure" (England, rugby); "resounding failure " (England, football); "impending disaster" (England, forthcoming cricket series).

Meanwhile, in the far-distant near-reaches of east London, three* intrepid artists huddled together fearfully at the gates of Stewart Headlam school, bracing themselves to face possibly the greatest challenge of their professional careers to date:
decimated school population, laid low by swine flu? Pah!
ditto teaching and support staff? No problemo.
Anywhere to park? Aha...

*Er, slight adjustment needed. Make that TWO intrepid artists. The third had manfully (!) given up the quest and made his lonely sojourn by bus.

Let's move on to the early hours of the afternoon:

The artists are locked in the school and isolated in a classroom, together with the last known survivors of the virus. Fourteen sneezing, coughing, spluttering soon-to-be adolescents; one teacher who looks as if he's about to join the celestial choir. They are armed only with a bottle of antiseptic gel, several phials of vitamin C, and a quiverful of talent.

The pupils are understandably apprehensive at first, but in the end, talent triumphs over fear. An amazing session ensues, one in which the pupils seize on each and every opportunity to express themselves and to engage in a lively, enjoyable and well-planned (!) workshop incorporating music, song, rhythm and rhyme. They take to it like hypnotised chickens sopping up Kentucky corn. They dispense word-gems, vocal and lyrical emerald-song, a never-ending dazzle of that sparkle like rubies and star- diamonds...

We – the artists – catch fleeting glimpses of ourselves, reflected in the sheer gloriousness of the pupils’ creativity. We love what we see.

The artists retire. “Tomorrow, same..?”

No. Tomorrow will not be the same. Tomorrow promises another mirrorful of miracles.

And Hot Chocolate: “I believe in miracles…”

Music & Literacy - Carolyn's blog

Our Music & Literacy project Moving on with Music started this week at Stewart Headlam Primary School in Tower Hamlets. Here's what our musician Carolyn had to say about the first day:

When plannng a music/literacy workshop somehow the possibility of a pandemic never arose. Imagine our confusion when the day before we were told that only 4 out of a class of 31 were in school.
Monday morning started with a flurry of calls-to the school, co-workers, management and GP's. Eventually the consensus seemed to be that we would go to the school with a core of 13 pupils and hope that more would appear during the week.

Oh yes-the temperature! Victorian primary schools are not the best ventilated buildings and we had the challenge to try and motivate very hot and listless Yr 6 pupils. We had a variety of activities incorperating the theme of "moving on" to secondary school. To do this we had planned songs, school riffs, written letters, soundscapes and poetry. The children learnt 2 songs and did a exercise of positive and negative emotions which all linked in with their own feelings of "moving on".

Second day and the numbers increased to 18-newcomers integrated well and picked up very quickly on the previous days activities. The school riff was made up of 6 groups all adding their own phrase accompanied by a steady beat. The new song now had instruments added-all these things growing daily and improving their abilities.

The musicians also played and one of the most gratifying parts of any workshop is watching rapt expressions as they hear (possibly for the first time) musical instruments up close and personal. The word magician has the same effect as he weaves his ideas and uses the pupils own words to add texture and new ideas to ongoing themes.

Thats it for now....sleep well and see you tomorrow.

The Big Opportunity at Sadler's Wells

Yesterday the New London Orchestra was invited to participate in The Big Opportunity's conference - a forum for representatives of the Third Sectory (voluntary organisations, and charities such as us), to get together and discuss the legacy to come out of the 2012 Olympics.

As well as sitting in on discussions with a panel of experts from across different fields including Muhammad Bari MBE from LOCOG and Caroline Diehl from the Media Trust, and a talk from the Rt Hon Tessa Jowell (see the picture!), we were also asked to provide a musical interlude. We wanted to show the sorts of community work we do in Newham, and decided to invite the Luton Road teams that had participated in our In Training concert to come and sing. They did an absolutely fantastic job, singing loudly and confidently and I just about got away with playing the piano to accompany them! Feizal Rajabally, one of the Senior Contract Manager's for Look Ahead came to speak to Julian and I before the performance to thank us for the opportunity. He said the group had grown in confidence and their self-esteem had been boosted by being asked to take part in New London Orchestra events, and their family and friends had been really impressed with the transformation in the individuals over the last year, thanks to their involvement in music making with us. We're really glad bringing music to the Look Ahead communities is making an impact, and we'll be discussing with their Arts Manager, Louise O'Reilly, ways we can develop this relationship in the future.

Thanks to Paul and Chloe for all their hard work organising the event, we had a great time!

We're part of Shine!

Our Music & Literacy project has been incorporated into the Tower Hamlets Arts & Music Education Service (THAMES) Shine Week. Shine is a national festival celebrating talents in all young people and is taking place between 6th and 10th July 2009. Embracing the energy and enthusiasm of young people, teachers and youth workers, Shine Week creates a real buzz across the country and in the media and is a really exciting way to celebrate the talent that every young person has.

You can find out more about it by going to www.shineweek.co.uk

Music & Maths at the Royal Institution

This weekend two of the New London Orchestra's musicians headed to the Royal Institution to present a Music & Maths masterclass to 30 year 5 pupils from across London.

The session was the culmination of an introductory series of masterclasses hosted by the Royal Institution for primary school children, based on the success of their secondary masterclass series.

The workshop began with introductions from Karl and David who played their instruments - tuba and clarinet, to the class, in a rendition of the Dr Who theme tune! They explained how their instruments worked by demonstrating the vibrations made in their lips and with the reed in the clarinet. The length of tubing in both instruments was also explained to the class as the way musicians can change the pitch of the notes and volunteers got the chance to play on Dave's specially created instrument - made from a trombone mouthpiece, a funnel and a piece of hosepipe!

The session then moved to a working room where the children were encouraged to try out a set of 'Boomwackers' between their group, listening to the notes the created and putting them into a scale. Then came the clever stuff from Amy Hooker from the Ri, who talked to the class about how the notes in the scale could be represented as fractions, and handed out different lengths of paper to represent this. Who knew that a 5th is 3:2 and a 4th is 4:3?! All this went towards explaining what David had introduced at the beginning of the session when demonstration the harmonic series which he could produce without changing the length of the pipe, but by simply changing the speed of the vibration in his lips.

The children all seemed to enjoy the session, and we finished off by giving a small demonstration of the things we had covered in the masterclass to parents and friends. We're looking forward to hearing the results of the evaluation forms the children completed and hope to continue working with the Royal Institution on more of these primary workshops in the future. Thanks to Amy for putting the session together and David and Karl for presenting the masterclass.

Vanessa leaves us!

Dear fans,

Today is a very sad day in the NLO office as our wonderful intern Vanessa left NLO Towers yesterday as she is off to Madrid for a month to learn Spanish. She will then be spending the summer working on youth projects for Islington Council, and we all wish her lots of luck with both these ventures. Vanessa has worked as an intern for the Orchestra since November 2008 and has put in a huge amount of work to our website, as well as contributing to all other areas of our work, including coming up with the Mix It! competition we ran as part of In Training, and manning the phones, stationery cupboard and photocopier with true dedication. We will all miss her a lot, and hope very much that Rob (our Fundraiser) finds us some money so she can come back and work for us again!