Young Performers: March 2010

We kicked off our Young Performers Concert Series for 2010 with oboist Peter Facer who performed an extremely varied programme aided by his accompanist, fellow MBF prize winner Cordelia Williams. The recital included Paul Patterson's "Phoenix Sonata" for Oboe and Piano (a world premiere!) which was fiendishly difficult for both performers but thoroughly enjoyable for the audience! Also in the programme, an Insect Etude for Solo Oboe - "Praying Mantis" composed by Peter himself who described it as "pleasantly quirky". We were also treated to works by Britten and Schumann. A great way to start off the series and many thanks to the Foundling Museum for their help in getting the series underway. I personally cannot wait for the next installment on 1st April when we will be joined by violinist Charlotte Bonneton. For more details click here

Young Performers Concert Series 2010

That's right, the Young Performers Concert Series is back!

Our wonderful concerts assistant has been busy finalising details, designing flyer's and emailing the series programme to many a person. Tickets are free with entry to the Foundling Museum (a bargain at £7.50) and concerts will take place on the first Thursday of every month between March and December, but don't worry we will be reminding you each time one is coming up!

Opening the 2010 series is oboist Peter Facer (above) on Thursday 4 March, 1pm.

We look forward to seeing you there!

Moving on

It's with great sadness that I am writing to all our blog followers that I will be leaving the New London Orchestra today. I have had an absolutely brilliant year with the NLO, putting together some truly different and exciting concerts all over the capital and starting to build a really strong base in Stratford which I have become very attached to. Some real highlights for me have been the Peter & the Wolf concert back in March, when the NLO launched its concert activity in East London with a huge gala performance. I worked on both the education project in all the schools leading up to the concert, and then ran the event on the day and had a great time with all our brilliant players and the fab staff at the Stratford Rex, who were so delighted to have us.

Another highlight most recently has been the Snowman concert, which really has rounded off a fantastic year in the East of London - selling out to over 300 families and children who were transfixed by the beautiful Raymond Briggs story. Once again, as is always the case with a small team, I organised and ran the whole event, even down to operating the film and screen on the day - very nervewracking, but totally worth it when we pulled it off!

There are so many other brilliant initiatives I have been involved in here that I couldn't possibly mention them all; from the Young Performers Concert Series at the beautiful Foundling Museum, to the fantastic folk at the Highgate Choral Society who do such a great job of putting together the concerts we are lucky to play in with them. I've listened to our fantastic players get through such a range of music this year - starting with Bacewicz recording sessions in a freezing cold church in February, to Elgar's Apostles at the Barbican, to Janeck's Glagoltic Mass in another cold church this November. Considering we often only rehearse on the day of an event, I am always overwhelmed by the incredible playing of our musicians and their dedication to this orchestra and I will miss them all very much.

But anyway, that's enough from me for now. I am pleased to hand over the reigns of both the Concert & Project Management, and the blog, to my successor Kirsten Mackay. I'm sure her blog updates will keep you entertained and up-to-date in 2010.

Merry Christmas!

P.S. Listen again to Sleigh Ride at Stratford Circus on 6th December on our YouTube channel here.

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.

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.

Polska Music

I'm back from a break and wanted to report in the blog how our Polska Music concert went. The day was busy as concert days always are for me, as I act as Stage Manager, Orchestra Manager, Box Office Assistant, Front-of-House representative and general ambassador for the Orchestra at all times! However all the running around from front to back stage was well worth it, we had a great turn out and the concert was a great success musically. Our UK premiere of Grazyna's Bacewicz's Simfonietta went down particularly well, and we sold plenty of preview copies of our Music for String Orchestra by Bacewicz, due for release on the 1st November, proving her music really is popular and should be played a lot more than it is. Hopefully our CD and this performance will prove a turning point for her works in this country.

Whilst front-of-house I met some of the audience members, many of whom were new to both Cadogan Hall, and New London Orchestra concerts. It's great to hear first hand how people hear about our concerts and what they enjoy about them, particularly with my 'marketing' hat on (did I mention I do that as well?!). Everyone loved Ron's introductions to the music, something we know he's excellent at doing to give the music some context. I always try to give the pieces we perform as much background information in the programme notes I put together too, and if you were there, I hope you found them informative. Everyone was surprised when we offered the programme booklets for free to our audience members - something we do at all our own promotion concerts. We think it's important our audiences get to understand the music and find out as much about us as they can whilst we perform to them, so it's vital to us to get this information straight into their hands!

There's a review of the concert on Music Web International, you can read it by clicking here. Quite rightly our soloists, Caroline MacPhie, Natalia Brzezinska and Gerard Collett, get a great mention. Got your own comments to make? Write back to us here on the blog, we love to hear your opinions.