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 - 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 rehearsal at the Amadeus Centre

Here's a little video from the string rehearsal for Polska Music as they rehearse ready for the UK premiere of Grazyna Bacewicz's Simfonietta. Enjoy, and hope to see you at tonight's concert at Cadogan Hall.

NLO Principals at St John's Smith Square

Here are some pictures of our rehearsal and concert at St John's Smith Square; a concert which combined our brilliant principal New London Orchestra players with an orchestra of post and under graduate students, and a 'Come & Sing' choir, brought together by Carolyn Pascall at Pascall Promotions. You can also watch a video at our YouTube channel.

The day was loads of fun and considering we put together the entire Haydn's Creation in just 4 hours of rehearsals, I think the final concert was really impressive. The whole event was raising money and awareness for the Access for All campaign at St John's Smith Square.

We also got some great feedback from the students sitting with our principals, who gained a lot from the chance to play with them. Here are just a few quotes:

"I Thought Anna Noakes [flute] was great. Such a lovely person and an amazing player. She was very friendly to both of us and I learnt so much from being able to sit next to her when she gave me the opportunity to double her first flute part. It was a fantastic experience for me and I would love to do more things like that. Thanks for the opportunity."

"It was an absolute joy sitting next to Jonathan Baritt (Viola principal). He made feel so welcome and I felt so much from him just by sitting and playing next to him. I asked him general career advice and it was very useful."

We are really keen to do more events like this to give students an opportunity to play and learn from our principals, so keep a look out on the blog and website for more details.

Polska Music on the Classical Music Homepage

Our Polska Music concert has attracted some more coverage in the virtual world, this time from Classical Music Homepage. Read the article by clicking here. We're getting quite a crowd together now for the concert - thanks to YPIA for advertising the event through the 'free tickets' scheme, we look forward to seeing representatives from the OAE, LSO Discovery, the ABO, IMG and the Musicians Answering Service there! Want to join them? Buy your tickets by click here and a tip for all our blog followers - if you use promo code POLAND when booking online or over the phone, you receive a 20% discount!

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!

Young Performers Concert Series - Charlotte Stephenson

It's been a busy couple of days in the office and last Thursday we had our August Concert for the Young Performers Concert Series at the Foundling Museum. Taking part this month was Mezzo Soprano Charlotte Stephenson and her accompanist Elizabeth Burgess. We had a great audience which was boosted in numbers by a group from The Music Club of London. They were treated to a varied program which opened with a piece of Mahler and included pieces by Hahn and Quilter before finishing with a work by Bridge. The Concert was a huge success and the audience (even though it was, yet again, on a perfect summer day) thoroughly enjoyed themselves. Thanks again to everyone who came along and thank you as ever to the Foundling Museum who hosted us, and the Musician's Benevolent Fund who continue to support the series. Thanks to Charlotte and Elizabeth too who gave a fantastic performance

Our Bacewicz CD - hear some extracts!

How very exciting, I've come back from a two week holiday (did you notice the quiet blog?!) and have been busying myself writing Wikipedia pages for the Orchestra and for our conductor and Artistic Director, Ronald Corp. Whilst doing my research for the citations, I found that Hyperion have posted some extracts of our new CD of string orchestra compositions by Polish composer Bacewicz. They sound great, click here to have a listen for yourself and let us know what you think!

Verdi Requiem with the Highgate Choral Society

In one of our regular concerts with the Highgate Choral Society, this Saturday 11th July we performed Verdi's Requiem at All Hallows Church, to a packed audience. The concert was preceded by a fascinating talk from our own conductor, Ronald Corp, on the history of the piece and how it was created from the final movement backwards (read more about it on Wikipedia here). Those who attended the talk also seemed impressed to hear about the Verdi Drum which is required in the Requiem, of which there are only 4 in the country.

Our soloists were Katherine Broderick, Catherine Hopper, Andrew Staples and Graeme Broadbent. Neither of the female soloists had performed Verdi's Requiem before, and you would never have been able to tell as they were all superb and received a huge round of applause at the end.

On a slightly geeky concert manager's note, we tried out a few of the new music stands the orchestra has bought recently at this concert. They're so much easier than those fiddily fold ups, but we're going to have to start hiring a van to transport them now!

Young Performers Concert Series - Laura Lucas

What a busy day it has been today! Not only have we had the Young Performers Concert Series at the Foundling Museum, but we've also been at Blanche Nevile School for the Deaf with a year 6 group, and also performing at the end of our Moving on with Music project at Stewart Headlam School in Tower Hamlets.

Having such a busy day and such a small team, I obviously couldn't attend everything today, but am glad I chose to go to present the Young Performers Concert. Laura Lucas and her accompanist Dominic John were absolutely fantastic, and one of the best in the series, one of our regular audience members assured me. They played a great varied programme, starting with Sonata in F minor for Flute and Piano by Telemann, followed by Sonata for Flute and Piano op.164 by Poulenc and finished with Lowell Liebermann's Sonata for Flute and Piano.

The audience (though hot on this gorgeous summers day) were obviously impressed, and gave the performers warm rounds of applause and cheers of bravo.

Thanks to everyone who came along and thank you as ever to the Foundling Museum who hosted us, and the Musician's Benevolent Fund who support the series. Thanks to Dominic and Laura too, who arrived later than they would have liked to, having mislayed one of the pieces of music they were performing in Dominic's house move! Hope you settle in Dominic!

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!

LAMPs

So. We are being told about LAMPs (Local Authority Music Plans).

This all seems very nice.

Unfortunately that's about all I'm in a position to say at the moment.

On an initial glance there are lovely buzzwords and numbers everywhere;
- £10m per year for Sing Up
- 3 year plans from local authorities that plan for vocal and instrumental ensembles; instruments; rehearsal and performance spaces, staffing; community music; training needs; Quality Assurance; progression and sustainability;
- ALL children have a free first year of instrumental tuition
- continuing tuition will be affordable for all

To be honest though, the question that everyone is really thinking is 'great, so how can we extend what we're doing in borough x as part of their LAMP?' [read 'where is the money and how do we get it?!']

And I have absolutely no idea.

There are so many different parties, it's pretty tricky to work out what it's really about. It's part of the Music Manifesto, it forms part of the strategy including the England's 8 programme, it incorporates Sing Up, LAs will take it into account when loking at Building Schools for the Future, it covers programmes in Youth Music Action Zones, there are Music Service Evaluation Partners (working in collaboration with the Federation of Music Services), the National Association of Music Educators, it's for Arts Council RFOs, MusicLeader programmes .....

If I were a betting woman I would guess that for an organisation such as ours, there won't be much space in a LAMP.

Maybe I'm bitter. I hope I am. I'll write more when I've waded my way through it.

The key sentence that looks positive, from Sound Connection's write up (written incidentally by members of a Music Manifesto subdivision, the 'Stronger Frameworks' working group) is 'If you’re an active musician or organisation delivering good quality teaching, training, guiding, mentoring for young people then you could and should be a part of your LAMP'. Cool. We'll get onto it!

In Training

In Training has come round so quickly! It's tomorrow and we're busily putting together all the finishing touches.

Personally I'm very excited about our new display board - tomorrow night it will be showing the same display that has been up in Stratford Library for the last couple of weeks with lots of interesting information about Newham Welcomes the World and the East London Concert Series, programmes, quotes, songbooks, you name it! Do come and have a look (and say hello to us) if you are coming to the concert.

Vicky and Ron have been talking on NuSound radio this morning about tomorrow's concert and our work in East London generally - we were all listening in the office and thought they were both excellent and, as well as being informative, really conveyed the personality of the NLO and what we're about.

One of the other things we are doing is tidying up our audience survey for In Training - is there anything you think we should be asking? What do you want us to know about you? Is there any subject on which you'd be really interested to hear the opinions of other audience members? If so, do let us know and we'll do our best to include it!

And then there's the shopping (making sure there's enough tea and coffee for the musicians!) packing up all the music, printing off signs for dressing room doors, getting lists of guests...I'd better get back to work then!

Looking forward to seeing you there and, as ever, do come and say hi if you see us - we'll be wearing our badges!

Pianos Pianos everywhere

So, Boris is planning to put 31 pianos around London; part of the Sing London and City of London Festival, is Luke Jerram's 'Play Me I'm Yours' project. A quick glance over the various reports in the media shows a pretty mixed reaction, but I have to say I love this idea!

I read about in the paper on the train home last night and it really brought a smile to my face. It's the sort of thing that, as a nation, we don't always manage to do very well (or at least very often); there's something celebratory and spontaneous that we just can't seem to get the hang of, least not for music and other things considered by so many to be 'trivial', 'luxury' or 'unimportant'. It's been tried in a number of other countries and, unsurprisingly, worked really well there. As far as I'm concerned, music is like sunshine, it just makes everything better. When the sun is out (as it is right now, lovely) everyone is happier. Same with music. What could be nicer than hearing music in public spaces everywhere you go? Than watching children messing around on a piano and playing together? Than watching someone totally unassuming creep up to a piano and astounding everyone?

It will only work if people get on board though.

I've copies just a few of the comments on the Times article below:

'30 seconds before someone takes a baseball bat to them. Such is the cultural instinct of the baseline of youth today, alas.'

'How about placing 31 'Soup kitchens' about the capital. That's more in keeping with todays social climate.... "The organisers believe the scheme will encourage trust" .........more likely to encourage theft ( of the pianos, that is! )'

'What a Joke, how long will they last ? a week or a few days.'

How sad.

If we are so set in this opinion of 'the youth of today' we might as well all pack up and go home. I have every confidence that the pianos will remain intact and even well cared for and often used! I can't wait to be wandering round some of those places and see people enjoying them and have a little joy and fun injected into my day.

One of the first things I did on googling was check where our nearest one will be in East London (I had hopes of trying to organise a big singalong, purely be means of this blog, our website and facebook) but the nearest are Liverpool St or Southwark. Anyway, if you are reading and fancy checking it out do let let us know as I for one would love to go! (Alternatively, let's petition to get one in Newham!)

Newham Welcomes the World @ Stratford Library

Katherine and I were busily putting up a very bright and interesting display today at Stratford Library - you can now head over there to the top floor to look over many of the recent things we've done: posters from Peter and the Wolf, the programme from Carnival, flyers from Pass the Baton, the songbook from the Journery Begins.....almost like a mini NLO museum!

In the coming weeks Stratford Library will also be adding a range of CDs and DVDs of past concerts and projects to their audiovisual library - even better, that section is free of charge so definitely make a trip and have a listen!

We are live!

Very exciting news - you can now talk to us live! Simply add vicky@nlo.co.uk and/or vanessa@nlo.co.uk to your windows messenger and you can ask us any questions you might have, give us your comments on anything we're doing or just drop by and let us know your ideas and general musings!

We'll be here most of the usual office hours (and normally beyond!) and you'll be able to see via our status if we're on the phone or in a meeting or something - if we're out and about you can normally find out where via our facebook profile or right here!

Looking forward to speaking to you soon!

In Training at Cumberland School

This morning five of our musicians were at Cumberland School with the GCSE Dance group, working with them to create their own anthem. There were five NLO musicians working with the class, and so we were able to break off into groups and discuss the class's thoughts on being a team and what words and feelings they associated with dance. Then when we'd brainstormed and put all the words down on the board, Baden (our performance poet working on this project) asked the class to give us a demonstration of their dancing skills. The musicians created the backing music and so began the dance off! Whilst the team seemed reluctant to show us their stuff, Aga seemed the most excited by the music - check out the video of his moves! I left the team at the break, but have been sent the final anthem... you'll have to come along on the 9th June to the Rex to check out the final piece.
Go to www.nlo.co.uk to get your tickets.

The Carnival at the Circus

Last night saw the New London Orchestra present it's second concert in Newham at the Stratford Circus. The programme featured lots of English dance music including Grainger's Shepherd's Hey and Holst's arrangements of Morris Dance tunes including English Country Gardens. Of course the highlight of the evening was The Carnival of the Animals with the wonderful Murray Melvin reading the poems by Ogden Nash, which went down a storm. Also playing both in the Carnival and also in a fantastic performance of Ravel's La Valse were two students from Trinity College of Music, Matthew McCombie and Yoon-Seok Shin. These guys are incredible, so many notes I could barely keep up, and I was page turning for Yoon which was pretty nerve wracking!

This concert was in a new venue for us, as we explore different options in Stratford to find somewhere that feels right and creates the accessible and friendly atmosphere we want at New London Orchestra concerts. Stratford Circus was a real winner last night. We were getting all the right feedback, including things like "I felt like I could reach out and touch the orchestra" and "really informal" and "so glad it was brought local to our borough." Gary and his staff were absolute stars and really accommodating as this was a first for them having an orchestra come in, so big thanks to everyone at Stratford Circus.

Hugely successful and firmly in our plans for a come back, was the text poll for the audience to choose the encore for the night's concert. After hearing the Carnival of the Animals we offered the choice of three of the most popular as well as a mystery piece. Winning by far though was the Fossils, and once we'd found our pianists (!) we performed it as an encore. However the secret Ron let the audience in on was that the piece that we'd selected as the 'Mystery' option (one of Ron's arrangement of a Purcell piece called Lilliburlero) we couldn't have played, as I had brought the wrong music!!

Ron reminded the audience about our website and this blog, so if you're reading this and you were at the concert, make sure you post a comment to tell us what you thought of the night.