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.

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.

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.

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!

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 - The Remix Competition is here!

I am so excited - the In Training remix competition went live on our website today!

Following the lead of DJ Excalibah, who remixed an NLO recording for Newham's Ascension Eagles Cheerleaders to perform to at the In Training event, you can now go to www.nlo.co.uk/intraining2009 and download for free an excerpt of Mozart's Symphony 41 (one of the pieces we will be playing at the In Training concert).

You can then do whatever you like to it; remix it into a piece of any style and post it as a response to our video on our YouTube channel at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kzgXa1zUXRQ

I'm really excited to see what people will do with it...the winning entry will be played at the concert on June 9 so make sure you're there!

Life after Peter & the Wolf

We have all arrived back in the office after a crazy day in Stratford! I've uploaded a couple of photos here that I took on my mobile which aren't great quality but we should have some professional ones through very soon.

The day started with a rather chaotic rehearsal. The tubes really weren't working in our favour, with the Central Line out and major distruption on other lines so many people arrived quite late. Not really what we needed when the venue was pretty difficult to spot anyway - it's so easy to walk past as it just looks boarded up. Despite these set backs, we did get the rehearsal running and the sound was really great in the Rex, although slightly hampered by two huge piles of speakers at each side of the stage! Tea, coffee and biscuits certainly helped keep everyone going and Michelle Collins did a really excellent first run through of narrating Peter & the Wolf with the orchestra.

From 1.45pm the children started arriving for the afternoon show - the atmosphere in the hall was brilliant and filled with excited chatter and various clangings from chime bars and drums as some students rehearsed their performances amongst themselves. At 2.30pm we were ready to start and Ron introduced Baden who has been leading the workshops in the four schools we ran workshops in from across East London. We were then treated to an excellent hour of 8 performances by the schools classes, each of which had taken their own take on the characters that feature in Peter & the Wolf. We had hunters with shopping trolleys and pies, a grandfather rap, a chilled out cat and a beautiful picture of an Enchanted Forest created through music amongst other things. We had a team on hand to record the whole thing and so each child will receive a DVD of all the pieces created. Following their performances, the orchestra took to the stage to perform Peter & the Wolf to the audience, a piece we hope could now be grasped with a whole new meaning, after really working on the characters in school sessions. The children's concert finished at 4pm but there will still plenty of children around, getting autographs and to chatting to Michelle Collins.

After we'd recovered from the afternoon we were straight down to sorting out the evening show. We'd given away lots of tickets to employees at Newham Council and Tate & Lyle and so we needed to prompt the Box Office staff and make sure the ushers knew to collect the stubs from the tickets for the all important draw for the chance to win tickets on the Eurostar, kindly offered by our sponsors. Reserved seating signs went out for the stars of the show - St Agnes Year 6 class who performed in the evening concert, and lots of audience surveys and free programmes so everyone watching could learn more about the pieces we were performing and about the Orchestra's work.

Doors opened at 7pm and the Rex quickly filled up. The concert started only slightly behind schedule, simply to make sure all the people pouring in the doors could grab a seat before we began! Ron introduced all the pieces from the stage with facts and context and the orchestra performed really well (despite the stage being a tad cold, sorry guys!!). Michelle Collins' narration was just perfect for Peter & the Wolf and she was really warmly received by the audience and the children who continued to flock for autographs in the interval. As per the New London Orchestra tradition, we included some lesser known music in the programme including Martinu and also a premiere of a Phillip Godfrey piece - Dance No.3. The piece was fantastic and just so fitting for the concert, and our surveys have revealed that it was one of the most popular pieces of the whole evening's concert, so well done Phillip, who also attended the show!

We think yesterday was a real success and hope that we've created the start of a classical music audience in East London. There's certainly plenty of work to be done still - we're collecting lots of feedback and want to hear all opinions so that we can get our whole concert series appealing to a range of people. If you were in the audience and haven't yet taken the survey - please click here.

Life seems very dull without Peter & the Wolf to concentrate on now, but I'm sure things will start to liven up as we approach our next performance in East London - Carnival of the Animals on 14th May.