Office update

Hi fans,

Just thought I'd give you an update of life at NLO Towers, as our blog is quite quiet at the moment! The office is pretty quiet too if I'm honest, Rob and Julian are both on holidays and so new intern Josh and I listen to Radio 3 and natter about news/sports/TV... and get some work done too!

This week I've mainly been focused on our year-round music provision at Selwyn Primary School in Newham. It's a really exciting opportunity to build music into the curriculum at the school, and make it an integral part of musical life for the students. However it's the first time we've done something like this, so I've been researching kindermusik (we'll be teaching the nursery classes, right through the year 6) and putting together some preliminary lesson plans to get started. Me and some of the musicians working on the project (Aga and David to name just two) will hopefully be meeting Andrea from Selwyn at the end of the month to show her our ideas and get her feedback. I'm mostly looking forward to planning the music projects for year 6 which focus on dinosaurs - imagine the music they will create!

Have a great weekend.

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!

Big Opportunity - Photos from Sadler's Wells

Music and Literacy Baden's Blog 2

Our Music & Literacy project Moving on with Music continues at Redlands School in Tower Hamlets.

Redlands blog, Thursday & Friday 9 & 10 July

After a day off spent nursing sore vocal cords and tender eardrums, the team are back to try and tidy up the various pieces that will go into Friday’s performance: songs, rap – oops! make that “riff” - and soundscape/poem, letter readings; some of this unscripted, all of it woefully under-rehearsed (who am I trying to kid? Make that completely unrehearsed. We’re still at the learning stage here, at best)…

Thursday is a battle against time, with Jade class (as ever) proving to be a real handful. They’ve produced some brilliant work for the soundscape, but getting them to settle, concentrate and produce the required musical backing is hard work. By the end of their session everyone’s nerves are frayed. Emerald are a totally different proposition. By the end of the day they’ve got it all down pat…

Friday morning: reinforcements arrive in the form of Karl “S-Kool” Sorenson and Dave “Hosepipe” Powell. A couple of rapid-fire run-throughs later and it’s time for the morning dress rehearsal in front of the whole school, minus Years 5 & 6. The children are shoehorned into the hall and treated to a surprisingly successful and relatively smooth-running presentation. This could work…

Friday afternoon: Year 5, augmented by a healthy turnout of bemused parents, make up an appreciative audience and are treated to an entertaining and varied hour-long programme. The children perform the “Hello,” “Bala-Bala” and “Moving On” songs with enthusiasm; the school riff (NB: it’s definitely NOT a rap) and soundscape actually work; a small number of hand-picked children read extracts from their letters with varying degrees of audibility and fluency (some are excellent); Baden recites his “Que Sera” poem, aided and abetted by Year 6 (who almost know it by heart by now); and the musicians – well, they do what musicians do. The TV Medley draws particularly warm applause.

All too soon, it’s time for the “Goodbye” song, for final presentation of school- leaving certificates and photos, and time to say goodbye. It’s been challenging; it’s been frustrating; it’s been chaotic; but overall, it’s been fun. Time to say goodbye: “Namaste!”

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!

Music & Literacy - Redlands School - Lucy's Blog

Our Music & Literacy project Moving on with Music continues this week at Redlands School in Tower Hamlets. Here's Lucy's blog from the first couple of days:

Day 1 and 2 Redlands School, E1

Mercifully, summer seems to be done with, the rain has set in and we have all cooled down after last week’s meltingly hot temperatures. We are met and shown round the school by Regena, who already has the video camera in her hand ready to film. The desks are cleared back and the fun can begin, but what takes us all by surprise is the reticence of the children to join in. After building a strong rapport with the Stewart Headlam children we expect to carry on from where we left off last week, but of course this is a new class, we are strangers to them, so we must begin again.

The staff are wonderfully supportive, and despite illness and absenses in their ranks all the ideas discussed in the planning meetings have been passed on and acted upon, so we feel we are jumping onto a moving bus.

The afternoon class is different again, lively and full on and this feels like a group that will be throwing bags of ideas at us by tomorrow. Once again, trust and a willingness to work together has to be built before the ideas can really begin to grow.

By day 2 both classes have learnt the ‘Movin On’ song very quickly and are coming up with some beautiful words and images to use for a soundscape with instruments. The short phrases needed for the riff produce some hilarious results, teaching us a lot about school workings. School dinners here don’t seem to provoke the same reaction of horror they did at Stewart Headlam! Are they better or are these children made of sterner stuff?

A day off tomorrow to visit London zoo, and we will all reconvene on Thursday, which seems uncomfortably close to the performance day, Friday.