‘Notification, Conversation, Celebration’ – Orchestra ONE’s 26th Project
Following the success of our first ever virtual Orchestra ONE (O1) course back in October, we were thrilled to welcome 17 young musicians who joined us via Zoom for Project 26. Our participants spent the second week of the Easter holidays composing a brand new piece on the topic of “Communication”.
Once again led by our Musical Director extraordinaire, Jason Rowland, our fantastic tutor team supported our young musicians in their instrument sections throughout the week. For this project, we welcomed back Danny Moulton, Joe Browne, Alex Ribchester, Kate Harwood, Simon Clarke and Luke Crook, as well as being joined by guitar tutor, Pip Bowers, who had previously led O1 sectionals in the early days of the project several years ago.
Prior to the start of the project, we asked our young musicians to think about what Communication means to them, the ways they communicate and how the Covid-19 pandemic has affected this. Their thoughts were transformed into melodies, lyrics, and musical fragments (including their own ‘notification’ alerts!), which were then developed into the final piece. The whole team was particularly impressed with our participants’ maturity and in-depth, honest discussions about the past year, as well as their sheer talent and love of music.
In addition to their musical ideas, we also invited our young musicians to create their own artwork and videos in response to the topic. Our Communications Coordinator (and video editor supremo, Grace Irvine) combined these videos with footage from our daily Zoom sessions to accompany the final piece.
The audio and video combine to an overall performance titled ‘Notification – Conversation – Celebration’, which ranges from moving, to funny, to sad, to conversational, and builds to an overwhelming feeling of hope and joy.
You can watch the final video below (and on our YouTube channel) and we are sure you’ll enjoy it as much as we all enjoyed creating it!
A huge thank you to all our young musicians and tutor team for yet another phenomenal project! We must also thank all the parents who supported our participants throughout the week, both musically and as technical support!
Here’s to the next project – fingers crossed it will be face to face!
If you would like more information about Orchestra ONE, please contact Sami Mason via smason@kent-music.com