Yamaha Education News

MusicQuest ends on a high with national primary school tour

Kevin Hathaway conducts members of the Philharmonia Orchestra at a MusicQuest concert attended by Hull primary schools, January 2010.

At the end of January 2010 the MusicQuest project took to the roads to take its inspiring classical music project to more than 5,000 primary school children in its third annual schools' tour, this year visiting Hull, Derby, Swansea, Croydon and Hastings. The project is a collaboration between the Prince of Wales' Foundation for Children and the Arts, the Philharmonia Orchestra, Classic FM Music Makers and Yamaha, and demonstrates the power of collaborative projects of this nature to inform and inspire.

Yamaha supports the project with the provision of the musical instruments used during the tour's morning workshops in the schools, in which members of the Philharmonia performed for the children, taught them a piece that they would later perform with the orchestra during the concert and finally invited the children to have a go on Yamaha orchestral instruments. The workshops were both lively and informative, such that the children did't realise they were learning though they all seemed to learn that music is fun! After lunch about 1,000 children from the participating schools each travelled to the local concert venue ready for the concert. But it wasn't what they, or any classical music concert-goer, might have expected.

Visually, even the brightly-coloured MusicQuest polo shirts worn by the orchestra were nothing to the delightfully garish get-up worn by MusicQuest's 'Kevin The Conductor' (Kevin Hathaway). And when the children began to arrive at the hall, they found the musicians they had met in the morning workshops waiting for them, instruments in hand, in the auditorium. There were lots of cries of, "There's our musician!" erupting from all around the hall, and the noise level and excitement mounted unstoppably until it resembled something you might expect before the start of a major World Cup football match!

Just when the children seemed almost at bursting point, Kevin The Conductor (who is a seasoned percussionist with the Philharmonia and head of percussion at the Purcell School), in silence raised one arm. A hush settled suddenly over the hall. Almost inaudibly he began to play the haunting snare drum introduction from Ravel's Bolero, with only the double bass player on stage at that point. As he played, the musicians began to process slowly towards the stage and each in turn began their entries, holding the children spellbound by the beautiful playing and the sheer theatre of it all! As more and more musicians reached the stage, playing all the while, nobody sat down to play and nobody was reading from a score. This was sheer musicality and professionalism of the highest kind but presented in a new and engaging way for these lucky young people.

Several weeks before the concerts the teachers had been invited to attend a workshop where they were given some ideas about how to prepare the children for the event, so that the children would enter the concert hall with some idea about the music, rather than the concert being their first encounter with the programme.

After the concerts the schools are invited to take part in a composing competition, in which they are invited to produce class compositions which have been inspired by something from the concert. The schools' efforts are presented to a panel of judges, who then select their favourites to be arranged and performed by the Philharmonia - a fitting end to a beautifully conceived and delivered project.

The MusicQuest project was set up to run for three years, with the aim of taking high-quality, live, classical music performance to parts of the country where children might be unlikely to have experience it before. The responses from both teachers and children have been very positive and it is clear that this ambitious and inspiring project has certainly exceeded all targets and expectations, and indeed won a music industry award because of it in 2009.

While MusicQuest is now in its third and final year many of the partners have already begun to talk about what they might do together next. Watch this space for announcements!

(ends)

(posted: February 2010)