Life in the Forest
Orchestras Live has been working with sinfonia ViVA and North West Leicestershire District Council to create a collaborative creative music project which took place during January and February 2009.
You can listen to an audio clip of interviews and musical extracts from Life in the Forest.
Here's a description of the project, as featured in the January 2009 sinfonia ViVA newsletter:
Exciting new project brings the music of nature to the performance stage
Life in the Forest will involve workshop leader Jack Ross working alongside a team of sinfonia ViVA musicians to write original pieces with groups of young people from three primary schools, a secondary school and Stephenson College. The participants will use percussion, voices and the instruments they already learn to create a series of songs and instrumental pieces themed around Life in the Forest.
The plan is that each of the groups will visit a National Forest site, local to their school or College and take photographs documenting their visit. The students will then present these images to the musicians at the first workshop and they will provide the inspiration for the creative music activities which will take place in the schools.
All the participants will learn two songs, Bartok’s Oak Trees in the Forest and popular workshop song All in a Wood and these songs will tie each of the pieces created by the groups together. Following a series of intensive creative music sessions, the young people will all come together for a massed joint rehearsal, during which they will being all their pieces together with Oak Trees in the Forest and All in a Wood to create one large collaborative piece.
The final day will see the young people meeting the 24-piece Orchestra and conductor (and ViVA core player) Nic Fallowfield so they can rehearse as one large ensemble prior to presenting a performance to friends, family and the general public at the Hermitage Leisure Centre on Wednesday 4 February 2009. The performance will being with sinfonia ViVA performing works including Respighi’s La Primavera from Trittico Botticelliano, Bartok’s Romanian Dances, Stravinsky’s Three Dances from A Soldier’s Tale, Copland’s Hoedown, Barber’s Adagio and Britten’s Soiree Musicales. The 150 participants will join with the Orchestra for the second half of the performance during which they will premiere their newly created piece alongside sinfonia ViVA. It promises to be a real spectacular!
Trevor Pendleton, North West Leicestershire District Council portfolio holder said: “We are very excited about the forthcoming concert with sinfonia ViVA. They are a national Orchestra based in the East Midlands who provide classical concerts and outreach activities that make live orchestral music accessible to all. It is a wonderful opportunity for the children of the schools and young people from the college to be part of this project.”
Tickets priced at £5 and £3 for concessions, are available from the Hermitage Leisure Centre on 01530 811215 and Ashby Tourist Information Centre on 01530 411767.
The project has been generously supported by Rolls-Royce plc, Leicestershire, Leicester and Rutland Community Foundation, The National Forest, North West Leicestershire District Council, Leicestershire County Council, Find Your Talent, Orchestras Live, Arts Council England and sinfonia ViVA.
Reproduced with permission from sinfonia ViVA newsletter.
