Thaxted Festival

Our ongoing partnership with Thaxted Festival and London Mozart Players (LMP) brings live orchestral music straight into local primary classrooms - giving young pupils the chance to compose and perform their own music alongside professional classical musicians!

What started as a long-standing partnership with Thaxted Festival in 2007 has grown into a powerful, year-round commitment to local schools. This summer saw pupils from four primary schools creating original music with the London Mozart Players, culminating in the children opening the festival's concert alongside the orchestra. For many of the pupils and their parents, it was their very first time experiencing a live orchestral performance.

Thanks to a new dialogue initiated between Thaxted Festival and Greater Essex Music Hub - the regional body responsible for coordinating local music education - the festival has now developed a dedicated three-year education plan. This exciting next step will bring instruments and teacher training to local schools, ensuring music-making continues long after the festival ends.

Hear & Now

In Bedford, Hear & Now brings together local voices and orchestral music to create something truly special.

The project sees older people living with dementia, their carers, and young local musicians write and perform original music side by side.

Rather than being delivered to participants, this project is built directly with them - using their words, choices, and personal stories to form the foundation of the final performance. This year’s theme of "advice" opened up a rich, playful, and moving space for participants to shape the creative material themselves, bringing together memory, humour, and personal reflection.

The project drew real strength from the Philharmonia Orchestra, whose players worked shoulder-to-shoulder with an incredible cross-section of the local community. Together, professional musicians joined forces with young players, local choir singers, and people living with dementia and their carers, supported every step of the way by Bedford Music Service.

For these partners, Hear & Now created a shared space where community knowledge, musical skill, and lived experience could meet on equal terms – strengthening confidence, wellbeing, and intergenerational connection. Ultimately, it shows how sustained orchestral partnerships can build trust, support communities, and keep music deeply relevant to the people involved.

Cambridgeshire Music Live

Recently, we supported our partners, Cambridgeshire Music and Britten Sinfonia, to bring high-quality live music straight into classrooms. As part of a refreshed pilot for the three-year Music Live programme, Britten Sinfonia brought the interactive Leon and the Place Between concert to schools across Fenland and Huntingdonshire.

Based on the picture book by Angela McAllister and Grahame Baker-Smith, the concert follows Leon as he steps into a magician’s hat and is transported to a magical world. Accompanied by classroom learning resources, the performances allowed pupils to actively join in - and it was wonderful to see the children singing along, guided by our fantastic presenter, Jessie Grimes.

Partner schools fed back that this was a truly special experience, giving pupils the rare opportunity to experience orchestral music up close. We’re delighted that the project aims to inspire and spark curiosity in young people, and we look forward to its return next year!