Catch up on all the exciting things that have been going on at London Music Masters since September!
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Christmas with London Music Masters

Monday 5 December brings one of the highlights in our calendar – the LMM Christmas Carol Concert! Featuring LMM Award Holder Agata Szymczewska, Year 3 Bridge Project students from Jessop Primary School and the newly-formed Year 4 string group from Ashmole Primary School, this exciting event is sure to demonstrate the exceptional talents of all those involved with London Music Masters.Taking place in St Peter’s, Eaton Square near Victoria station, this beautiful church is the perfect setting for a concert filled with festive cheer.

Suggested minimum donation £10. Doors open at 6.45pm. Concert at 7pm. For more information, please contact Charlotte Bath on 020 7216 4737.

Buy a Bar update:
World Premiere of Martin Suckling’s new violin concerto de sol y grana to be performed by Agata Szymczewska on Monday 12 December!

This February we set ourselves a steep fundraising challenge to commission Royal Philharmonic Society Award winner Martin Suckling to compose a violin concerto for LMM Award Holder Agata Szymczewska. We raised over £8,000 and now, eight months on, we are gearing up for the world premiere. Martin’s violin concerto, de sol y grana, will be performed by Agata with the London Contemporary Orchestra and conducted by Hugh Brunt at Shoreditch Church as part of the Spitalfields Music Winter Festival. The title originates from a poem by Antonio Machado, roughly translated as ‘of sun[light] and scarlet’. In this poem he likens his songs to bubbles and describes his delight at watching them set off, float in the air, glimmer (with sunlight and scarlet) and then burst.

If you donated to our ‘Buy a Bar’ campaign, or just want to come and listen to what is sure to be an exciting new piece of music, come down to Shoreditch Church on 12 December at 7pm to see the culmination of months of composing, fundraising and hard work!

TICKETS: 020 7377 1362 | www.spitalfieldsmusic.org.uk

LPO and LCO workshops

Year 2 and 3 Bridge Project students are gearing up for workshops with two of London’s finest orchestral acronyms: the London Philharmonic Orchestra (LPO) and the London Contemporary Orchetsra (LCO).

LCO will be joining forces with LMM Award Holder Agata Szymczewska and composer Martin Suckling to bring his newest work to the Year 3 students at Ashmole and Jessop Primary schools. Our incredibly successful crowd funding initiative ‘Buy-a-Bar’ raised over and above the total needed to commission Martin’s piece which has allowed us to develop a series of creative workshops led by talented young animateur Jess Maryon-Davies.

The LPO will be working with our Year 2 students in an innovative composition project led by composer David Bruce in collaboration with City University and Iranian musicians Arash Moradi and Fariborz Kiannejad. Together they will create a new piece for Bridge Project students, the LPO and percussionist and Tanbur players Moradi and Kiani to be performed at the May 2012 Bright Sparks concert at the Royal Festival Hall.

Get involved!


VOLUNTEER WITH LMM!

We need an extra pair of hands! You can help us by being involved with our events, assisting with teaching or helping to support lessons.
For more info, contact Rachel Wadham on 020 7216 4742 | 07583 072241 | rwadham@londonmusicmasters.org

DONATE 

Your generosity can help support the LMM Awards and the Bridge Project.
Donate online or contact us for more information.

Bridge Project launches at Churchill Gardens Primary School

September saw an exciting development for the Bridge Project as we launched our third school partnership with Churchill Gardens Primary School in Pimlico. It is our first school in the Borough of Westminster and we are very much looking forward to working with them over the coming years and watching the children develop through the programme.

However, you won’t be hearing any violins in school yet! The initial year of the Bridge Project focuses on whole class musicianship sessions to help the children develop their musical skills before they embark on their journey as young violinists next September (aged 5-6).

The new reception class have been working all term with Michele Wolfson, our Musicianship teacher, who has started building the musical foundations for the project.

“During the autumn term our focus is on introducing music through singing, musical games and work on building a sense of pulse as well as just enjoying taking part! We have been singing ‘so-mi’ songs, the musical interval that forms the foundation of their ear training. The children’s tuning of this interval is reinforced through a variety of singing and movement games and they have opportunities to practice in groups, in pairs and solo. We also encourage the children to explore their voices; can they be loud or quiet? High like a mouse or low like an elephant? The children have also met Mummy Bear and Baby Bear, whose footsteps we use to introduce a sense of pulse and then later on, rhythmic notation. We make regular visits to the bears in Musicland, walking with Mummy Bear, ‘ta’ & Baby Bear, ‘ti-ti’ steps.

Often what the children enjoy most of all are the musical games, enhanced by colourful, tactile props such as lovely little bean bag animals, sheer scarves and shaker eggs. As well as being fun, these games help develop concentration, watching and listening skills and encourage the children to follow instructions.

Last of all, the children get their weekly mini concert (it was Bach last week) where they get to hear some live violin playing to help inspire them so that when they do get given their violins next year they will already be musical experts!”

Elena wows audiences at Two Moors Festival

We were thrilled when LMM Award Holder Elena Urioste was approached to perform at the Two Moors Festival as part of their International Young Virtuoso recital series and even more delighted with the phenomenal performance she gave with pianist Harvey Davies on 22 October. The two had a natural rapport and the audience were completely blown away by their performance.  

Amy Beach’s Romance was an unknown work to the majority of the concert-goers but it went down a storm as Elena and Harvey soared through the wonderfully lyrical lines with incredible beauty.

The performance of Mozart’s Sonata in B flat major was equally impressive and the sheer technical brilliance combined with her sensitive musicianship had the audience gripped. A fantastic energy came through in Strauss’ Sonata in E flat major, taking us in yet another direction for a grand finale.

The whole recital was performed to an excellent standard and what was really good to see was that both Elena and Harvey thoroughly enjoyed working together and this vitality was most certainly communicated to the audience. Bravo!

LMM feature in Financial Times 'How to Spend It' magazine

London Music Masters was featured in the Financial Times ‘How to Spend It’ magazine in August, as Claire Wrathall reported on how intimate music recitals in private homes often double up as fundraisers, something which is now an important component of LMM’s own fundraising activities.

LMM Award Holders Jennifer Pike (pictured) and Agata Szymczewska discuss how it feels to connect with the audience in intimate spaces, while our Chief Executive Victoria Sharp talks about the fantastic evening we hosted at Vernon Ellis’ residence in March, which raised £9,000 for LMM’s ongoing activities.

Read the full article here.

Elena visits Churchill Gardens

It is an exciting occasion when an acclaimed international soloist performs in an inner city London primary school but last week LMM Award Holder Elena Urioste did just that, captivating a classroom of four and five year olds during their Bridge Project Musicianship session.

The children have been taking part in the project for just six weeks and haven’t been at school for much longer so Michele Wolfson (Bridge Project Musicianship teacher) designed a cleverly structured session exploring dynamic range which enabled them to engage with the wonderful sounds Elena was producing. As well as performing a movement from one of the Bach partitas, Elena accompanied them as they sang, danced, stomped like elephants and tiptoed like mice. She was particularly stretched when the children were given the opportunity to direct her dynamics as she performed excerpts from the Sibelius Violin Concerto!

Elena commented afterwards “I had such a great time! The kids are adorable...[I’m] so honoured to be part of something like this”.

Bridge to the Community

Bridge to the Community (B2C) combines performance opportunities and community outreach in a unique programme central to LMM’s ethos. It offers the children on the Bridge Project and the LMM Award Holders the chance to participate in local performances in hospitals, community groups, care homes and  homeless shelters.

The Bridge to the Community 11/12 season opened with an early morning recital given by Elena Urioste at King Solomon Academy, an Ark School in Marylebone.  The school is already very in tune with LMM’s work as they run their own strings programme giving lessons and ensemble opportunities to all pupils, so they were thrilled to hear Elena’s recital of Amy Beach and Mozart.

As string players themselves the students had lots of questions for Elena; “How much practice do you need to do?”, “Why do you move when you play?”, “How can you put the emotion into a piece of music?” and even “Do you miss your family when you are working away from home”! Elena fielded the questions expertly and the whole morning was a great success.



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