For Families

Family Music Day 2009
Is A Success!

To see some of our favourite quotes and pictures from the day, click here.

"Truly magical" - Parent

On Sunday, 1st November, over 80 families attended Britten Sinfonia's Family Music Day. Children (and some of the keener parents!) had the chance to try their hand at musical activities, including instrumental workshops coached by our musicians, percussion, instrument building, and gamelan.

As the doors of West Road Concert Hall were opened, the families who had braved the wet weather flooded in and the place was filled with an excited buzz. Children who had early workshops hurried off, whilst others began the treasure hunt and explored the building. Soon, there were sounds coming from every corner...strings singing, singers humming, guitars strumming, drills whizzing, boomwhackers slapping, trumpets blaring and drums banging.

"The workshops were all fantastic.
Very hands-on and we were all involved." - Parent

Before we knew it, lunch was upon us, and Origin8 caterers were doing a roaring trade (and quite rightly - the brownies were delicious!). Colouring was reaching fever pitch, and great composers were being firmly put into their places on the time machine, while queues of children were turning into tigers courtesy of the fantastic facepainter, Samirah.

After the lunchtime lull, chatting groups dispersed to carry on with the next workshop in their hectic schedule - whole new groups of children were able to discover the beauty of gamelan and the excitement of drumming.

Before long, workshops came to an end and everyone made their way through to the concert hall for the Grand Finale Concert. The Britten Sinfonia musicians were sitting on stage, and were soon joined by children from the day's workshops - string, wind, guitar and percussion players created a huge orchestra. Concert Director Tim Steiner's grand plan was to create a huge time machine using the music that the participants had learned during the day. As Tim introduced the first note of the time machine, the auditorium came to life. Just as suddenly, however, the noise died away and the Britten Sinfonia players began their first piece - Purcell's Rondeau. For many children, this was their first exposure to live classical music, and to be part of the performance was exhilarating.

The concert wound on, through the musical periods, as we heard Mozart, Beethoven, Schubert, Britten and Ligeti, each interspersed by the children's magnificent time machine. Finally, the climax was reached, when musicians joined children in playing Tim's completed Time Machine piece.

There were some weary, but very happy, faces as the day came to an end. All in all, it was a great success - see you on 31st October 2010!

"The overall experience was amazing" - Parent

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March 2010