About Come Together
As part of our residency with Saffron Hall, we’re delighted to be partnering with their Learning and Participation team on ‘Come Together’ – forging a new creative community who are interested in making new connections across generations, sharing ideas and experiences, and telling the stories of what is important to them through music, words, movement and theatre. Four of our musicians are joining them, to work with composer Sam Glazer and theatre maker Rachel Yates on creative responses to the theme of ‘connection’. At a time when connection feels difficult in so may ways, this community is coming together to listen, write, sing, and talk. Of course, we’re meeting online at the moment, but we hope to bring everyone together again when that’s possible! The musicians are preparing solo works to which they feel a connection, and sharing these with the participants, as well as providing music as a stimulus for movement and free writing.
This project builds on the success of ‘Lost Letters’, which was devised and produced at Saffron Hall in the summer of 2019 with a string quartet from Britten Sinfonia – see the video below to get a flavour of what we achieved together. The scenes in the show were inspired by the lived experiences of the new theatrical ‘company’, who came from across the community of Saffron Walden and included participants from the ‘Together in Sound’ group, who all live with or are caring for someone with dementia.
Highlights from ‘Lost Letters’. Find out more here.
As well as reuniting members of the original company, ‘Come Together’ has welcomed new participants of all ages and players from across the orchestra. They’ve been enjoying performing for the group and chatting about the connection they feel to their chosen pieces, and it has been a genuine delight to see and hear them play again after such a long hiatus. We hope that this project will continue for a long time – and hopefully we’ll all be able to actually come together again soon!
Come Together is a Saffron Hall project, co-produced with Orchestras Live, with support from Essex County Council and Arts Council England. Also supported by Uttlesford District Council. In Partnership with Britten Sinfonia.
