Apollo Music Projects

NEWS

We are pleased to announce the formation of Apollo Music Projects, a registered charity which will run the innovative Apollo schools projects. We will be creating an AMP website and email address, but for the moment contact info@apollochamberorchestra.com for further information.
Charity Registered in England & Wales, Charity No. 1124784
Company limited by Guarantee, Company No. 6585879

Registered Address: 43 Clifden Rd, London E5 0LL

"This project gave the children a unique opportunity to get to know different instrument families, how they make sound, how music works, tells a story, how musicians play together and many other fundamental things about music. The majority of the children probably wouldn't have this sort of experience otherwise."

"Presentation of the music was absolutely fantastic in many ways. It was almost like analysing a story part by part. They've seen/heard each setting and scene as well as the whole picture/story"

"I have been highly impressed with this music programme and would recommend it to any other primary school teachers."

"The staff have been a breath of fresh air to work with and have not only made the experience enjoyable for the chldren, but also enjoyable for the adults."

2008-9 is the fifth year of the ACO's Schools’ Project in Hackney and Tower Hamlets primary, secondary and special schools, funded by Lemon Land, Arts & Business New Partners (Year 1), Hackney Music Service, Jack Petchey Foundation, Willow Tree Trust, Marchday Charitable Trust and The Worshipful Company of Plumbers Charitable and Education Trust.

This innovative and enjoyable interactive programme is designed to introduce primary school children to the instruments of the orchestra, the musicians who play them and the music they play.

The programme focuses on developing listening skills, enabling the children to discover for themselves how to listen to and enjoy classical music, using their own imagination and experiences to enter a new world of sound, stories and feelings. It is designed as a progressive series of classroom sessions, an orchestra workshop and a Schools' Concert.

When the programme began we found that the children found it hard to concentrate for long, and much of what they were hearing was very new to them. The classes enabled them to discover a new way of listening, and by the end of the programme they were able to listen to a concert with full orchestra, enjoying and following the music.

We plan to offer the programme to other education authorities. We have produced a Teachers’ Pack and CD to accompany the programme, and will be setting up training programmes for musicians interested in using our programme and materials in their own local areas.

An article about the programme appeared in the April 2008 issue of Music Teacher magazine.  The following is the text of a short article written for Symphony magazine:

One image that sticks in my mind from the three years of our music education programme is watching the faces of a class of restless children listening, transfixed, to a live performance of the slow movement of Mozart’s Clarinet Quintet, as the music cast a magic spell over the classroom.

Music provision in English schools has never recovered from the budget cuts and rigid education policies of the 1980s and 90s.  The government has recently pledged that every child should have the opportunity to play an instrument, but this will need to be backed up by significant funding if we are to come close to regaining the ground lost since the 1970s, when there was widespread provision of free instrumental lessons, feeding into an extensive network of excellent youth orchestras.

Many organisations now take their projects into schools, mainly concentrating on improvisation and composition.  When I devised the Apollo project, I felt that there was a need for a programme which introduced children to the particular thrill of listening to live music.  Our programme takes place in Hackney, one of London’s poorest boroughs.  Each class receives six classroom visits, a chamber orchestra workshop and an hour-long symphony concert.  We carefully select pieces which fit the theme of each session – storytelling, conversation, how we play together, how we rehearse – always with the aim of  stimulating the children’s imagination and encouraging them to relate the music to their own experiences.

A central element of our method is playing parts separately, then putting them together, enabling the children to discover the conversations between the instruments.  We discuss the roles of the different voices – what is the second violin saying?  Why does the composer write that passage for the cello?  The children’s responses are direct and surprising: they immediately engage with Ravel and Shostakovich, as well as Haydn, Beethoven, Mozart and Schubert.  The sessions are fully interactive, as we constantly ask the children questions and encourage them to fire questions back at us. The children benefit from hearing smaller groups of instruments and shorter excerpts first, gradually encountering more instruments and longer pieces, while remaining fully involved and asking questions throughout.

To play Beethoven’s 5th symphony to an audience of several hundred attentive and excited children, many of whom had struggled to concentrate for five minutes at a time at the beginning of the year, is one of the most thrilling experiences I have had as a musician.

David Chernaik

click to open Teachers’ Pack (Introduction)