Shaldon Festival Outreach 2018
There were two outreach projects at this year’s Festival, both taking place on Thursday 21 June 2018:
1 Voces8
VOCES8 conducted a short Vocal workshop based around the ‘VOCES8 Method’ involving students from Teignmouth Community School, Exeter Road. This included rehearsing the song Price Tag by Jessie J which the students then performed on stage with VOCES8 at the start of the second half of their concert that evening.
2 Chetham’s School of Music
Four pupils from Chetham’s School of Music conducted two workshops at Shaldon Primary School and Teignmouth Community School, Mill Lane.
They also gave a lunchtime concert at the Alice Cross Centre.
2018 OUTREACH REVIEW
This year we were very fortunate to have outreach activities associated with two of our concerts.
The first was the VOCES8 who ran an afternoon workshop for students from Teignmouth Community College. The students had prepared the group’s arrangement of ‘Price Tag’ (Jessie J) and after some lively and enjoyable vocal warm-up exercises, the session moved into rehearsal of ‘Price Tag’. The students had clearly been so well rehearsed, that VOCES8 let them take the main part, both in rehearsal and in the evening performance, much to the delight of both performers and audience. The young people performed with great confidence and enjoyment, and were greatly appreciative of the training they received and the performance opportunity.
The second was a series of three workshops run by Stephen Threlfall and his amazingly talented students from Chetham’s Music School Manchester. They began at Shaldon School where students were treated to demonstrations by the Chetham’s students of their instruments and capabilities. The students were encouraged to ask and answer questions and were engaged in an animated way throughout. Here are some comments from their music teacher Lisa Price: “ Wow, what an amazing opportunity for both our school children and the young musicians who visited. The Chetham’s musicians exuded skill and dynamic technique which our children were able to watch and listen to. As a class of many musicians, they were able to watch the young talented musicians and see the level of ability they could all aspire to. The passion the musicians had for their own instrument and the encouragement they gave each other was beautiful to watch. It was certainly an inspiring workshop. Thank you for organising it. We definitely look forward to many more visits in the future.
The students also visited Teignmouth Community School Mill Lane Primary School who were equally delighted: “It was very well received and the children very much enjoyed having this opportunity. The teacher said it was very interesting and that it caught the attention of all of her pupils”.
Finally, they visited the Alice Cross Centre, where the response was equally glowing from the manager Julia Street: “Thank you very much to you and the festival committee for organising another Chetham’s School of Music outreach with us. It was much appreciated. We hold our weekly memory café for people with dementia on Thursdays, so some of those people with memory issues stayed for the concert and thoroughly enjoyed it. It was lovely to see them so animated and enjoying the musical performances. The standard of music this year was exceptional and we felt privileged to spend a few hours with Stephen, Brenda and their students. We do hope the Shaldon Music Festival will consider us again for an outreach project next year, as this is a really special event we all look forward to.”
We were very fortunate to have the opportunity to reach so widely with our Outreach this year and delighted that it was received so favourably. We trust we are building our future audiences and encouraging the enjoyment of music in the area in this way.