On the evening of Thursday 11 April, parents and families came to Maplesden Noakes to watch the final concert of Orchestra ONE – Project 22. This was the culmination of four days’ hard work from both our young people and their tutors, who had spent the course exploring the theme of ‘The Future’.
Over the four days of the course, our 49 participants looked into the past in order to then think about what the future may hold. This led to an exploration of different musical ideas relating to the moon landing, Hadron Collider, and the Futurist’s Manifesto, “The Art of Noise”. During the course, we also considered the future of the Orchestra ONE logo and the identity of the group. Thanks to the ideas and creativity of our young people, we plan to have a new logo designed in the coming months – watch this space!
The final piece featured a ‘lunar’ theme, tribal drum rhythms, an orchestrated take on the sound of the Hadron Collider, a range of music technology devices, complex time signatures and even a newly created alien language! The piece was aptly entitled “The Music of the Future (Well, Not Any More)” and showcased the talents of all our musicians, including some excellent guitar and trumpet solos.
A huge thanks to all of our wonderful young musicians who took part, as well as our Musical Director, Sarah Freestone, for their creativity and dedication throughout the week. We also couldn’t have created such a brilliant piece without the help of our section tutors – Simon Clarke, Bill Clift, Anna Croad, Luke Crook, Alex Ribchester, Kate Harwood and Andrea Haines – or our sound engineer, Tom Wood.
Thank you so much to everyone who took part, and to all the friends and family who supported our young people and attended the concert on Thursday.
Project 23 will take place on 30 July – 2 August, and will be open for registration soon. Hopefully we’ll see you all again then!