The Radio 3 Breakfast Carol Competition has returned for 2017, with amateur composers challenged to write a new carol for SATB choir set to the words of a 15th-century carol: Sir Christemas.
Entries will be judged by a panel including Judith Weir and David Hill, with a shortlist of six being performed live on air by the BBC Singers. The ultimate winner will be decided by listener vote and played on Radio 3 on Christmas Day.
It's been hard keeping our successful application to Adopt a Composer a secret since we got the great news on 16 August… And at last we are on our way to London for the Making Music press launch and to find out which composer we are ‘adopting'. Sarah Cunningham (MD) and I meet somewhat bleary-eyed at 5am at Edinburgh airport feeling a tad nervous…also excited.
I first heard about ‘Adopt A Composer’ as an anxious teenager who had absolutely no idea how to realise my ambitions; the name fell into my distracted ears while trying to revise for my AS Levels with BBC Radio 3 on in the background (a terrible attempt at multitasking).
Making Music Executive Director, Barbara Eifler, presented the 2016 Sir Charles Groves Prize to Sir Karl Jenkins at a concert on Friday featuring world première performances of excerpts from his work Symphonic Adiemus.
The award was presented at the Royal Festival Hall during the first of three performances, conducted by Sir Karl himself (at the Royal Festival Hall in London, Symphony Hall in Birmingham, and Bridgewater Hall in Manchester) of the new work alongside fan-favourite The Armed Man: A Mass for Peace.
Each year our Adopt a Composer scheme sets amateur choirs, orchestras and ensembles up with composers for a year to produce a new piece together. Meet this year's pairings.
The Royal Shakespeare Company is looking for four choirs from the Midlands area to be part of an event to mark the Twelfth Night of Christmas on Saturday 6 January 2018 in Stratford-upon-Avon.
Coinciding with the RSC’s forthcoming production of Twelfth Night, the Company is holding a Wassail in and around the Royal Shakespeare Theatre. Roughly translated as ‘be in good health’ wassailing is an English tradition taking place on the Twelfth Night of Christmas, which involves singing the health of apple trees in the hope that they might yield a good harvest.
The majority of our members work towards and put on formal performances or concerts on a regular basis. This is a positive thing: it gives your members something to aim for, and allows people in your community (i.e. your audience!) to be exposed to music they might not otherwise get to hear in a local venue, creating a sense of occasion and connection for everyone involved. But putting on a concert can be expensive, and if audiences don’t come and you make a loss on the event it can be tempting to wonder why you put the performance on in the first place!
KEMS Concert Band is now back from its summer break (complete with tour to Belgium), and rehearsals for our premiere on 15 October are in full swing.
Since the restart, we have done two sessions on what we expect to be the final version of Chris’s piece, now with the title of Martian Saloon, and we really feel we are getting our heads around it. Even the whistling seems manageable now!
Surrey Performing Arts Library (SPAL), currently based on the Denbigh Estate in Dorking, is one of the two largest collections of music sets in public libraries in the UK (only the Yorkshire Music Library, now housed in Leeds, is a similar size). It includes the Kirby Collection, owned by Making Music, purchased with a legacy from former Chairman Alan Kirby. SPAL is crucial not just for music groups in Surrey, but has national significance.
National choral charity Sing for Pleasure has announced that applications are open for scholarships for its 2017-18 Young Conductors Programme.
Funding has been secured to provide training for four young would-be choral conductors for this programme, launched in 2013, that offers a transformational learning experience for talented young musicians aged 18-25 who aspire to a choral conducting career, but who lack the financial means to access the specialised training they need to succeed.
For all our updates and opportunities
