FEATURE: MUSIC & THE PERFORMING ARTS
If music be the food of love… Image (c) Joe Marchant I
n our final look at music and the performing arts this month, we’re delighted to hear from harpist Emily Hopper, who explains how her love of music and stories inspired her to bring a combination of the two to a new generation of children.
During 2017-2021, I completed my undergraduate degree at the Royal Birmingham Conservatoire where I studied Harp with Rita
Schindler. Whilst pursuing the technical and performance demands of the harp, I also started to explore the world of music education. I focused much of my time towards the end of my degree on expanding my pedagogical knowledge and working with young people in a music education setting. Working with children is something that has always been a passion of mine and the idea of inspiring the next generation of musicians and audiences is something that pushed me to create Musistories in the final year of my degree. Musistories is a concept I created for my final project – the practical alternative to a dissertation – as a way of introducing young people to music through the medium of storytelling. The rationale for my project was to create an engaging concert which would contribute to young people’s musical education by offering a unique musical experience, inspiring them listen to more genres of music and to start playing an instrument. Inspired by pieces such as Prokofiev’s Peter and the Wolf, I commissioned a brand-new piece of music to accompany the story of Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves. The concert consisted of contemporary music, composed by Éire Lavery, Narration, by Will Crawford, and Animation, by Rita Albuquerque. The short sections of narration were accompanied by movements of music performed by a small orchestra, using visual elements to help show how the music linked to
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the story. I wanted a genre of music which the young people wouldn’t have experienced before in the hope that it would inspire them to listen more styles of music. I also wanted the music to incorporate visual elements to help the young people hear the story within the music. Éire Lavery perfectly created a captivating modern score incorporating clear motifs which linked to the story. I was interested to see how the contemporary music style would be received by the young people and was pleasantly surprised that with the feedback. Many young people said the music was their favourite part of the experience out of the narration, animation and music. I was also happy to receive feedback that many of the students who watched the concert felt inspired to learn an instrument. The project had to be modified into a multi- track recording due to COVID-19 restrictions which meant that the children wouldn’t experience seeing the orchestra live. There is no way I could have replicated the immersive experience of watching a live orchestra, so I had to think of more creative ways to make sure the concert was as exciting as possible. We used this opportunity to edit the videos carefully, purposefully selecting different sections of the orchestra to highlight during different parts of the piece. Whilst there were many benefits to producing an online video, I do still hope to have
November 2022
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