Ingenium 2016 Blog - Day 3 Week 1 | The Ingenium Academy

The Ingenium 2016 Blog - Day 3, Week 1

21 July 2016

Wednesday was a day of collaboration at Ingenium, with the conductors joining the choir during the morning and lots of student chamber groups preparing for Thursday's performance platform.

The morning began with rehearsals as usual, and we welcomed Clare Duckworth (LSO) back for more violin lessons. The orchestra have added a new modern composition to their repertoire by Cyril Lloyd, and were doing well getting to grips with some very tricky changing time signatures and syncopation.

Meanwhile, the choir were singing a beautiful arrangement of Fleetwood Mac's The Chain, and the saxophones rehearsed ensemble pieces Satin Doll and Songs from the British Isles. Tim Redmond's conducting students made the most of the sunshine by beginning the day outside conducting on the lawn.

Our musicianship session yesterday took the form of a fascination lecture from sound collective called 'Science of Music - Tone Deaf?', all about music and the brain. They have also been presenting the talk at the Winchester Science Festival this week. The collective ended this informative session with an energetic performance of 'Czardas'.

During the afternoon, the students enjoyed some free time and the opportunity to walk into Winchester's historic town centre, for some shopping and sightseeing. Others chose to spend the time working in groups on their compositions, or collaborating on chamber music.

After dinner there was time to get ready for the evening activity, which was a live performance and vintage dancing lesson from visiting swing band Down for the Count. We learned about social dancing during the 1920's-40's, and tried out some Lindy Hop moves! The highlight was undoubtedly watching some of our instrumentalists and singers joining the band to play Autumn Leaves, Take the 'A' Train, Ain't Misbehavin' and Cry Me A River.