Thursday is one of the highlights of the Ingenium Week with our evening performance platform. It’s always a pleasure to hear stunning performances from students across all our courses and hear what they’ve been working on over the past few days.
The morning warm up was led by our Composition tutor Michael Betteridge who got us all involved in a very energetic session that culminated with a group vocal improvisation about Coca-Cola!
The composers started their morning experimenting with creating musical shapes through the use of various dynamics and articulation. They were very keen to try things out and get out of their comfort zone, creating interesting and varied musical ideas.
Tim led the conductors in an exercise about gravity and the motions involved in conducting, using apples as a way to find control and give clear directions. Then it was time to put all of the knowledge to practice by working more in depth on Mendelssohn’s Hebrides Overture.
In session two, we got the conductors and the chamber musicians together working on Prokofiev’s Overture on Hebrew Themes.
On the piano programme we were joined by two new members of staff, Richard and Clio. With Richard, the students took part in sightreading sessions in which they learned to develop a sense of complex rhythms with the help of games. Clio gave the pianists individual lessons and a taster session on playing the organ which many of them had not had an opportunity to experience before – they found it exciting and fascinating.
In the Musicianship session, David, one of the pastoral staff members used group games to teach the students more about polyrhythms and how to maintain a strong pulse throughout complex rhythms within an ensemble. We managed to keep up a rhythm of 5 against 6 against 7 against 8! In a different group, Finan Jones – our Head of Music – took some of the young musicians from having never conducted in their lives to conducting Brahms’s 4th Symphony with confidence and clarity.
In the evening it was performance time. We enjoyed some mesmerising performances from our students: the programme included everything from Beethoven and Scriabin to world premieres from our young composers. It was fascinating to hear how much they had learnt in just 4 days, and the support from their friends in the audience – even after only a few days of knowing each other – was wonderful.
Musicians of the day
Conducting
Salome: for mastering conducting in 8 minutes!
Chamber Musician
Aleksander : for being the true embodiment of a Chamber Musician and for always getting to the heart of each performance.
Vladimir: for his creative and imaginative contributions and opening up to new expressions.
Pianist
Enrico: for being the best sight reader on the piano programme this week!
Composer
Lola: for responding to feedback, always having an open mind and thinking about her learning journey as a composer.
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