Education
Education
Norwich Chamber Music has a long and proud tradition of supporting and promoting music education for young people, thanks largely to the generosity of our donors. Our current work with Guildhall Young Artists Norwich is outlined below.
If you wish to help us in this work, find out more about GYA Norwich, or simply to sponsor a young musician, please contact NCM Education Secretary Juliet Rickard, at julietrickard@icloud.com, or on 07786 122374.
Support for Guildhall Young Artists Norwich
NCM is delighted to announce its partnership with Guildhall Young Artists Norwich. This is part of a nationwide initiative of the Guildhall School of Music and Drama, and is part of NCM’s charitable commitment to promoting educational projects with professional musicians for schoolchildren and young adults in Norfolk and Norwich.
Guildhall Young Artists Norwich (GYAN) runs a thriving Saturday morning music school offering significant performing arts activities and training for 8- to 18-year-olds across Norfolk (including the respected County Youth Orchestra). The national GYA programme (which has eight centres, including Junior Guildhall) offers a unique combination of local and national musical expertise, alongside a strong commitment to equality of access for all, regardless of means.
NCM is sponsoring:
- Five annual ‘Music Scholar’ awards for talented young musicians aged 7 to 11
- Opportunities for GYAN young people to meet and work with our world-class performers, for example Nicolas Namoradze, after his NCM concert on 21 January 2023
- A series of bespoke NCM Workshops, designed to encourage many more aspiring Norfolk young musicians. The first of these took place in February 2023.
On Thursday 16th February, during half term, 22 students from across Norfolk met at the John Innes Conference Centre in Norwich to work with composer Alexander Rudd, lyricist John Nicholson and cellist Natalie Rozario.
Together they worked on a song entitled ‘Far Away’. The inspiration and brief for this song was as follows…
Far Away
The concept is quite simple. Two workers going about their day, passing the time through conversation – questioning the big stuff and reminiscing about the small stuff. Only these workers happen to be astronauts working deep in outer space. One astronaut is a dreamer, the other, a weary traveller longing for home. Over time, our workers get lost in the details, the scope of it all and begin to question whether anything is what it seems.
Now the joy of song writing is we had to find a way to fit together eclectic lines like “I would buy a star if I could” and “my daughter was born in a nuclear power plant” but alas, we found our way....
Alexander Rudd performed ‘Far Away’ for the first time at Kings Lynn Corn Exchange on Thursday 6th April. The workshop students were invited to hear this performance alongside a concert by Norfolk County Youth Orchestra which included a newly commissioned piece for NCYO by Alexander Rudd called ‘Kings Lynn Fanfare”
- Here is a recording of the song:
- Far-Away-NCG-Songwriting-Workshop.mp3
In the words of one parent:
"Thank you for granting our son an NCM scholarship. Not only is the money gratefully received (both parents slept much better knowing the money burden had been lifted!) but more than that, it’s validated his love of music in a way that won’t now be undone."
