Composing the future

“To BSO: I really enjoyed your visit because it was astonishing to play with professional musicians and perform with you. Thank you for helping us to perform. I really enjoyed playing my instrument, it was sounding fab. I would really like to be a musician when I grow up. Music is cool!”

Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra (BSO), the orchestra of the south and west, remains at the cutting edge of orchestral community and outreach work in its region. The bulk of its work takes place in schools. Over the past few years, a long-held ambition of the BSO to provide schools projects of up to a term or more has been realised, thanks to funding from leading global financial services firm JPMorgan, which has a base in the orchestra’s home town. Through this support, between 2003 and 2007, the BSO provided host musicians as links between school and orchestra, and brought a variety of musicians into each school to work in depth with class and year groups over 12 weeks. An additional key element was two or more performances to the whole school by the Mini-BSO, an ensemble of five players representing each family of the orchestra.

We have delighted in the range of projects created by schools when offered the opportunity to create bespoke projects. For example, the different musical cultures represented were brought together to create new music, music was used to facilitate and enliven key subjects such as numeracy and literacy, and recording and composing projects were realised. There were also unexpected outcomes, such as a marked increase in attendance at the BSO’s regular children’s concerts, and some schools achieving Artsmark status with the help of the project outcomes.

When the project finished in summer 2007 (every primary school in Bournemouth having been visited), talks immediately began as to how to capitalise on what had been achieved. What would be a logical development? How could the orchestra and its funding partner build on the extraordinary outcomes achieved in the schools, and maintain/increase the long-term benefits to the children of Bournemouth, as well as a wider community of parents and friends? We developed an exciting new orchestral position: a Children’s Composer with the brief of working in schools and creating new music for children. The over-arching aim is to leave a legacy of musical experience and inspiration, again working with every primary school in the town over a period three years. The BSO is unique in working with such a composer in residence. Award-winning music animateur Paul Rissmann has been appointed and will start working with schools in September.

Current Government thinking suggests that every young person of primary school age should experience live orchestral music at least once. The JPMorgan Children’s Composer project aims to take this requirement further by offering young people in Bournemouth the opportunity to take part in a much deeper experience: to hear music, but also create it; to create music, but also perform it; to learn from the experience, but also know that plans are in place to pass that learning on to others. By offering young people the opportunity to engage with a living artist and create music, this project will increase young people’s ability to leap barriers to a full enjoyment of music and the arts in general.