MERCHANT SINFONIA RULES OK!
Gill, our web-weaver, asked me to write a blog about the Sinfonia, so that anyone (that's you) can post some comments for us. She should know better than to encourage me. My mind's been bubbling with bloggy stuff recently and the website is still groaning with my verbiage left over from way back last Easter. The main item on today's menu is the Merchant Sinfonia, which is already three weeks into its first term. The taster day in December was a knockout. For myself, I had huge big fun at it, and came away stimulated out of my mind, marvelling at the potential of this sort of musical event. In one afternoon we put together an impressive performance of . People had dragged their instruments out of cupboards, blinking in the long forgotten daylight. They went for it, they had a go, they had fun. Anyone can join the party; you don't have to reach any particular standard before you can come along and get the experience. That's the bit I'm interested in: inclusiveness. And I'm not the only one. Lots of organisations have started up these "If you can hold it, bring it" orchestras. Not to mention the huge numbers of pubs that now have regular 'open' sessions.
But....... already around 150 folk want to get involved with the Merchant Sinfonia, and that's too many for a single orchestra and the hall we have to do it all in. First come first served has been strictly and impartially applied to all applications. People who didn't get in for the first term will be given priority for the second term in April. Please contact us, tell us what you think, throw in some ideas, particularly anyone who came to the taster day, or who has signed up for the course. Let's discover something exciting together. You can email, phone, write, come and grab me at a concert. What do you want to do: have more sectional rehearsal time? Look at some of the music from our SSO concerts? Play some particular piece? Whatever – you say. Do you want an amateur orchestra along the lines of others in Glasgow? One that might eventually have to gently shed players who can't keep up as the thing improves? Or do you want something more inclusive? If the latter, how should we all go about it? Can we make it fun and fulfilling in some new way?
Try this for a really boring statement: "Playing an instrument is a group thing, it's a universal and basic human activity". If it wasn't for our western culture and its educational curricula I wouldn't need to be saying anything like that – we wouldn't need telling because we would all be doing it already. We wouldn't need telling any more than we need telling to go out, have fun and enjoy being a human being. Our culture has stuffed classical music into cupboards in ivory towers, and there's lots of folk wanting to find the keys, get the music out, throw away the rubbish and reclaim the valuable items. Is the abiding picture of our music-making an image of children being brow beaten into solitary practise, intimidated by austere exams and those awful 'only-one-person-can-win' types of competitions that leave the rest of us labelled as losers, yearning to give up the whole irrelevant and pressurising palaver? At the very age that children would gain most from the stimulation, diversion and social aspects of music they are often forced to abandon their instrument because of the relentless regime of 'academic' exams imposed on them. How many times have I heard someone lament, 'I wish I hadn't given it up'? Yet, all the scientific evidence points to the fact that practical music-making, starting as early as possible, boosts 'academic' achievement and overall self-confidence! You will have noticed the derogatory apostrophes I've put round the word academic.
But I don't just want to talk about the playing; there's room for a bit of chat – preferably over a jar or three. Our new concert season has now been planned, and we're wondering if we might develop the pre-concert talks. The concerts will be fortnightly on Thursdays, more regular. I've been asked to do some of the talks. If you've read my blogs you'll know what gets me excited. I'm not very interested in academic aspects of music; it's not my thing, others can do it far better. How about meeting in a smaller room, getting a bit of chat going, reflecting on the previous concert? What do you think? The big hall tends to make people talk in more grandiose concepts. Did you hear the Radio 3 New Year series "At The Piano"? Five top pianists chatted about the players who influenced them, and they all came across chatty and humbly – as superb craftsmen in the business of looking for answers – there wasn't any intellectualising. I always look for the more personal content from the composer's and player's perspective. Setting stuff in its historical context invariably enriches my enjoyment of the music. Stephen Johnson was brilliant at that when talking about Sibelius and Nielsen the other evening. (Hey! What did any of you think of 's mammoth opus? Or even just his programme note for it?) The deeper universal questions, about why or what music is, totally fascinate me. This was a mystery to the great Darwin himself, but I think we are finding some answers now, or at least realising where to look for those answers. The , in cahoots with the indomitable , has started a year long feedback type programme, "Hear Here". Take a look and join in. More importantly, feed your thoughts back to us. There was another Radio 3 programme during the holidays, "Where did it all begin?" looking at the evolutionary origins of music; but I don't want to leave the boffins in charge of this discussion, the whole point is for us to go on our own journey of discovery, with our own jeely pieces.
There's another strand to all of this. You might have heard about "", which is a radically new and stunningly successful music education scheme in Venezuela. ´óÏó´«Ã½ Scotland and the have just signed up to running this in Scotland, starting already in Stirling. There's a short film about it on this website here . It turns our conventional music education on its head, exposing its embarrassing bits. Over there, hundreds of thousands of kids are doing music, hours a day, several days a week. And the kids are making some of the instruments they use! Did you hear the youth orchestra at the Proms, or the repeat at the New Year? One of the most astounding concerts ever. They're on Radio 3 again during the afternoon on 21st and 25 January (You can 'Listen again' for seven days after the broadcast with the iPlayer link on the Radio 3 website). All over Venezuela they're building loads of new concert halls, halls which all include recital and teaching facilities. I won't say any more about it here, others will say lots more in the near future. Cultural czars in heavyweight countries like America and Germany are agape. It's great – learning an instrument can be, and always should have been, like learning to kick a ball around with your pals. And thousands of Venezuelans are having fun, and it's completely inclusive. Not a fusty intellectualism in sight.
