'˜Epic' event features 120 musicians

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Peterborough Music Hub has been working closely with the Cambridge based Britten Sinfonia, presenting a range of projects for young musicians and young audiences across the city.

For the past three months, workshop leader Tim Steiner and a small group of players from Britten Sinfonia, have been working in Jack Hunt School, Ken Stimpson Community School, Thomas Deacon Academy and St John Fisher Catholic School in Peterborough.

n each, a group of thirty Key Stage 3 students (11-14 year olds) has signed up for a musical composition and performance project celebrating the area’s cultural diversity. Some are accomplished musicians; one has just taken her Grade 8 exam on clarinet and another rips impressive Hendrix solos on his electric guitar.

Each group, over five, half-day workshops, has created a performance piece, each school also learning the pieces conceived by the others.

Drawing inspiration from a range of repertoire across Britten Sinfonia’s 2015-16 artistic season from 1600s Bach to 1980s Louis Andriessen, they have explored performing and conducting, developed their skills as musical and artistic leaders, worked in small groups and large ensembles and above all, inspired by the twenty-three individual voices of Metamorphosen they heard Britten Sinfonia rehearse in April, explored their independence, the diversity of their individuality, and the ways in which they can come together to form a whole which can only be described as ‘epic’.

Peterborough Epic will culminate on Tuesday 24 May when all 120 participants will come together with fifteen professional musicians from Britten Sinfonia to perform their compositions to an audience of their peers in a live streamed concert at the Kingsgate Conference Centre.

“The students call it ‘Epic’” explains Tim, “When you’re talking 21 keyboards, 4 drum kits, 39 bongos/sambas/djembe drums, 9 electric guitars, 2 electric bases, flutes, clarinets, saxophones, brass, an orchestra and a beatboxer all amplified and all playing together, there isn’t really a good, single word for it!”

For more information contact [email protected].