Page 123 - FULL BOOK Isata Kanneh-Mason Childhood Tales

‘Letting young people be the music is an ideal starting point.’ Photograph: Jeffrey Isaac
Greenberg 9+/Alamy
There should be regular encounters with exceptional live performance both in schools
and off site, crucially with affordable school-to-venue transport. And a massive
upscaling of things like the once well-funded national Sing Up programme. We should
train all early years teachers to be confident meshing music into the curriculum –
teaching them to play the piano, for the leading of class singing, would be
transformational. Meurig Bowen, chief executive/artistic director, Britten Sinfonia

8. Do a conga to Beethoven’s 7th

At Aurora, we’ve found creative concert presentation to be a powerful tool in engaging a
broader audience for the orchestral music we love, whether playing among 2,000
people at Printworks nightclub, inviting 100 people to create a giant graphic score
during a concert, or playing from memory. At one show, the whole audience formed a
spontaneous conga line to the slow movement of Beethoven’s Seventh.

Nicholas Collon conducts the Aurora orchestra in Jane Mitchell’s staging of Berlioz’s
Symphonie Fantastique. Photograph: Mark Allan

The whole industry is engaging with this question: take a look at the Orchestra of the
Age of Enlightenment’s Night Shift series, which sees the orchestra perform informally
in pubs; the Budapest Festival Orchestra’s concerts where audiences can sit on
beanbags among the orchestra; or theatrical projects such as the Scottish Ensemble’s