Our final anniversary celebration in our 450th anniversary calendar, was Orchestra Unwrapped, an exciting concert series for children and our support enabled the Philharmonia Orchestra to bring this project to the town for the very first time.
The hour long concert at the Corn Exchange was attended by 700 children and staff from state primary schools across the borough. The entire Symphony Orchestra performed music ranging from Elgar to Star Wars, and the pupils got to perform too, singing along to a song written specially for the programme by the orchestra’s composer Paul Rissman.
Trustees recognise that many children in the borough would not usually have an opportunity to attend a performance such as this and we worked closely with the Philharmonia to ensure that the schools which might benefit from this most had first refusal on tickets. But another element to the project which particularly appealed to trustees was the fact that the Orchestra conduct workshops with both pupils and staff leading up to the concert; the staff inset in particular providing music co-ordinators and teachers within schools with a wealth of techniques, ideas and resources to support delivery of the curriculum across an entire academic year.