This Autumn, the team from the Academy of St Martin in the Fields is joining with 100 Islington school children to explore the heritage of gardens and create our own music inspired by Mozart’s La Finta Giardiniera. Musicians from the Academy will work alongside 75 Year 7 students from our partner school in Islington, and 25 Year 9 students from our partner school in Redbridge.

The project began with visits to Valentines Mansions and Parks in Redbridge, where the children learnt about the historic house and gardens, exploring the space and collecting and noting many objects which would inform their compositions. The participants walked the grounds of the gardens in Mozart’s shoes recording the life and times of a Georgian household and the relationship between culture, houses and gardens as would have been experienced in the times of the great composer and influenced the setting of his opera.

Following their garden visits, the children will now adopt the role of a composer and take part in a series of music workshops led by Jan Hendrickse and Richard Thomas with Academy players at their schools to create their own compositions, as well as musical instruments made from natural objects and music technology. In parallel with their music, they will produce an animated work working with visual artist Akhila Krishnan. The music, instruments and visual art will all culminate in a multi-sensory, live performance by the students and Academy musicians at Kings Place on 25th November.

Project Partners:Vision Redbridge Museum & Valentines Mansion and Parks

“It was really exciting and interesting working with the musicians because I haven’t done that before.”

“I’ve learnt new things about vibration, pitch, and about music.”

“I’ve learnt how to make different sounds using different techniques.”

Participating Students

The Academy is very grateful to RWE npower and the Heritage Lottery Fund for their support of the Garden Music project.

“Through the Academy’s Outward Sound community programme, we were inspired by the way they make meaningful connections with people of all ages, backgrounds and abilities who otherwise may not have access to music. 

The students’ garden visits, in-school workshops and own musical performances will be followed in 2012 with the development of teaching resources and a teacher awareness event so more teachers in Islington and Redbridge can incorporate music into their lessons. It has been an inspiring project to be part of.”

Volker Beckers

Chief Executive, RWE npower

Read more about Garden Music in the project leaflet.

For more information about the Academy’s Outward Sound programme, please e-mail outwardsound@asmf.org

Photo Credits Katie Snooks

 ”What a wonderful opportunity for these children! Fantastic, well done!”

Parent of participant

Garden Music Blog

By Stephen Buck, Concerts and Education Volunteer

Over the last couple of months, since I started volunteering with the orchestra, I have been involved with the Garden Music Project. When I started with the project, the students had just been to visit Valentines Mansion and Gardens and the first workshop I was involved in was where the students started to make their electronic instruments. The instruments they created drew inspiration from the different stimuli they had observed in the garden such as light, moisture and touch. The instruments translated the effects of these stimuli through specific sensors to create or manipulate sounds. In these workshops I was shocked by just how easy it was to create these simple and cheap instruments. I’m sure that the computer programme the electronics where going through was far beyond my comprehension- but the physical part of it was so gratifyingly simple to make and use, and you could tell that the kids who had never really played an instrument found this immediacy really enjoyable too.

The next sessions the students had a couple of weeks later explored the things they had observed and noted in their journals on their garden visit. The first of these workshops was with Akhila (our visual artist) and the second was with members of the orchestra. With Akhila they produced works to be used in the film to accompany the performance at Kings Place, you can see from the video how impressive this was. In the workshop with members of the orchestra, the students explored the various sounds the instruments could make (both conventional and unconventional). Many of them had never seen an orchestra instrument before so it was great to see them so engaged in the sounds they were producing and giving creative direction to the musicians by producing graphic scores to be interpreted and played there and then.

In the final workshop, the students combined all the elements from their previous sessions. By using the instruments they had helped to create in their first session, they composed a piece which both complimented and manipulated sounds produced by the orchestras musicians and some sounds that had been recorded on the visit to the mansion and garden. All the time the creative ideas for the work were coming from the ideas they had picked up on their visit to the garden. I think this was probably the most challenging workshop for the students as they were coming at it from a background with little or no experience of classical music and yet were required to structure and perform a work which some used unusual sounds and ideas. I do think it took some of them a while to really get into it but when they did, it was great seeing these kids with no previous knowledge of orchestral music and instruments making creative decisions and asking the players to do things which were really effective but often even the musicians wouldn’t have thought of doing- in this respect the students weren’t the only ones learning something.

While I knew what to expect from the performance at Kings Place, having been involved in the workshops leading up to it, I was still really impressed by the finished article. The different groups all came together, each offering something completely different and original and yet as a work it really successfully linked together, even more so thanks to the stunning video that had been created from the student’s artwork.

Garden Music Documentary

Jan Hendrickse (sound artist / animateur)
Akhila Krishnan (visual artist)
Richard Thomas & Dave Hunt (instrument makers)