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Place-making: what is it?
Post date: Thursday, 19 October 2017 - 5:34pm

Much about place-making is intangible. You, the groups making and presenting music in your local communities, week in, week out, and your fellow citizens organising amateur dramatics, painting classes, adult ballet, Scout groups, and much more - you are the often hidden but indispensable ingredient in a successful place.

Your locality would not be an attractive place to live, work and visit if you didn’t populate it with interesting activities for everyone and thus with opportunities for people to come together and rub shoulders with others from their community.

Surrey Performing Arts Library: join the meeting
Post date: Thursday, 19 October 2017 - 11:29am

The online consultation by Surrey County Council closed on 1 October, receiving an astonishing number of over 1500 online and 220 offline submissions.

Officers will be reporting the results of the consultation and laying out the options they are considering to councillors at the meeting of the Communities Select Committee of Surrey County Council on Tuesday 7 November at 10am in Kingston.

Getting started with Adopt a Composer
Post date: Wednesday, 18 October 2017 - 6:07pm

A fantastic start to the project so far. After a great day in London for the big announcement of the pairings, we have set to work getting to know our adopted composer Gaynor Barradell and encouraged the band to share their thoughts and ideas.

Response has been enthusiastic with lots of ideas and already we have begun to form a great relationship with Gaynor that feels like we have known her for years.

Composers - the Radio 3 Breakfast Carol Competition is now open!
Post date: Wednesday, 18 October 2017 - 4:08pm

The Radio 3 Breakfast Carol Competition has returned for 2017, with amateur composers challenged to write a new carol for SATB choir set to the words of a 15th-century carol: Sir Christemas.

Entries will be judged by a panel including Judith Weir and David Hill, with a shortlist of six being performed live on air by the BBC Singers. The ultimate winner will be decided by listener vote and played on Radio 3 on Christmas Day.

'A little bit of a Blind Date electricity' - Adopt a Composer blog
Post date: Monday, 2 October 2017 - 6:10pm

It's been hard keeping our successful application to Adopt a Composer a secret since we got the great news on 16 August… And at last we are on our way to London for the Making Music press launch and to find out which composer we are ‘adopting'. Sarah Cunningham (MD) and I meet somewhat bleary-eyed at 5am at Edinburgh airport feeling a tad nervous…also excited.

'You play anyway because the music is so good' - Adopt a Composer blog
Post date: Monday, 2 October 2017 - 4:50pm

I first heard about ‘Adopt A Composer’ as an anxious teenager who had absolutely no idea how to realise my ambitions; the name fell into my distracted ears while trying to revise for my AS Levels with BBC Radio 3 on in the background (a terrible attempt at multitasking).

Sir Karl Jenkins presented with prize at world première performance of Symphonic Adiemus
Post date: Monday, 2 October 2017 - 11:56am

Making Music Executive Director, Barbara Eifler, presented the 2016 Sir Charles Groves Prize to Sir Karl Jenkins at a concert on Friday featuring world première performances of excerpts from his work Symphonic Adiemus.

The award was presented at the Royal Festival Hall during the first of three performances, conducted by Sir Karl himself (at the Royal Festival Hall in London, Symphony Hall in Birmingham, and Bridgewater Hall in Manchester) of the new work alongside fan-favourite The Armed Man: A Mass for Peace.

Meet the 2017 Adopt a Composer pairings
Post date: Saturday, 30 September 2017 - 1:48pm

Each year our Adopt a Composer scheme sets amateur choirs, orchestras and ensembles up with composers for a year to produce a new piece together. Meet this year's pairings.

Anna Appleby with Merchant Sinfonia

Royal Shakespeare Company is looking for choirs in the Midlands to mark the Twelfth Night of Christmas
Post date: Friday, 29 September 2017 - 4:15pm

The Royal Shakespeare Company is looking for four choirs from the Midlands area to be part of an event to mark the Twelfth Night of Christmas on Saturday 6 January 2018 in Stratford-upon-Avon.

Coinciding with the RSC’s forthcoming production of Twelfth Night, the Company is holding a Wassail in and around the Royal Shakespeare Theatre. Roughly translated as ‘be in good health’ wassailing is an English tradition taking place on the Twelfth Night of Christmas, which involves singing the health of apple trees in the hope that they might yield a good harvest.

Opinion: Are formal concerts more trouble than they're worth?
Post date: Monday, 18 September 2017 - 5:05pm

The majority of our members work towards and put on formal performances or concerts on a regular basis. This is a positive thing: it gives your members something to aim for, and allows people in your community (i.e. your audience!) to be exposed to music they might not otherwise get to hear in a local venue, creating a sense of occasion and connection for everyone involved. But putting on a concert can be expensive, and if audiences don’t come and you make a loss on the event it can be tempting to wonder why you put the performance on in the first place!

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