At Music in the Round, we work closely with our four partner Music Hubs in Sheffield, Barnsley, Doncaster and Rotherham to support teachers and students in their exploration of music as composers, listeners, creators, performers and audiences.
Read on to find out more about some of our current and most recent projects working with schools. If you’d like to get involved, or have any questions, please contact ellen@musicintheround.co.uk
Ensemble 360 & Lucy Drever
Music-Makers of Sheffield
Music-Makers of Sheffield
Aga Serugo-Lugo & Ensemble 360
The Chimpanzees of Happy Town
Our latest concert for Early Years and Key Stage 1
Based on the best-selling children’s book by Giles Andreae and Guy Parker-Rees (creators of Giraffes Can’t Dance), this concert features original music by our Children’s Composer-in-Residence, Paul Rissmann, written for strings, woodwind, piano and horn. Performed by Ensemble 360 and narrator, the concert is a great introduction to live music with story-telling, projections of illustrations from the book and plenty of opportunities to join in with songs and actions!
Whether you are nervous about teaching music, or a classroom maestro, our brand-new accompanying resources will inspire your class to get singing, listening and creating music. We also offer training opportunities in collaboration with the venues and hubs with whom we work. For more information, please email ellen@musicintheround.co.uk
WeCompose
An adventure in composition for young people across the UK
WeCompose is our latest composition project for Key Stage 3 students in Sheffield, Barnsley, Doncaster, Rotherham, Portsmouth, Milton Keynes and Barking and Dagenham, and Key Stage 4 students in South Yorkshire and across the north of England, recently confirmed until at least 2026 thanks to generous funding from Paul Hamlyn Foundation.
The project includes a broad introduction to chamber music matched to the interests of year 9 to 11 pupils. We are partnering students with composers, who will help them to create their own group and individual compositions. We’re also offering training to the composers to enable them to effectively lead classroom sessions and to support teachers, growing everyone’s confidence in group composition. Read more here and check out the resources above for more information. To find out more, please email ellen@musicintheround.co.uk
Schubert in Schools
Schubert in Schools was a project led by Music in the Round, in collaboration with Singer-in-Residence Roderick Williams and pianist Christopher Glynn.
Using Franz Schubert’s Winter Journey (Winterreise) song cycle as a starting point, it helped students and teachers find their voice and compose their own music. Young people from across South Yorkshire and around the country took Schubert to heart, performed versions of his songs in professional settings and created their own diverse range of compositions inspired by their engagement with one of the greatest composers of song and chamber music.
Find out more in our video, The Story of Schubert in Schools.
Read more about the project here.
Flowers of Doe Lea
In Spring of 2022 we teamed up with Bolsover District Council, supported by Orchestras Live, to deliver a project with a focus on community place-making through musical engagement.
Composer Duncan Chapman was joined by Ensemble 360’s horn player Naomi Atherton, double bassist Jamie Manson and Bridge violinist Raye Harvey, to work with young people from Bramley Vale Primary School. Inspired by a sculpture in their community, this team helped the children to gather sounds, test out instruments and use the unique shape of the sculpture to inspire a joyous composition. Naomi, Raye, Jamie and the children performed the brand new work together, interspersed with some well-known chamber music and new arrangements. Sound artist Martyn Stonehouse is now creating an online version of the new composition.
Sheffield Music Academy & Sheffield Music Hub
Students from Sheffield Music Academy and Sheffield Music Hub teamed up with Ensemble 360 and Sheffield Chamber Choir for a ‘Sunset’ concert at St Andrew’s Church, Psalter Lane, as part of Sheffield Chamber Music Festival 2022. They performed works including Mahler’s arrangement of Beethoven’s ‘Serioso’ Quartet for string orchestra. Read more in this review by Colin Clarke.
Sheffield Music Academy students also provided a number of pop-up performances in the Crucible Theatre foyer for our audiences, before and after concerts as part of Sheffield Chamber Music Festival 2022.
South Yorkshire Music Celebration
Hundreds of young musicians from Barnsley, Doncaster, Rotherham, and Sheffield came together for a massed concert at the Doncaster Dome in October 2019. The concert included appearances from a number of Music in the Round’s Bridge 2018-20 musicians, and celebrated the amazing power and joy of shared music-making – connecting communities, forming friendships, bringing down barriers.
The celebration took place on 19 October 2019 at Doncaster Dome, organised by the four South Yorkshire Music Hubs with Music in the Round. Watch our video about the concert.
