Back in March I was involved with a whole school music video with Old Park Primary, where I work with In Harmony Telford and Stoke. It was all part of the nationwide BBC Ten Pieces initiative, where schools across the country come up with a creative response to the film made specially for Primary School children.

The piece we performed was an arrangement by Andrew Smith of Mussorgsky’s Night on a Bare Mountain. The 3 school orchestras came together (all 300 children) with a team of professional musicians to record the soundtrack in the school hall – which was immense! Their concentration was so good and they coped really well with the pressure of the recording, with the mics and crew. As I conducted it was amazing looking out across this giant sea of children who were absolutely loving the feeling of playing together as an ensemble. Quality!

So then we spent a week with a brilliant and patient film crew – jam-av and each year group in the school – from Foundation through to Year 6 – worked with the fabulous Jo Billingham to choreograph some sort of movement. The teachers worked tirelessly to help the children produce costumes to go with the action.

Film week involved taking whole year groups to different locations around Telford, which was a logistical headache but really proved that you can take 90 children at a time into town without losing them…

One highlight was taking the Chamber Orchestra on a trip up the Wrekin (see my previous post).

And then it was up to the film guys to work their editing magic!

Last week we premiered it with 5 showings at the local Odeon Cinema (big thanks to them for their generosity!) so the children and their families could see themselves on the big screen.

Now the film is up on the BBC website – you can view it here.