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| The Samling Foundation's Performance and Outreach Project |
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The Samling Foundation's Performance and Outreach Project |
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The singers will work with Samling pianist Caroline Dowdle in vocal and choral workshops in all four schools.
Southbank Sinfonia will work with and perform Dvorak's Slavonic Dances side by side with members of the QEHS orchestra while the Newcastle Choral Society will join the QEHS choir and Southbank Sinfonia to perform Mozart's Coronation Mass with Samling Scholars.The Samling Foundation
The Samling Foundation invests in young people. Education is at the heart of all its work. The charity provides a vital link between established international artists and emerging young professionals in music and the visual arts. At a critical stage between training and embarking on their careers it provides young artists with a sympathetic environment where they can work, perform, exhibit, and above all, be inspired. It also believes in nurturing the next generation of musicians and artists and is committed to involving schools, teachers, colleges, and the wider community in their work.
The Samling supports excellence and provides the right conditions for it to flourish. It believes that no digital connection can replace direct contact with great people. Patron Sir Thomas Allen has led the Samling Foundation's international masterclass programme from the beginning, together with a team of accomplished artists, coaches and teachers including Barbara Bonney, Ileana Cotrubas and Malcolm Martineau. These week-long vocal masterclasses are unique - there is nothing like this in the UK. They are highly respected and have attracted young artists - Samling Scholars - from every continent.
In 2005 The Samling Foundation produced its first opera at The Sage Gateshead. In partnership with Northern Sinfonia this new production of Mozart's Così fan tutte was directed by Sir Thomas Allen, conducted by Thomas Zehetmair and starred six Samling Scholars. Samling Opera also had an ambitious education programme involving 42 gifted and talented teenagers from across the region, including six students from Queen Elizabeth High School, Hexham, who produced their own piece of work in response to themes in the opera. Through a specially commissioned interactive CD-ROM, there are plans also to reach as wide an audience in schools as possible - a lasting legacy of the project.
Southbank Sinfonia
Southbank Sinfonia is a groundbreaking new orchestra, unique in Europe, which provides an intensive eight-month learning and performing experience, supported by a bursary, for exceptional young graduates of UK music colleges. Its primary mission is to give players the additional skills and experience necessary to ensure a successful transition into a professional career in music and by extension to explore and pioneer the way forward for the 21st century musician.
In 2005, Southbank Sinfonia gave more than 85 orchestral and chamber performances including six premières working with each different composer and 30 concertos where the soloist was a member of the orchestra. It toured to 30 venues around the UK and Europe, including 8 major festivals, worked with 25 conductors, undertook two fully-staged operas and an innovative dance collaboration with Random Dance at Sadler’s Wells.
In 2006 we are continuing our special relationships with the Parliament Choir, Royal Opera House, the Academy of St Martin in the Fields, Brunel University, The Samling Foundation and Wells Cathedral School. The season includes a Baroque week with a performance in the London Handel Festival, further performances at Wigmore Hall and Cadogan Hall (including the launch of a new Saturday morning family concert series), and the staging of Puccini’s La Bohème at the Anghiari Festival in Italy and Berbiguières in France. Southbank Sinfonia is also honoured to have been asked to stage a memorial concert for Sir Edward Heath in July.
There is an extended series of Thursday Rush Hour Concerts at the orchestra’s home in St John’s Waterloo. Special events in conjunction with other arts and community organisations stretch the boundaries of the musical and performing experience.
Len Young was born in Manchester and then lived in the North Riding of Yorkshire before going to the Royal College of Music in London. He taught in London and Newcastle for fourteen years before spending ten years as Adviser for Music with Newcastle Education Authority. He returned to teaching as Head of Music at Queen Elizabeth High School, Hexham in 1995. In September 2004 he also took on the role of Assistant Head responsible for development of the school as a performing arts college.
As well as conducting Newcastle Choral Society he has encouraged thousands of people of all ages to participate in vocal work in a variety of styles. His many compositions include a musical, Mine, numerous Christmas carols, Blackfriars, The Seafarer, a Requiem, Earthsong, Glimpses of Grainger Town, Spes Durat Avorum, Hexham Abbey Ground for organ with audience participation, and a full length musical, Odysseus, written for Queen Elizabeth High School Youth Theatre. His recent arrangements of Tyneside folk songs for choir, soloists and orchestra will be performed at the Sage Gateshead on 22nd September.
Newcastle Choral Society
Newcastle Choral Society now celebrating more than 50 years of choral tradition, has sung under the direction of Len Young since 1976.
It has 120 singers and aims to produce choral concerts of a high standard, in a wide range of styles, at venues in and around Newcastle. The Choral Society is also committed to a regular programme of fund raising for local charities.
Since its formation, as well as the standard repertoire, the choir has performed modern works by Rutter, Carter, Ramirez, Jongen and Nyman and a number of new works composed by Len Young including Seafarers, Blackfriars, Earthsong and a Requiem. Recent concerts have included performances of Messiah with Newcastle Baroque, Stravinsyk’s Symphony of Psalms and Verdi’s Requiem in memory of George Walker, founder of the Newcastle Proms. In April 2004, the choir performed its celebratory 50th anniversary concert with the Tyneside premier of Karl Jenkins The Armed Man A Mass for Peace. In June 2005, NCS gave an acclaimed performance of seafaring greats to a packed house at The Sage Gateshead in aid of The Children’s Foundation and are to return there in 2007.
There have also been a number of concerts with lighter pieces, and a regular series of Carol Concerts each December. For the past sixteen years the NCS has taken part in the North East Last Night of the Proms at the City Hall, a charity event which has now raised over £750,000 for Leukaemia Research.
