Re-Imagined projects enable young people of all ages to come together to become part of an Aurora performance.
“WOW! It was as though someone had invited me to see Roger Federer, and shake hands with him. It was wonderful.” (Ivona, primary school workshop participant)
Projects are designed around participants’ ages and musical experience, with a mixture of some or all of the following participative elements catering for all ages and abilities. Each of these strands can be run concurrently, with all participants coming together for a final performance. The result is an unusual and inspiring opportunity for children of different ages to work and perform together and draw inspiration from one another.
Re-imagined projects can either take place in 4 – 8 half-day sessions over a half term, or can come together over a single day.
- Primary school composition. Primary age children (no prior background in music necessary) collaborate with Aurora players and a workshop leader/composer to write songs or instrumental pieces as a class, inspired by works being performed in an Aurora concert. Participants eventually perform their work beside (or sometimes in the middle of!) the work that inspired them as part of a final concert. The new work is orchestrated by the workshop leader so that children are able to perform with full orchestral accompaniment.
- Primary school side-by-side work. Aurora’s arranger-in-residence Iain Farrington arranges simplified instrumental parts to children with only rudimentary instrumental skills to perform alongside a professional orchestra. This approach can be adopted with any young group of instrumentalists, and is particularly well suited for classes where teaching takes place on a whole-class basis. Parts are arranged following consultation with the children’s regular instrumental teacher(s) and then taught as a group by an Aurora workshop leader, alongside Aurora Principal Players. The result is that children are then able to perform orchestral repertoire alongside Aurora in the final concert.
- Primary and secondary school cross-arts work. Inspired by the cross-arts collaborations which are often a feature of Aurora concerts, these projects encourage young people to use another art form to create their own response to repertoire being played in the concert. Examples of this have included film-making, animation, storytelling, dance and artwork.
- Advanced secondary school side-by-side work. Re-Imagined projects also invite gifted young instrumentalists (Grade 7+) to play original orchestral parts, sitting alongside Aurora players. Sessions are led by Aurora’s Principal Conductor Nicholas Collon and include sectional coaching from Principal Players.