Category: Proms
Date: 28.07.2005
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Talented teenagers from around the country join the BBC Symphony Orchestra at a special Proms concert featuring star violinist Viktoria Mullova on Saturday 30 July.
It is the first time that aspiring young musicians have been given the chance to work alongside world-class professionals at the BBC Proms.
The project provides an unprecedented opportunity for committed school-age students and aims to develop their creative as well as performing talents and to deepen their musical experience.
Among the 87 young musicians are players of all the main orchestral instruments and some surprising others, including electric guitar and penny whistle.
The 13 to 18-year-old players are drawn from Southampton Youth Orchestra, Cheltenham Music Festival Youth Ensemble, Berkshire Young Musicians Trust Ensemble and The Sage Gateshead Weekend School and have to be of Grade VIII standard or above to participate.
Forty-six of the young people will swell the ranks of the BBC SO, joining them for Respighi's enormous Pines of Rome.
Thirty-five others will perform an entirely new work created through intense workshops and improvisation sessions with members of the BBC SO and the contemporary music ensemble Between The Notes in the week leading up to the concert.
The project was devised by Matthew Barley, of Between The Notes, and Lincoln Abbotts, the BBC SO's Learning Manager.
In recent months they have taken musicians from the BBC SO and Between The Notes to spend a week with each of the regional groups of young musicians in their home towns, creating music for a final public concert.
Viktoria Mullova has attended many of the sessions to share her experience and to play with them and for the young people.
The Proms concert on Saturday 30 July, conducted by Martyn Brabbins, also features the world premiere of Fraser Trainer's new concerto for amplified violin, for the living, played by Viktoria Mullova, and Britten's The Young Person's Guide to the Orchestra.
The concert, from the Royal Albert Hall, will be broadcast live on BBC Radio 3 at 7.00pm and on BBC FOUR from 7.30pm.
It is the centrepiece of the BBC Proms Violins!! Day which includes a family matinee which features works for one, two, four and more violins and culminates in a Late Night Prom with Scottish Blazing Fiddles and gypsy virtuoso Roby Lakatos and his ensemble.
