“It seems like we’ve got a really friendly bunch this year, everyone is chatting and the place is buzzing already!”

This was what several young musicians were saying as they walked into this evening concert. The Sound and Music Summer School 2016 started this afternoon with around 75 budding young composers arriving at the Purcell School for a week of creating music.

After a short introduction and welcome from Judith Robinson – SAM Creative Project Leader. Students went off to meet their tutor groups and to get started. I was working closely with the film students today and watched whilst they worked on an icebreaker activity putting music to a short scene from The Life Of Pi. This makes up part of the film taster session (more about that tomorrow!) Following this they reviewed all of the films as a group and discussed what had worked and how they could improve when they start on their final project. This will be a really useful session for them when it comes to producing their final compositions.

Each evening there will be a performance or workshop for everyone on the course and tonight we open with the sensational Lucie Treacher. Lucie joins us this year in her second year as staff of the Summer School as the composer in residence on the World Music strand. Following Lucie’s talk regular SAM group, Juice this year with Majiker will be performing. More about this later!

Martin has already been working on our pictures and you can find all of the photos from day 1 here.