Wow – what a first day!

Sunday might traditionally be a day of rest, but it’s been a jam-packed first day for us here at the Sound and Music Summer School. After bringing together our huge staff team (including tutors, composers, instrumentalists, chaperones and the Sound and Music team), we couldn’t wait for this year’s young composers to arrive.

Finally, once we’d imported our composers from across the UK, it was time to get everyone acquainted. Day one of the Summer School is all about introductions: to each other; to our tutor groups; to a world of new ways to compose, create and conceptualise music.

So after a brief introductory assembly we split up into our tutor groups, in which students will be working and composing with for the next week. With the guidance of their assigned professional composer, each group set about discovering the timbral possibilities of the instruments they’ll be working with.

Over in the vocal group, Laura Bowler’s vocal group set about exploring extended techniques for the voice. Check out the video below of them beatboxing with Majiker:

Elsewhere in the school, David Horne got the class to push the musicians in the Instrumental Group to their limits, while the Film Group got to test out some ideas on their ensemble:

There were even more amazing moments in the Cross Cultural and Jazz Groups – be sure to check out our Twitter feed or Instagram stories for even more behind the scenes footage!

After a hard day’s work, it seemed only right to have a bit of fun. In that spirit, we finished off the evening with an amazing performance and workshop from Loop Machine Choir. In the workshop, Ben See and Esmerelda Conde Ruiz took us on a group composition that spanned from Bjork to beatboxing. By the end of the session, they’d managed to get a room of 75 tired out composers enthusiastically singing and looping – certainly no mean feat!

After a long day of music, we’re all ready for bed, but can’t wait to make even more music tomorrow. If you want to see even more of today’s shenanigans, be sure to check out all the pictures from Day 1 here.

You can also help us support tomorrow’s composers by donating to our Steve Martland Bursary Fund, which helps us provide our amazing Summer School to young creatives of all backgrounds.

Thanks for reading, and enjoy this short video of Loop Machine before you go!