It’s quiet… Too quiet.

Aside from odd noises coming out of practice rooms, or composers scribbling and tapping away, there appears to be very little noise at all. Having spent the last few days in a school bursting to the seams with music, this sort of softer atmosphere is almost eerie.

Of course, the reason behind this is that the weekend is fast approaching, and with it the final performances of our all our composers’ work across Friday and Saturday. If the pieces are to be ready for the professional musicians to perform by then (not to mention ready for recording tomorrow!), there’s a lot of work to be done and deadlines to be met.

This explains the relative quiet. But that doesn’t mean there’s nothing to be heard – if you know where to look, of course. Firstly, the air is brimming with ideas. We caught up with a young composer from each group (Anna Maria, Sam, Jack, Rosa and Jemma) to hear what compositional elements they’re finessing today:

Today, we also caught up with all these composers and more in our takeover of Arts Council England’s Instagram, where we flooded their feed with all the amazing music being created as the Sound and Music Summer School! Be sure to check out their Instagram Story to see our takeover and hear music by the likes of Scottie from Jazz Group, Johnny in Vocal and Delyth in Cross Cultural.

As part of the takeover, we also caught up with Liz in the Jazz Group, who let us all know what it’s like to write a whole new composition in just seven days:

As is to be expected with a group of teenagers, the fragile peace and quiet mentioned above did not last into the evening; we roared back to full volume with a Summer School Quiz Special!

Headed up by our chaperone Simon, the quiz encompassed everything from a famous composer picture round, to the latest winners of Love Island. There were also bonus rounds galore, from coin toss to taste tests of coke vs pepsi. The undoubted highlight had to be a complete the limerick bonus round, which saw students and staff alike completing a limerick beginning “there once was a cellist named Mickey…”. We’ll leave to your imagination what rhymes might have transpired!

It was great to end the night on a high, and even better to hear the distant sound of the vocal group’s professional musicians rehearsing for this weekend’s concerts in the hall next door. We can’t wait to see what amazing music our young composers have in store for them!

If you want to see even more behind the scenes, head on over to our Instagram, check out our Day 5 pictures here, or sign up to our newsletter to hear about all of our Education work.