Shropshire Music Service

Andy Davis asks if any Shropshire schools are attending the Young Voices event at Birmingham - if you are attending please leave a comment and contact for Andy below this posting.

“Do you know of any schools attending “Young Voices” at B’ham on Thursday? We’ve been for several years now and it is well worth attending.
Andy Davis (Clunbury)”

Friday December 1st 2006 sees the launch of the Shropshire initiative to begin to support the Secondary National Strategy in teaching and learning in Music at Key Stage 3.

All music departments in Shropshire have been invited to attend at the Shrewsbury Training and Development Centre (1:15pm - 4:00pm) when the strategy will be introduced by Keith Havercroft (School Improvement Adviser - Music and e-Learning - Shropshire LA), Margaret Lloyd (Head of Creative Arts - The Marches School and Technology College), and Ken Lumley (Head of Music - Meole Brace School and Science College).

Colleagues will be issued with, and guided through, the resources and briefing DVD and will engage in representative examples of the support materials as they begin to see the context and rationale for the planned changes to the Key Stage 3 music curriculum.

Further details will be posted after the event.

The rehearsal of The Shropshire Music Service Pops Orchestra on 29th October was most successful with some very impressive orchestrations from Les Miserables, Miss Saigon, West Side Story, Mission Impossible and Dances with Wolves rehearsed. There are still places for all instruments especially woodwind and violins. Remaining rehearsals are on 21st January 2007 & 18th February 2007 (10.00am -3.00pm) and concerts are on 16th & 18th March 2007.

If you enjoy film music come & enjoy a different experience.

The preliminary rounds will be held on 14th November 2006 at New College & on 15th November 2006 at Crowmoor Baptist Church.  From this event a smaller number of performers will be selected by independent adjudication to go forward to the next round. 

Penultimate Round 17th January at New College.

The final group of performers 3 or 4 musicians will go forward to the final which will be held on 28th March 2007 at The Music Hall, Shrewsbury when they will be accompanied by The Shropshire Sinfonia.

Christmas concerts ‘Passport tickets’ are available for the following concerts at £8 adult, £4 concession £20 family which entitles you to entry to as many of the following concerts as you wish. Individually these concerts are priced at £4, £2 & £10.

Look out for further details which will be posted closer to the event.

Saturday 2 December - 6.00pm Shropshire Girls Choir & Shropshire Junior Choir at Crowmoor Baptist Church

Saturday 9 December – 2.00pm Shropshire Training Youth Orchestra, Shropshire Training Youth Wind Orchestra, Shropshire Senior Clarinet Choir & Shropshire Senior Percussion Ensemble at Christchurch, Bayston Hill

Saturday 9 December – 2.30 pm Shropshire Youth Wind Orchestra & Shropshire Youth Brass Band at St. Mary’s Church, Shrewsbury

Monday 18 December 8.00pm Shropshire Youth Orchestra & New College Chorale at Shrewsbury Abbey

The following items from the diary are here to give some advance notice – further details will be posted closer to the event.

Tuesday 5 December North West Shropshire Schools String Orchestra at The Marches School, Oswestry 6.00pm

January 5-7 – Strings Residential Weekend at Pioneer Centre. This very popular course is now full.

February 24th – Woodwind Platform

March 2 to 4 – Residential Chamber Music Course at Pioneer Centre. Please return forms asap even if you are not a member of a chamber group.

March 3^rd Shropshire Youth Brass Band performing in Condover

March 9 and 10 – School of Music Open days – take an opportunity to hear our bands, choirs and orchestras in rehearsal, especially if you would like to join.

March 17 (10.00 -16.00) Music for Youth, Meole Brace School – the regional round of the National event.

March 30^th at 7.30– Shropshire Youth Brass Band at Wrekin College

April 28th– Woodwind Platform

June 22^nd Whole class violin concert, Shrewsbury, The Music Hall

July 9^th – Cellobration 3 – our third annual event to celebrate the cello at Christchurch

July 10^th 7.00pm Meole Brace School – Shrewsbury String Festival

July 11^th Brass Extravaganza

July 14th 7.15pm Strings Gala Concert, Meole Brace School

The Shropshire Youth Big Band, which rehearses on Friday evenings of School of Music weekends at Belvidere School from 5.30 to 8.00pm, has vacancies for alto, tenor & baritone saxes, trombones & percussionists. The contact is Jenny Couch at our email address – see ‘contact’ above.

As a result of some work I’ve recently undertaken with a primary school, it reminds me that I placed some time ago on the website a series of ideas for getting started to support clarity of learning objective when teaching composition. While these starters are not fully formed lessons they may be none the less useful for teachers who are lesson clear about the direction to take to support composition. Although the National Curriculum (for music) has been around for nearly 10 years I think the area of composition is very much disregarded, while the national debate centres on vocal work.

Feel free to contact me for further help with composition.

The Shropshire Youth Percussion Ensemble, conducted by Andy Richards, boasts some of the finest young percussionists in Shropshire and Telford & Wrekin. Previous members have included Adrian Spillett (Winner BBC Young Musician of The Year 1998) and Toby Kearney (Finalist BBC Young Musician Of The Year 2006). SYPE performs an eclectic and exciting repertoire of music written and arranged especially for percussion ensembles. The instrumentation includes marimba, xylophone, vibraphone, glockenspiel, orchestral chimes, bass drum, drum kit, timpani, congas, bongos, Afro-Cuban and Latin hand-held percussion instruments.

Players are required to have advanced experience on drum kit, tuned and unpitched percussion instruments. The minimum requirement is grade 6 or similar on their first study instrument and grade 5 on second study instrument (one of which must be a tuned percussion instrument).

Shropshire Training Youth Percussion Ensemble conducted by Jerome Auxant, provides an introduction to the percussion ensemble environment. Players are encouraged to have some tuned and unpiched percussion experienced to a minimum grade 3 standard.

SYPE rehearse on alternate Monday evenings 7-9pm STYPE rehearse on the same evening 6-7pm (both following the School of Music weekends as detailed in The Music Service Calendar).

If you are interested in joining Shropshire Youth Percussion Ensemble or Shropshire Training Youth Percussion Ensembleplease contact Andy Richards at The Music Service telephone 01743 874145 mobile 07790 775249 home 01952 510334

Welcome to the ‘Music for Teachers’ blog. The ‘Music for Teachers’ website is currently at www.m4t.org. The contents of the website are gradually being reviewed and presented within the new Shropshire Learning Gateway - members of the Shropshire community can find the logon screen at https://www.shropshirelg.net