The BBC Concert Orchestra took to the road last March with another series of concerts for primary schools under the Making Tracks banner with conductor Robert Ziegler and presenter Rani Price. 

Following visits to Blackheath, Watford, Grantham, Cambridge and Southend in previous years, in March 2008 the BBC CO played to packed houses in Stevenage and Norwich, as well as a return visit to Grantham. 

Playing to a total audience of over 10,000 children and their teachers from nearly 250 primary schools in a four day, seven concert tour, the events were supported by local councils and music services through partnerships facilitated by Orchestras Live. 

Pupils prepared for the events using specially commissioned resources and through their broadband powered computers.

The involvement of local partners was key to the success of the tour: in Norfolk, for example, every district in the county was involved, working and planning together for the first time on an orchestral project.

The concerts featured an engaging combination of pieces in as piquant a mix as you would expect from the UK’s most diverse orchestra, all enhanced by big screen projections of the BBC CO and specially created film extracts and graphics. 

Rob Lea’s Pedal Power, a cycle ride in sound, was particularly popular alongside Nutcracker Suite favourites and Saint-Saëns The Swan, beautifully played by BBC CO Principal Cello, Benjamin Hughes. The final movement from Mozart’s Concerto for Horn No 4 (soloist Stephen Bell) and Monti’s irrepressible Czardas, played by leader Charles Mutter, offered opportunities for a focus on individual instruments and a chance to hear from the players concerned, whilst the tutti power of the Doctor Who theme was a real highlight for many children. 

The children had an insight into what secondary school pupils can achieve through Bushey Hall School’s soundtrack for a Doctor Who clip (created in the BBC CO MusicLab education project for secondary schools, and orchestrated by the BBC CO’s Alasdair Malloy).  

The interactive elements of the concerts were particularly popular such as the chance for children to conduct the music from The Great Escape, and Robert Ziegler’s Marvellous Machines in which the Orchestra becomes a live sequencer controlled by the audience alongside a pupil percussion group led by BBC CO percussionist Steve Whibley. (Marvellous Machines links to a composition game on the BBC website which many children had explored beforehand.) 

Howard Goodall’s beautiful and thought-provoking song Refuge was sung by the whole audience in a new orchestration by Graeme Stewart. Local singing leaders led the song in each of the venues: children had practised the song in their schools using the Sing Up online resources. Soul Bossanova and Can Can provided appropriately exuberant closing pieces. Presenter Rani Price was a big hit with the children. Her frequent sorties into the audience to talk to the children added immensely to the accessibility, excitement and impact.

Resources were provided to schools in advance of the concerts, enhanced, as mentioned above, by links to websites. In Norfolk, there were preparation sessions for teachers in some areas as well as some Marvellous Machines composition work-shops with BBC CO musicians.
Venues were chosen to maximise audience reach and provide convenient access for children from a wide area in the counties involved. In Stevenage and Grantham, the local Leisure Centre Halls were ideal for our needs with large open spaces in which we could accommodate large numbers of children as well as customise to our needs with our tour rig of lighting, projection, sound and staging equipment. In Norwich, the Exhibition Hall at the County Showground was our largest and most unusual venue with audience capacities of up to 2,000 per show in a setting more commonly used for housing agricultural exhibits and livestock! Sound and screen rigs minimised acoustic and sightline difficulties. 

For many children this was their first experience of hearing a live orchestra. For teachers, the concert underlined the potential of orchestral music in stimulating children’s musical imaginations and music-making and the content of the programmes offered invaluable support to the music curriculum. The legacy of our work is vital to its ongoing success. We were delighted to hear, for example, that the Norfolk Music Service has received increased demand for instrumental lessons from schools that came to our Making Tracks concerts in Norwich.  

Building on this success, our next series of concerts for schools in 2009 will focus on Key Stage 3 with a programme for 11- to 14-year-old children in Watford and Grantham. We are aiming for events with just as much impact that we hope will inspire and stay with pupils and teachers for many years to come.