Emily
Music Quest Participants, The Prince’s Foundation for Children & the Arts, Education
Hello, we are Emily Woodthorpe, Jemma Hurford and Robert Willgoose - three of the Pen y Bryn children who took part in the Music Quest project. It was a wonderful and amazing experience because lots of us had never heard a live classical music concert before.
First we met one of the orchestra players who came into school and showed us their instrument – the French horn. We had a go at playing it. We had to blow hard and it was more difficult than it looked! Then we saw the orchestra play at Venue Cymru. Jemma liked the Music from Carmen best. It was really loud with lots of dynamics. We joined in with another piece too – clapping and chanting. It was fun!
Back at school we listened to other examples of classical music. We listened to a part of 'Pertushka' by Stravinsky. It was about a fairground. It was funny and not like ballet music at all! Then we made up our own version of different parts of a carnival. I was in the Juggler part playing the flute. Robert was in the Marching Band and Jemma was a Carnival Goer. Some of the other groups were the Carnival Goers, the Street dancers and the Ice Cream Van.
We all enjoyed playing it together and experimenting to see which parts of the carnival sounded good together. We recorded our favourite groups and we thought our Pen y Bryn Carnival sounded great. We entered the competition and were all very pleased and proud when we were told that the judges liked our composition too !
Thank you for giving us this once in a lifetime opportunity to go to London to hear our composition being played at the Royal Albert Hall. Fantastic!
