It’s only 7.30am when we – the artist team – arrive to our first school on Friday morning, but there is already an air of excitement sweeping the corridors. In the school hall is the biggest collection of cardboard boxes, tubes and paper recycling. John Wallis Primary have been on a mission in the last few days! Collectively they have gathered a mountain of resources for this important day – the day to build the Cardboard Orchestra.
Now I must admit that myself and Animate Arts have built a Cardboard Orchestra before. Last time it was the most glorious experience, full of making, creativity and brilliant performances that were recorded on film.
But this project commissioned by Revelation Ashford has offered an opportunity to take the project to another level. This time we perform LIVE! And on a STAGE! To the PUBLIC! It’s a little intimidating but super exciting at the same time… and we are up for the challenge!
We’ve chosen to perform Elgar’s Enigma Variations which is the most brilliant piece of classical music for children to explore. It’s made up of short pieces, each one dedicated to people he loved and valued in his life. In some ways you could describe them as musical portraits. To help us to explore and understand how music can describe people, feelings and characteristics, we brought in a team of musicians from Rose Bruford College to our workshop. With a gorgeous cello, acoustic guitar, a special drum (that looked remarkably like a cardboard box) and some percussion symbols, music was played live to the pupils. They got to hear live sounds from real instruments, and enjoyed testing the musicians to play improvised music inspired by characters and mood. What would a happy pupil sound like? A tired teacher? A busy artist? A dancing princess? An angry shopkeeper? Even a man being chased by a crocodile? The musicians were put through their paces, but it was such a valuable experience for the children to understand the power of sound and expression.
Inspired by musicianship, the pupils set to work to create their own orchestra. With a little guidance and a bunch of resources for cardboard sculpting, the pupils each made an instrument for their 24-piece orchestra. From harps to trumpets to piccolos to timpanis, John Wallis pupils worked hard to create their ensemble. Luckily we were accompaniment with a live soundtrack by the musicians to spur on our building, keeping up a good pace to complete before home time. In fact we worked so hard that we did finish shortly after lunch. We even had time to get ourselves (and the instruments) into an orchestra lay-out and have our 1st run through.
John Wallis is now on task to rehearse and rehearse between now and the performance day on 12 June! In the meantime, the artists and musicians are off to work with a further two primary schools in Ashford – Kingsnorth Primary and Beaver Green Primary, to make another two Cardboard Orchestras. The three school orchestras will all come together to present Elgar’s Enigma Variations to the public, in a way that the piece has (probably) never been performed before!