You can now watch the Christmas Concert video at HayesCreates
A huge well done to all students involved today – for the months of rehearsal, for your brilliant performances, but also for your amazing attitude towards getting kit out, lugging stuff around, tidying it away afterwards, and sorting the tech – you are awesome!
We very much hope to be able to perform to live audiences again in 2022. In the meantime, here is our video from today. The sound quality is pretty naff – the sound on our backup iPad recordings was actually much better, but we haven’t had time to edit them all together in the best way. So it’s all a bit rough and ready, but it gives you some idea of how fabulous our lovely students have been today.
Thank you all. Have a great Christmas, and we’ll see you in 2022!
We have only had three weeks of rehearsal this term… and even then with hugely reduced numbers of students. We miss all our concerts and rehearsals so much! Still, we are proud that we have been able to put a few things together for this virtual Christmas concert… and we look forward to 2021 being a lot MORE full of music!
Some fun ideas for Christmas music-making – or a future MusicFest item, maybe?
Stay musical over the holidays! You’ll find some Christmas carol karaoke here and awesome singing blobs here (yes, really!)
There’s loads of great music being streamed over the holidays… check out this guide. Also check out loads of things to listen to and music facts here
Listen to what the BYMT ensembles have been working on this term here
Have a great, music-filled Christmas, and we look forward to making LOTS OF NOISE at some point next year!
What a weird year this has been… but for the first time since March, we will be able to start a very limited programme of extra-curricular activities next week. We are restricted to keeping activities within bubbles, and lunchtime is too short to use for rehearsing these days, so we can only offer music activities for Years 7, 8 and 9. Here is what’s on offer:
Wednesday after school: Year 7 choir and Year 7 band
Thursday after school: Year 9 Jamsesh (all instruments/voices)
Friday after school: Year 8 Jamsesh (all instruments/voices)
We can only accommodate a small number of students at a time because of the limits on how many people can sing/play wind instruments in a room, and if you have expressed an interest in joining, we have emailed a number of you to invite you (check your emails!). Further places may become available in due course.
Although this is a very small beginning, we are really looking forward to doing some music, and recording some things to put into a Virtual Christmas Concert.
BYMT Musical Theatre workshop
TUESDAY 1st DECEMBER BYMT will be welcoming CARLY THOMS (West End’s Current Miss Honey) for an exclusive online MATILDA Workshop. Looking at the acting & dancing skills required for MATILDA, Carly will coach you through some of the scenes from the hit West End show & teach you some of the choreography. There are 3 workshops 5.30-6.30pm (Ages 8-11) / 6.45-7.45pm (ages 12-15) / 8.00-9.00pm (ages 16-21). Cost is £8 per student. Spaces are limited – don’t miss out! For more information & to book, please visit www.tinyurl.com/bymtmatilda
The concept is simple: On the website there are parts for all instruments, you video yourself playing the part that suits you most, send it in and then they’ll collate all of the videos to make a Virtual Orchestra and Jess will play along too. All audio parts will be used in the final video, however it may not be possible to include all video appearances.
The Christmas piece will be Sleigh Ride by Leroy Anderson. Written in 1948 by Leroy Anderson and recorded by The Ronnettes, Ella Fitzgerald and Bing Crosby, this piece is a firm Christmas favourite and will be great fun for us all to play together. You can download musical parts and choice of click tracks from www.jessgillamsax.co.uk
Thank you to everyone who contributed to the Virtual Summer Concert, and proved that Hayes just can’t stop being musical! 🙂
Well it’s all been very strange, hasn’t it! We are looking forward to seeing everyone in September. We are hoping to have some extra-curricular music up and running, as we know how much everyone has missed it, but it will have to take a slightly different format from normal. We’ll let you know the details when term starts (things might change in the meantime, so we don’t want to make any firm plans just yet).
WE WILL BE MAKING MUSIC NEXT TERM one way or another!
We will get back to having concerts as soon as we are allowed to. If that isn’t for a while, we will do more virtual/video events. If you have any brilliant ideas, please let us know about them!
In the meantime, have a great summer and stay musical!
Chichester Psalms was written in 1965 by Leonard Bernstein, who also wrote West Side Story (see our previous post on Mambo). You can hear the same infectious rhythms in this piece once the fast section starts around 0:42. It’s quite difficult to sing as the harmonies are difficult and the choir parts have a very wide range.
Leonard Bernstein (1918-1990) was a colourful character who led an extremely interesting life as a composer, conductor, pianist, author, and lecturer. Here is a great pic of him (we don’t condone smoking, but it’s great to see a ‘serious’ musician playing a kazoo!):
17-year-old Sheku Kanneh-Mason won the BBC Young Musician competition in 2016, and has gone on to have a stellar career, playing at the Proms, the Royal Variety Performance, and Prince Harry and Meghan’s wedding. Here he is playing one of the core pieces of the cello repertoire, the Prelude from J.S.Bach’s Solo Cello Suite No.1. This was composed between 1717 and 1723, making it a Baroque piece:
It is quite complicated to play! However, it is a great example of how you can make a complex pattern out of simple chords. This is the opening:
Eminem was the first hip hop artist to win an Oscar for Best Original Song, with this song in 2002. It is from the movie 8 Mile, in which Eminem plays a fictionalised version of himself, showing how he overcame various barriers before finally gaining the respect of the hip hop community.
In this piece, Christoph Sietzen plays a marimba (wooden keys) and a vibraphone (metal keys). As is common when playing these instruments, he uses four beaters: part of the skill is being able to control the distance between the two beaters in each hand, as well as the amazing hand-eye co-ordination required to play music this fast.
Here is another piece for marimbas, where the performers play drums as well:
Flamenco is specific to southern Spain and the region of Andalucia. It has a range of influences which include Romani and northern African.
The music is very complex and uses its own system of rhythms (compás) and scales. This is the ‘Flamenco mode’ which is an altered version of the Phrygian mode:
The music always features a guitar and may also have singing and very complicated clapping patterns. Of course, it’s not just a musical style: the dance is absolutely essential too!
This is our second klezmer piece: the first was back on 4th April. Klezmer is is a Jewish style originating in Eastern Europe. As well as having its roots in Jewish folk music, there are elements of Romani music (because Jews and Roma lived in the same communities in Eastern Europe), and jazz.
In this piece you’ll notice the exuberant clarinet playing, that is a real feature of klezmer, and the accordion with buttons on both sides (it’s similar to a bandoneón, but this isn’t one of those – notice it’s a different shape). The big woodwind instrument on the stand is a bass clarinet.
Shalom aleichem is a Hebrew title meaning ‘peace be upon you’, which is a common greeting among the Ashkenazi Jews of central Europe.
Hayes Music blog 