In March 2020, LSO Discovery, the Orchestra's learning and participation programme, found themselves facing a new challenge: how to bring people together to create music during lockdown. Head of Discovery, Andra East, tells us how they rose to the challenge, and shares some highlights from an extraordinary summer.
Every month, adults with learning disabilities, their supporters and carers come together as LSO Create 'Monday Club'. United by a love of music, they are joined by LSO players for sessions which see them become composers, improvisers, performers and audience members. However, that all changed in March.
Pre-lockdown, the idea of scheduling an online meeting for 45 toddlers might have seemed questionable (to say the least)… But when it became clear in March that LSO Discovery would have to cut short their series of Shake, Rattle and Roll music sessions at LSO St Luke's, there was only one thing for it: jump feet first into the madness and find a way to bring the music sessions for under 5s into people's homes!
It’s ridiculous o’clock but I’m still buzzing in a way I haven’t for months. I’m on a post-concert high, the feeling of a drug pulsing in my blood that my body had long forgotten about.
One of the surreal aspects of having been in lockdown was practising the violin with zero thought of any audience for the foreseeable future. I’ve never spent this amount of time with my violin without anyone actually getting to hear the fruits of my labour, be it for a lesson, chamber music or orchestral concerts.
