Bringing together different abilities...



Contributor: Caro Leitzell
School: Sparsholt Primary school

Year: 5 - 6

Piece: In the Hall of the Mountain King, Grieg
 

Media: Photo of the band playing 



Quotes from pupils:

"This is our favourite piece we have played in Oak Band – it’s fantastic!"

"We are really excited to perform this in our Spring Concert!"

 

 

Background

We have a class band which meets weekly and performs in our Christmas concert, Spring concert and Summer Production each year. We usually take a piece of music related to the theme in class (eg. we played the Good, the Bad and the Ugly when they studied Arizona earlier this year).

 

Why this piece?

We decided to try The Hall of the Mountain King from the BBC Ten Pieces as it inspired the most  lively feedback when the pupils listened to several of those on offer! They recognised it from adverts on TV (currently the Alton Towers ad).

 

Bringing different abilities together!

We have adapted the parts given by the BBC site to suit our players’ levels (those provided were a really good starting point). The result was that we had 14 pupils playing without a backing track and really producing a great sound!  They were all so excited and it was a very all-encompassing experience (we have some pupils at grade 4 standard and others who know 5 notes). The outcome was to perform in our Spring concert just before Easter and we have sent it to the BBC (!)– the band really had the sense of working hard to achieve a result and were rightly proud of their achievements.

It would be lovely to hear more from music professionals, get in contact or visit our homepage to download the blog form (right hand column)!