Please help support our Music Treehouse project for SEN/D children!
Aviva’s Community Fund has given us the opportunity to fundraise to help ensure this vital life-line of creative music making can continue to help alleviate isolation and offer much needed support to children with a wide spectrum of needs through lockdown, across the summer and beyond.
Any help you can offer is much appreciated.
To commemorate the 75th Anniversary of VE Day, our I Can Sing! students have been rehearsing We’ll Meet Again, a show of music from several of our commissions commemorating different aspects of the Second World War.
We are delighted to announce that we have been shortlisted for the ‘Music & Drama Education Award for Excellence in Musical Theatre’, for our work on Trench Brothers.
More on the project can be found HERE on the website.
You will develop the following skills:
The four days will culminate with a relaxed performance for all friends and family.
The course will be at Mossbourne Academy, E5 8JY, and is specifically for sax, trumpet, trombone and rhythm section players (approx. grade 5+, no audition required) though places are limited (especially for rhythm section players), so book now to reserve a place and avoid disappointment.
The full four-day course costs £179.00
Payable when you accept the place.
Discounted fees £159.00 available for students who attend the Jazz Blues Course or the Julian Joseph Jazz Academy.
The Music Treehouse programme at HMDT Music’s Saturday Programme, offers younger disabled children access to high quality interactive music making, boosting social skills and confidence, and offering pathways to learning through songs and participatory musical activities. The relationship between singing and speech (in the context of people with special needs) is well researched, and we find there are linguistic breakthroughs among some of the children as they become more familiar and more confident with the songs. We focus on simple tasks, encouraging the young people to join in, and even lead activities, and there are no barriers in terms of ability. For us as a team of skilled musicians we keep musical standards high, even if words and melodies have to be easy enough to encourage participation. But the combination of keyboard, percussion, flute and guitar to accompany the songs, as well as the team’s skills in improvisation, mean that we can change soundworlds in an instant, and maintain focus throughout the sessions.
As the year has progressed we have seen huge changes in the attention levels of some individuals, as they grasp the fact that making music is both fun and empowering, and that they are free to take part at any level. We try to make every moment of a session joyful, and we introduce different elements to increase stimulation, including puppets and movement work. It’s really a whole body, whole mind, whole voice approach. Some children are non-verbal/vocal, but they often have acute understanding, and certainly can participate to the same level as vocal students, even if their participation is expressed in different ways. When percussion is introduced, every child can contribute equally, and the combination of sound and rhythm changes the dynamic of the room, often dramatically, with individuals often becoming confident enough to lead sections.
This year the overarching theme has been the animal world. We have made from scratch songs about hounds, birds, geese, moles, tigers and lions. Puppets help tell the stories of these creatures, and we always bring animals to life through movement work as well as sound. Often, we travel from one animal environment to another with the help of a bus song. And each session begins with a familiar hello song, as well as
songs to warm up the body, and get us in the mood to make music. The session ends with a bespoke goodbye song, which is calming and which sends the participants away on a quiet note. Our autistic children respond particularly well to these more calming activities.
Tim Yealland MBE
Music Treehouse Saplings Workshop Leader
Our first National Commemoration Days were launched in 4 schools to 1000 children. Students participated in art workshops, learning First World War songs, meeting an Indian Soldier costumed interpreter and exploring artefacts. The days culminated in moving commemoration services bringing together all the activities from the day including laying poppy wreaths and placing newly made medals onto barbed wire in remembrance alongside army drill and songs.
The team were amazing, helping the children explore each activity and the range of sessions gave each child an opportunity to play to their strengths. Everyone thoroughly enjoyed themselves
As always with HMDT Music, it was thoughtful and meaningful and gave us all a lot to think about
The WW1 workshop day was very interesting and the artefacts were really unique. It was a once in a life experience
I really enjoyed the singing workshop because the warm up and songs were fun and catchy
The best day in Year 5!
I was looking forward to it all week but it was even better than I thought it would be!
On the 28 October 2018 The I Can Sing! Music Theatre Programme Seniors and Richard Sumitro performed excerpts from Trench Brothers to a crowd of thousands (including the Mayor himself), at the Mayor’s Diwali Festival at Trafalgar Square.
Alongside the performance, The Royal British Legion showcased the Indian section of our Trench Brothers Exhibition at the Festival.
We were very honoured to be part of this great event – a fitting end to the Trench Brothers project.
This was a truly incredible and moving performance that serves as a fitting tribute to the soldiers whose stories are too often left out of the narrative of the war.
On the 17 October 2018 HMDT Music’s Trench Brothers was performed to great acclaim, at Brighton Dome to audiences of around 1,500 people. The finale of four year’s work around the country, it brought together songs written with schools in London, Lancashire and the South East in a unique collaboration of musical genres alongside the core music theatre work by composers Julian Joseph and Richard Taylor set to a libretto by our Creative Director Tertia Sefton-Green.
It was performed by children from 7 local schools, Seniors from our own I Can Sing! programme and top artists Cleveland Watkiss, Damian Thantrey and Richard Sumitro accompanied by students from our Julian Joseph Jazz Academy, our CYMH tutors and the Jasdeep Singh Degun Indian Sitar and Tabla duo.
Tertia Sefton-Green’s libretto masterfully engages its adult audience while ensuring that the content remains accessible and understandable to the young people taking part. Julian Joseph and Richard Taylor’s music help to elevate the performance into something wonderful to experience – each character’s culture is reflected in their music and it is a joy to hear different genres and influences being woven together to reinforce the narrative’s themes of camaraderie.
An affecting music theatre work……. ‘letters home’ …. have all the poignancy, humour, sadness, bitterness and gritty historical detail that you would expect.
HMDT Music have form for taking on projects with big themes.
Ahead of HMDT Music’s Trench Brothers premier on Wednesday 17th October at Brighton Dome, award-winning Kamila Shamsie has written this wonderful article about not only the history behind the project but also its relevance for today.
Read her article HERE.
