{"id":6194,"date":"2020-10-24T09:59:33","date_gmt":"2020-10-24T08:59:33","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.larkreviews.co.uk\/?p=6194"},"modified":"2020-10-24T10:01:35","modified_gmt":"2020-10-24T09:01:35","slug":"oae-now-based-in-a-camden-school","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.larkreviews.wickedlemon.co.uk\/?p=6194","title":{"rendered":"OAE now based in a Camden school"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment (OAE) has a new home. It is now based\u00a0 at\u00a0\u00a0Acland Burghley comprehensive school\u00a0 (ABS) in Camden.\u00a0\u00a0Three offices will be adapted for the administration team, alongside a recording studio and library. The Grade II listed school assembly hall will be used as a rehearsal space, with plans to refurbish it under the school\u2019s\u00a0\u2018A Theatre for All\u2019<\/em>\u00a0project, so for\u00a0the first time, all elements of the OAE will be in the same place: players, staff and library.’<\/strong><\/p>\n

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It\u2019s been quite a journey since 1986 when a group of musicians decided to tear up the rule book and reinvent what we mean by \u201can orchestra\u201d by going back to basics. That means \u201cperiod instruments\u201d or replicas of them \u00a0and they were at the forefront of the original instruments movement which has gained so much momentum in the last 30 years. OAE players switch instruments according to the music they\u2019re playing. This might mean for example, one violin or flute for Bach or Vivaldi and a different one for Brahms or Bruckner and all the challenges of\u00a0 sheep gut strings and horns without valves. It\u2019s a case of using historical knowledge to make the music sound fresh, immediate and exciting.<\/p>\n

William Christie is OAE\u2019s current director although the idea of an omniscient conductor or \u201cmaestro\u201d is a concept which developed during the nineteenth century. OAE often plays without a conductor as a lot of their repertoire would have been performed in the eighteenth century and before.<\/p>\n

The\u00a0 new residency \u2013 a first for a British orchestra \u2013 will allow the OAE\u2019s musicians to live, work and play amongst the students of the school. The move is supported by a leadership grant of \u00a3120,000 from The Linbury Trust, one of\u00a0the Sainsbury Family Charitable Trusts. It\u00a0 facilitates the move to the school and underwrites the first three years of education work.<\/p>\n

Crispin Woodhead, OAE chief executive explains: \u201cOur accommodation at Kings Place was coming to an agreed end and we needed to find a new home. We already had a strong relationship with many schools in Camden through our education programme and our appeal hit the desk of Kat Miller, director of operations at Acland Burghley School. She was working on ways to expand the school\u2019s revenue from its resources and recognised that their excellent school hall might be somewhere we could rehearse.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u00a0Nicholas John, Acland Burghley\u2019s Headteacher confirms:\u00a0 \u201cThis partnership is much broader than simply music education.\u00a0 Its reach will be measurable in other areas including physics and mathematics, and supports our new school mission \u2018Creating Excellence Together\u2019.\u00a0<\/em>The orchestra will very much be a part of the everyday school community, where students will be offered workshops and assemblies.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u00a0The school won\u2019t just be OAE\u2019s landlord or physical home, however. The arrangement will offer the opportunity to build on twenty years of work in the borough through OAE\u2019s long-standing partnership with Camden Music.\u00a0 Having already worked in eighteen of the local primary schools that feed into ABS, the plan is to support music and arts across the school and in the wider community.\u00a0 This new move underpins the OAE\u2019s core \u2018enlightenment\u2019 mission of reaching as wide an audience as possible.<\/p>\n

A similar project was undertaken in 2015 in Bremen, Germany. The Deutsche Kammerphilharmonie moved into a local comprehensive school in a deprived area and the results were described as \u201ctransformational\u201d, with improved academic performance, language skills, mental health and IQ scores; reputational benefits; greater interest in and engagement with music among pupils; strengthened links between school, orchestra and community; and even, according to some of the musicians who took part, an improvement in the Kammerphilharmonie\u2019s playing.<\/p>\n

Violinist Margaret Faultless, who leads OAE,\u00a0said:\u00a0\u201cAs classical musicians, it can often feel as if we exist in a bubble. I think I can speak for the whole Orchestra when I say that we\u2019re all looking forward to this new adventure. We are all used to meeting with people from outside the classical music world of course, but the value of our new project lies in the long-term work we\u2019ll be doing at the school and the relationship that will hopefully develop between the students, their parents and teachers and the orchestra. The members of the Bremen Kammerphilharmonie said their experience actually improved them as an orchestra and I think the same will happen to us over the next five or so years, and it will remind all of us of the reasons we make music, which are sometimes easy to forget, especially in our strange and troubled times.\u201d<\/p>\n

SE<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment (OAE) has a new home. It is now based\u00a0 at\u00a0\u00a0Acland Burghley comprehensive school\u00a0 (ABS) in Camden.\u00a0\u00a0Three offices will be adapted for the administration team, alongside a recording studio and library. The Grade II … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10,7],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.larkreviews.wickedlemon.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6194"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.larkreviews.wickedlemon.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.larkreviews.wickedlemon.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.larkreviews.wickedlemon.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.larkreviews.wickedlemon.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=6194"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.larkreviews.wickedlemon.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6194\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6198,"href":"https:\/\/www.larkreviews.wickedlemon.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6194\/revisions\/6198"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.larkreviews.wickedlemon.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=6194"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.larkreviews.wickedlemon.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=6194"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.larkreviews.wickedlemon.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=6194"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}