It’s the start of the new year here at Everyone Matters and we’ve certainly started as we mean to go on!

Music Matters

Our lecture-recital series started this month. It was such an amazing way to start the season as we had Margaret giving us such an interesting evening with her Clutter of Clarinets starting with a surprise on her bass clarinet playing the opening to the Sugar Plum Fairy-hardly ever noticed with the familiar tune on top. Moving on to her basset home we heard music from Mozart and Mendelssohn who both liked the basset horn then on to the A and Bb clarinets where Margaret showed her dexterity swapping between the two and managing not to lose her reed! The C clarinet has a real lightness and its surprising its not more widely used in orchestras as it blends so well with flutes and oboes. On to the D clarinet which showed where the name clarinet comes from-little trumpet then a contrast with Margaret’s weapon of war-otherwise known as the Eb clarinet though giving an eerie quality to Ravel’s Bolero. Finally the high Ab clarinet-a tiny simple clarinet used in film scores and in the military. A wonderfully intimate and informative start to the season.

We have a lot of great lecture-recitals coming up, with such a variety of topics. Tickets are £12, or you can buy a season ticket for £57, which is great value. They are held at The Chapel at Whitgift House in Croydon at 7 for 7.30. Please see the attached document for more details about the speakers and the venue.

• 

• 

Clarinets in the Community

Every year, Margaret and David Campbell run the David Campbell Clarinet Weekend at Benslow music. This has been going on for several decades, and normally ends in a final performance at Benslow of the different groups that have been practising. However, this year to celebrate Benslow’s 90th anniversary, the final performance was taken to the Leonard Cheshire home in Hitchin.

33 performers went in total, and it was a superb concert. They have a large activities hall which meant there was plenty of space for wheelchairs and a tea table, meaning many of the residents could attend the concert. 

The feedback has been brilliant and Benslow wrote a lovely piece about the weekend on their website; https://www.benslowmusic.org/index.asp?PageID=2725

• 

• 

• 

• 

A September Music Cocktail

One of our big events this month was our cocktail evening at Langley Park School for Boys. Margaret has been doing this for many years now, and it was as successful as ever.

The event was tied across two days, with several concerts given in care homes during the day, leading to the grand performance on Tuesday Evening. We are very proud of the Langley Boys as they were all very polite and engaged with the residents, with one comment sating ‘the boys were smartly presented and so smart.’

Margaret also decided to link a care home seminar to the performance, to give Margaret and care home activities organisers a chance to discuss what they all want from the concerts Margaret gives. It was a lovely evening, and enjoyed by all that attended.

Thank you to the Good Luck Charitable Trust for helping us with the funding for these projects.

• 

• 

• 

• 

Conversation Pieces

Margaret has different layouts of the concerts she gives care homes. One of the popular styles is her Musical Menu. On the 11th and 12th of this month, Margaret and Jonathan Duke on the piano headed out to several care homes with their musical menu.

We got lots of positive feedback from the concerts performed in the care homes, with all saying they would love to have more concerts from us in the future. We were also thanked for giving such a ‘beautiful concert!’

Arts in Care Homes

The BBC holds a Music Day every year and this year it was on the 26th September. We were very excited to be a part of it this year, and part of its Music and Dementia Initiative. The care homes and day centres we visit often look after people with dementia so it’s exciting to be part of something bigger that help provides music to those suffering from dementia as we know first hand how powerful music can be.

For this project we worked with Langley Park School for Girls and Langley Park School for Boys. After an afternoon of rehearsing on the Monday, the girls and two professionals, along with Margaret, performed two concerts on Tuesday. They were given at Glebe Court Nursing Home and Bertha James Day Centre. Bertha James Day Centre is always a pleasure to work with, and it’s clear they enjoy having us come to perform for them, as they are already getting a request in for a Christmas concert! 

Following these two concerts, the professionals headed off to Baycroft where they met the Langley Boys musicians. They then gave a concert here, followed by a tea and chat. Baycroft are also keen to have us back, which is the biggest complement they can give us!

It was an honour to be part of this initiative, and are proud to be supporting it! Thank you also, to John Morris’ family, as these concerts were given in memory of him, and all that he did.

Alice Britton
Alice Britton is a former pupil of Margaret’s and has worked with Everyone Matters as a young musician for a few years, helping organise and give concerts with other young musicians in special needs schools and care homes. After learning about all the amazing work Margaret and Everyone Matters does, she wanted to help spread the word and so is now the Social Media Manager for the charity, running the Twitter and Facebook pages, and doing the monthly blog.

It’s been a great month to finish the school year, with three big projects.

Bromley Reform Synagogue concert and percussion side-by-side project
We started off the month with a group of young musicians giving a family concert at the Bromley Reform Synagogue. The musicians, mostly university students that had worked with Margaret on  projects in previous years, rehearsed the varied programme during the morning. After tea and cake with the audience, they gave an informal concert. In between the pieces, Margaret introduced all the young musicians and their instruments, making sure to highlight anyone that switched instruments or performed solos. The audience was also included in several pieces; they clicked, jingled bells and sang Drunken Sailor, adding Margaret’s carefully choreographed actions! I think both the audience and musicians enjoyed themselves!

  

Linked to this concert was a day of workshops for the Year 6s at St Nicholas School in Purley. This is a Special School for primary school children. We began the day by performing the pieces then we got the children involved. Margaret had devised a schedule that meant that all the children got a turn playing percussion in various pieces. The improvement the children showed was incredible. They started the day off hitting the instruments with very little musicality, but by the final performance to the rest of the school, they were playing their assigned instruments in time and with great confidence. I hope the children enjoyed their day of music, and it gave them an escape from their daily routine.

We hope we can return to St Nicholas School again as these projects seem to work really well. All the young musicians seem to love working with Margaret and are keen to sign up for these projects. Thank you also to Sarah Hatch and Elaine So – your work with the children on the percussion is invaluable and you really help the students become part of the music! Thank you also to Clare Britton, one of our new trustees, who helped not only behind the scenes in the admin tasks for these projects but also with the children!

Conversation pieces; Words and music uniting the generations
Everyone Matters was left a monetary contribution in memory of John Morris. John was a great music lover who supported the London Mozart Players and Everyone Matters. With this money, and in memory of John, two days of Margaret’s ‘Conversation Pieces’ project was organised in association with Hayes School.

A group of students had a morning of rehearsals and then visited St Mark’s Church Lunch Club, Park Avenue Care Home, Bertha James Day Centre and Prince George (Masonic) Duke of Kent Home to give concerts.

Even though we always think our concerts have gone well, and the students tell us they enjoyed themselves, it’s always so pleasing to hear that the residents have enjoyed it too.

We got some very nice comments from the residents at Prince George (Masonic) Duke of Kent Home. Most of the residents there have dementia, and the home manager said that it was lovely to see most of the audience not only awake, but also interacting! One resident even came in from gardening to hear the “wonderful” music!

The Lifestyle Coordinator of Park Avenue Care Home also told us that the residents had a wonderful time.

Getting feedback like that is so uplifting because it reminds you how powerful music is. These projects are also so good for the students involved as it gives them opportunities to perform, and with very little rehearsal time, and practices their social skills because we always finish our concerts with a chat with the residents. This gives the students a chance to mingle with people they wouldn’t normally chat to, and the audience to interact with the performers and find out more about who they are.

We hope John would like how we are remembering him.

Rutherford School Summer Club
Every year Margaret goes to Rutherford School to provide a day of workshops to the children that attend the Summer Club. Margaret always devises a new project based their theme for the year. It is a lot of work but it always goes down well with the staff and children enjoying themselves.

The children play the percussion with the help of the staff whilst Margaret plays the clarinet or piano, and Katie Clemmow a music therapist, plays the oboe, cor anglais or piano.

In one piece, the children very successfully added jungle animals and a rainstorm sequence with an assortment of percussion instruments. In another piece they tried to get the children to add harmony using combi-bells, which wasn’t totally successful to begin with. However, with some quick thinking, Margaret worked out a way to indicate which students should play when, and then it all came together very nicely!

Even though there were fewer student this year due to the hot weather, everyone enjoyed themselves, and we hope to keep returning to Rutherford School.

We’d also like to thank Katie for all her hard work in helping to organise this project!

We have a well deserved rest in store for August, until the end of the month. There is then lots in store for September!

 

Alice Britton
Alice Britton is a former pupil of Margaret’s and has worked with Everyone Matters as a young musician for a few years, helping organise and give concerts with other young musicians in special needs schools and care homes. After learning about all the amazing work Margaret and Everyone Matters does, she wanted to help spread the word and so is now the Social Media Manager for the charity, running the Twitter and Facebook pages, and doing the monthly blog.

Although May was a quieter month on the project front, our artistic director Margaret Archibald has been very busy behind the scenes.

A big part of what’s been going on has been lots of meetings with various people. One exciting one was with Philip Emery about a possible pilot project in prisons. Despite the difficulties there’ll undoubtedly be in getting this project off the ground, it could be very exciting and rewarding. Hopefully we’ll manage to organise it and get the funding to carry this out as I definitely think it could be a great thing to do.

As many of you will know, Everyone Matters does a lot of concerts with care homes. We are trying to set up a seminar Q&A session with the activities organisers and managers of many care homes and day centres in September. We’ll be able to hear what the care homes and day centres want from us and they can hear what we need from them, and discuss ways that we can improve our concerts. This will then be followed by a cocktail party and music at Langley, that everyone will be invited to. More information will come out closer to time so keep an eye out for that!

For many years, Margaret has been doing a project with the boys at Langley Boys School in September, and it seems to have become an annual fixture which is great news for us! The initial conversations for this year’s have now started and it’s nice to know they enjoy our projects that they can’t wait to have us back!

In preparation for this partnership with Langley Boys School and a couple of projects with young musicians in July, Margaret has ordered a lot more music so we can expand our repertoire. I know some ABBA music has been purchased and I hope they are part of the line up in the July concerts as I am one of the musicans!

This month, we have our Midsummer Music. This will be a musical evening at Ripley Arts Centre. The Lakeside Quartet are playing, and they performed at our final Music Matters last term and were incredible so I’m excited that they’re back again so we can see more of what they can do. Margaret will of course be playing, this time along with Maya Magub on the violin and Jonathan Duke on the piano. There will also be refreshments which, fingers crossed, will be able to be enjoyed in the beautiful garden. This is always a very popular evening – so much so that we’ve had to move to Ripley, instead of Margaret’s house, in order to accommodate everyone coming – so it would be great to see as many people there as possible! Please R.V.S.P. to Margaret if you would like to come.

This event is free, but if you would like to make a donation to Everyone Matters, it would be greatly appreciated. We are always needing money to help make our projects a reality. If you would like to help contribute to our work, please send a cheque made payable to:

Everyone Matters c/o Margaret Archibald, 21, Stone Road, Bromley, Kent, BR2 9AX.

Alternatively, you can make a direct bank transfer. Please phone, text or email Margaret for details – tel: 020 8464 1645; text: 07970 123105; email: margaret@everyone-matters.co.uk.

Any donations would be put to such good use and help give music to those who often need it most but can’t easily access it.

 

Make sure to follow our Twitter, @EMCharity, and Facebook, Everyone Matters, to keep up to date with all that we’re doing.

 

Alice Britton
Alice Britton is a former pupil of Margaret’s and has worked with Everyone Matters as a young musician for a few years, helping organise and give concerts with other young musicians in special needs schools and care homes. After learning about all the amazing work Margaret and Everyone Matters does, she wanted to help spread the word and so is now the Social Media Manager for the charity, running the Twitter and Facebook pages, and doing the monthly blog.

We’ve now had two of our lecture-recitals in our Music Matters series. These are lovely evenings, where we are given an informal lecture about a specific area of music from an expert on that topic. Music, both recordings and live, is also always incorporated into the talk, which makes it so much more of an experience rather than just a talk.

David Juritz gave the first lecture, in which we were brought the music of the tango from South America. Not only did we learn about some of the techniques used in the dance and its musical accompaniment, especially those used on the violin and bandoneon, but we also had extracts played for us, both recordings of music from some of the most of prominent artists and composers of the tango, such as Astor Piazolla, and live performances by David Juritz himself. It was a very immersive and educational audio visual experience, and has definitely inspired me to listen to more tango, as I didn’t know much about it beforehand!

 Our second, with Paul Barritt, was very intriguing, exploring the use of birds and their calls in classical music. Despite the high prevalence of birds in music from cuckoos and nightingales to quails and blackbirds, many of us don’t realise they’re there. So now we know they are, and what to listen out for, we’ll be hearing the birds in all the music we listen to! This lecture-recital was a follow on concert, after a trip to the Surbiton Club for the Blind. The concert there went down a treat as well. We provided them with entertainment they don’t normally get, but as one resident said, it was ‘very illuminating and enjoyable’ which I think is a rather nice complement!

We have also had our ‘Beethoven and Beyond’ concerts, in which we played some great  repertoire, including Beethoven’s Trio Op. 11 and Saint-Saëns’ The Swan, in care homes in Bromley, Croydon and Kingston, with John Flinders on the piano, and Julia Desbruslais on the ‘cello. It’s great to perform music to such a receptive audience that really appreciate the music, and can’t easily access it themselves. One comment from one of the audience members was particularly lovely: ‘Thank you for such a wonderful afternoon. For many of us, the music touched different parts within us. Thank you for making it happen for us and for your kindness and thoughtfulness.’ This is why we do what we do here at Everyone Matters – music touches these people in a way words and other actions can’t. 

The coming month looks just as exciting. We are starting the month celebrating Margaret Archibald’s 70th birthday. In honour of this occasion, we are holding a gala for Music Matters, where Margaret herself, Nicoline Kraamwinkel, Martin Smith, Mickey Posner and Julia Desbruslais will perform Weber’s Clarinet Quintet. They are also performing at Whitgift House in the morning, having a chat to all the residents afterwards as well.

 

Alice Britton