GCSE Musicians Watch Inspiring Performance

GCSE Musicians travelled to Stevenage Music Centre to watch a fantastic concert, led by conductor Patrick Bailey.

On Monday 27th March, our Years 10 and 11 Music GCSE Students travelled to Stevenage Music Centre to watch a fantastic concert, conducted and led by Patrick Bailey. Patrick Bailey is a conductor, composer, arranger and presenter who conducts concerts with the Philharmonia Orchestra, Royal Philharmonic Orchestra, London Sinfonietta and many others. He has given concerts across Europe and in Dubai, India, Oman, China and the USA. As a composer, workshop leader and presenter, Patrick has led projects and written and presented concerts for BBC orchestras, BBC Proms, London Philharmonic Orchestra, Philharmonia Orchestra, London Sinfonietta, Royal Opera House, Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra and Music for Youth. He led an inspiring and informative session for us, which presented pieces from different musical periods, some minimalism as well as music composed for television. The pieces were performed by a small orchestra of professional musicians. As well as the works just being performed, Patrick also explained the context of the pieces, and analysed them, illustrating his points with some cues being played by the musicians. The language he used to do this recapped some really key vocabulary which is vital for our students in their listening and appraising exam. The afternoon concluded with Patrick leading a composition session in which he practically illustrated an approach to composing a whole piece for GCSE using just two 4-bar fragments of music. This was a very useful learning experience for our students in order to help them with the composition element of the course. Some of our students commented that this was the first time they had seen a real orchestra play live, making it a really memorable experience. This was a fantastic event organised by Hertfordshire Music Service and we were very pleased to be able to take part.