LSO Discovery

Conservatoire students take part in LSO's Centre for Orchestra

LSO Discovery is the London Symphony Orchestra’s pioneering music education and community programme. It aims to bring music to the widest possible audience by prioritising quality, innovation and access and to make the Orchestra and its music an easily-accessible resource to people of all ages, backgrounds and abilities. Now in its twentieth year, LSO Discovery works with infants, schoolchildren, students at university and music colleges, adults and those at the most vulnerable ends of society, reaching over 40,000 individuals each year in London and across the South East. The emphasis of our work is firmly on encouraging people to take part, and many of those we engage with will be experiencing live music for the very first time.

LSO Discovery’s home is LSO St Luke’s; a beautifully restored Grade 1 listed Hawksmoor Church which is a five minute stroll from the Orchestra’s Barbican home. This once dilapidated church has been converted into a state-of-the-art  and unique orchestral education centre that puts music education at the heart of the LSO’s work, and the LSO itself at the heart of the community with which it works. It was opened six years ago with a vision that education work could happen locally, but via technology could reach a national and international audience. Along with the talents of the LSO itself, it is the key resource for the delivery of our programme, which is broken into four key strands of activity: Education, Community, Young Talent and Digital.

Since its beginnings 20 years ago working with schools lies at the heart of LSO Discovery’s programme. Thousands of children from across London and the South East attend schools concerts each year. Sixteen sell-out performances for young people at Key Stages 1, 2, and 3 are promoted each year at the Barbican and an additional chamber series of concerts are presented at LSO St Luke’s in a much more intimate environment. All of the schools concerts are presented by our three accomplished LSO animateurs, Hannah Conway, Rachel Leach and Paul Rissmann, who help the young people get inside the music, achieve the appropriate learning objectives and above all feel inspired by the power of the live orchestral experience.

Our very local schools benefit from closer contact with LSO Discovery. The Instrumental Learning Programme, with five Islington schools, sees 50 young people learn the flute, trumpet or violin each year supplemented by creative workshops at LSO St Luke’s with LSO players each term. Future plans include deepening the relationship with these local schools by engaging them in a range of creative projects linked to both the schools concerts and the repertoire the Orchestra are performing on the Barbican stage.

Our relationship with the communities around LSO St Luke’s and beyond is key and this programme begins with the very young through the Early Years Outreach programme for children under five and their parents in local children’s centres, and for parents and their children together at LSO St Luke’s, where there are Family Open Days and specially designed concerts. Offering progression opportunities are important so as the children grow older they might attend our Family Concerts at the Barbican Centre or participate in one of our many youth activities.

The LSO St Luke’s Youth Choir offers unique experiences for 8- to 15-year-olds to perform in professional venues with world-class artists such as Ian Bostridge. For the young instrumentalists we have developed the Fusion Orchestra over the last three years, an innovative improvisation-based ‘urban orchestra’, encouraging young people to develop work through improvisation and create full programmes with LSO players and visiting artists. Most recently the group worked with Nitin Sawhney on pieces inspired by his own work and performed on the Barbican stage.

Teenagers can also drop into our after-school Digital Technology Club (DTG) and explore rap, dance, MC-ing and other urban music styles with the help of our musicians. The Youth Fusion programme now extends across East London with regular roadshows and taster sessions encouraging more people to get involved.

LSO St Luke’s is not solely for young people however. We realise these opportunities must be for everybody so there is a wide ranging adult-learning programme encompassing a Community Choir, who most recently performed with Hugh Masakela as part of his 70^th birthday celebrations at the Barbican, a highly skilled Community Gamelan Group who regularly commission new work involving LSO players, open rehearsals for local residents and free informal Friday lunchtime concerts featuring LSO players and students from the Guildhall School of Music.

On a more specialised level there has been intensive work with people with disabilities and in recent years we have run special initiatives for adults and children with special needs and learning difficulties, hearing and visual impairments and mental health problems. We also run an extensive programme each year of visits to children in London’s hospitals, using music to engage long-term patients both on the wards and in hospital classrooms. This is highly sensitive work and there is a dedicated group of LSO members who have the very particular skills to enable them to work in a very responsive and reactive manner.

Two recent developments which have had a major impact on the work of LSO Discovery involve increasing our commitment to and investment in the musicians of the future. Our Young Talent strand nurtures those who intend to enter the music profession as players, conductors or composers. Talented young musicians aged 14–24 can attend the annual LSO St Luke’s Academy, a week-long course of masterclasses and orchestral workshops led by LSO principals and focusing on a different orchestral section each year with the coming one in July focusing on String players. Conservatoire students from across the UK benefit from our Orchestral Experience schemes, offering unique opportunities to rehearse and, for string players, perform with the LSO. In fact we have recruited 14 string players to the LSO through this scheme alone and our new Principal Trumpet, Philip Cobb, who is just 23 years old, took part in the LSO Academy two years ago.

The Conducting Scheme gives a masterclass opportunity with either Sir Colin Davis or Valery Gergiev to three aspiring students each year whilst our two composition programmes, the Panufnik Young Composers scheme and the UBS sponsored Pioneers programme offer opportunities to young and emerging composers. Since 2004 a total of 40 young composers have been commissioned by the LSO to provide pieces for workshop sessions with the Orchestra or full performance on the Barbican stage. This commitment to new music and new talent is central to the ethos of LSO Discovery.

This year sees the first full programme of Centre for Orchestra, our new partnership with the Guildhall School and the Barbican Centre giving talented players of the future direct access to the Orchestra and visiting soloists. Activities include intensive orchestral coaching from LSO players plus performances at the Barbican; Guildhall School students shadowing LSO chamber performances and receiving valuable coaching and advice; a series of masterclasses from LSO Principals and the LSO’s family of soloists and conductors which this season includes Midori and Simon Trpceski as well as LSO Principals Bryn Lewis (harp) and Gareth Davis (flute); special access to LSO rehearsals concerts and the preparation of students for auditions and public performances. Guildhall students are also working alongside LSO animateurs and players on a range of education projects in order to increase their understanding of this growing area of employment.

Our commitment to young talent is most evident in our work across East and South East London through LSO On Track: The LSO has a vision for the Olympics and beyond which is to develop LSO St Luke's as a hub of musical inspiration by providing opportunities for over 5,000 young instrumental learners each year.

LSO On Track was launched in September 2008 and works in partnership with the Local Authority Music Services in the boroughs of Barking and Dagenham, Bexley, Greenwich, Hackney, Havering, Lewisham, Newham, Redbridge, Tower Hamlets and Waltham Forest. The activities include bespoke activities for each borough, a scheme for young people showing significant musical potential, a two-year training programme for classroom teachers and the opportunity to take part in large-scale inspirational performances alongside the LSO on world-class stages such as the Barbican Hall.

The vision is to provide the opportunity for children from East London to learn a musical instrument, to capture the imagination of young children from diverse cultural backgrounds and inspire them through this programme, to continue learning with a view to playing a part in the Olympic cultural programme and beyond. This education programme forms part of wider plans by the LSO in 2012, which will link our work not only across East London but internationally.

The last 12 months have seen a significant increase in international education projects as the quality of our work is acknowledged around the world. This has included projects in cities as diverse as Dijon, Dublin, Grafenegg and New York. This June we return to our second year of collaboration at Salle Pleyel, Paris, working with over 100 young string players whilst the new four-year residency at Aix-en-Provence Festival from July will include a whole series of LSO Discovery projects ranging from creative work with young people, concerts for the under fives, visits to hospitals and care homes and the coaching of a newly established Festival Youth Orchestra. Plans are also developing well to work with young musicians in Beijing and Shanghai as part of a tour in the autumn.

Underpinning all of this activity is LSO Discovery’s ambitious Digital Programme which is not so much a strand in its own right as an opportunity that pervades every area of our work. Hard-to-reach youths can use our technology to sample LSO Live recordings and film music for use in their urban music tracks; students in the USA can use video-conferencing to take part in seminars with figures such as Boulez, Gergiev and Adams, whilst teachers can link up with colleagues across the country to talk about best practice in music delivery in the classroom. In the Jerwood Hall, the main space at LSO St Luke’s, sophisticated audio-visual facilities allow for performances and workshops to be tailored to the needs of the participants: plasma screens allow audiences to see a conductor’s face during a masterclass or open rehearsal; retractable dampeners alter the acoustic of the hall in minutes and state-of-the-art cameras and microphones allow events to be recorded for participants.

One recent example of this work was the LSO being the lead partner in the much publicised YouTube Symphony Orchestra which engaged with over 10 million people across the world. This new technology is enabling us to take LSO Discovery projects to a regional, national and truly international audience, broadening the reach of our work as far as we can.

To find out more visit lso.co.uk/getinvolved

Philip Flood
Head of LSO Discovery