Education ViVA
REMIX
Tuesday 3rd February 2004
Phoenix Theatre, Leicester
Music has been remodelled, reworked and remixed throughout history. Great composers such as Beethoven, Bach, Haydn and Vivaldi quite consciously used the motifs and ideas of other composers to stimulate their own creativity. In the popular music of our own time, sampling and remixing techniques are utilised in many 'hit' records - often provoking copyright cases in the courts!
For 5 days during February, Icelandic composer and workshop leader Sigrun Saevarsdottir and ViVA musicians Tim Holmes and Aidy Spillett worked with students from two Leicester schools and created a new work that fused Western Classical music and Asian music with contemporary styles such as rap and hip-hop. The resulting piece was premiered during a ViVA concert at the Phoenix Arts Centre on Tuesday 3rd February 2004.
"I felt this was the most fluid of the projects we have done with ViVA. Sigrun conjured something magical out of really simple materials. This has given me the confidence to go for fluidity and simple materials myself." - Teacher
The resulting piece was premiered during a ViVA concert at the Phoenix Arts Centre on Tuesday 3rd February 2004.
"It was a big experience. It was my first time being on show." - Participant
The workshops were hosted by Ash Field School - a school that caters specifically for children from 3-19 with physical and educational special needs and over 15 mainstream students from Crown Hills Community School. The workshops gave all students the opportunity to work together exploring a great range of musical genres and ideas.
"I improved playing in time with other people." - Participant
Classical Asian music was worked together with classical western music and ideas from the students' current popular tastes such as trance, garage and hip-hop were fused and re-mixed to create a brand new piece of music.
"It is great to see that, for example, someone with physical difficulties that enable them to do little more than bang a drum, are so obviously getting an enormous thrill and sense of achievement from being part of, and making a real contribution to, something which, as a whole sounds great, and is an original piece, the creation of which they have been involved in." - Musician
The new work was really well received during ViVA's Remix Concert. The concert also featured ViVA performing a mixture of contemporary classical music; from Martland's 'high-tech' baroque work Remix to Torke's reworking of the Telephone Book. Whether the audience was into classical, jazz, funk or rock - there was something for everyone!
"I enjoyed working with the ViVA orchestra." - Participant
Images from the project...
