The National Youth Orchestra will perform for thousands of school students at free concerts in Blackpool and Bolton, featuring music from Andrew Lloyd Webber’s Phantom of the Opera. To mark the musical’s 40th anniversary, Andrew Lloyd Webber has created a special version of the score exclusively for these performances.
NYO is partnering with Lancashire Music Service and Blackpool Music Service to provide these free school concerts to 4,000 students from primary and secondary schools. The orchestra will perform across two concerts on 23 February at the famous Blackpool Tower Ballroom and Kearsley Academy in Bolton on 24 February.
Music has not been a core part of the curriculum at Kearsley Academy in recent years. Bringing music into state schools without musical opportunities is central to NYO’s mission to share the power of orchestral music with every teenager across the UK.
The school concerts will also feature music by Leonard Bernstein, Stevie Wonder and Rimsky-Korsakov and classical music that may be familiar to young people from film, TV and popular culture, including music from Pirates of the Caribbean.
As Classic FM’s Orchestra of Teenagers, The National Youth Orchestra will partner with Classic FM to broadcast music from the concerts on the radio in March, and share exclusive videos of the performances across social media.
The school concerts follow a week-long series of free music-making residential activities for musicians from across the country. The residential activities have been hosted in Blackpool for musicians from NYO Inspire, providing opportunities for teenage musicians from state schools, where there is a widespread lack of opportunity to progress in music.
Andrew Lloyd Webber is a passionate advocate for music in schools and increasing opportunities in the arts for young people. Andrew Lloyd Webber Foundation provides 30 performing arts scholarships every year for talented students with financial need and supports a range of projects such as the Music In Secondary Schools Trust (MiSST), which provides all children in participating schools with free musical tuition and instruments as part of Andrew Lloyd Webber Foundation Programme.
Since 2011, Andrew Lloyd Webber Foundation has awarded £25.7m to projects that focus on the enhancement of arts education and participation, improving access and increasing diversity across the arts, culture and heritage sector.
Composer, Andrew Lloyd Webber, speaking in the past of his passion for opportunities in the arts for young people:
“Music and the arts can empower and liberate, which is why it’s so important to encourage participation and nurture talent. If you empower children and young people through the arts, the return on investment is huge. I don’t think there’s ever been a time when the arts have been more important. I really, passionately, believe that.”
Sarah Alexander OBE, CEO & Creative Director, said: “The orchestra will turn an ordinary day at school into an extraordinary one for the thousands of young people in attendance in Blackpool and Bolton. They’ll bring an unbounded energy to this exciting new version of Phantom of the Opera, created especially for them to share with other teenagers.”
Kaya, NYO Musician, flute, said: “My favourite thing about orchestral music is its sheer force. There will be many people in the audience who have never seen an orchestra before, so I’m quite excited to see people experience the power for the first time. I’m particularly looking forward to Phantom of the Opera as this edition was written for this concert and I think it really captures the big energy that I love.”