Adam MacKenzie led a project with Lincolnshire Music Service to work with children from schools in Lincolnshire, to create their own music based on the motifs featured in Prokofiev’s Peter and the Wolf. These compositions were then interwoven into a performance of Peter and the Wolf, given by the LMP at the South Holland Centre in Spalding, at which all of the schools involved were in attendance.

Led by composer/animateur Fraser Trainer, this project worked with seven primary schools (around 90 children) in Shepshed, Leicestershire, to help them build a new youth orchestra for the area. For one week, Fraser and LMP musicians worked with the children, split into three groups, to write their own piece of music. Fraser also arranged Grieg’s In the Hall of the Mountain King to include performers of all ages and abilities.

At the end of the week, at an LMP Family Music Concert in Shepshed hosted by Alasdair Malloy, all the young people played their pieces as part of the concert, and then joined in with the whole LMP for Fraser’s arrangement of In the Hall of the Mountain King for a grand finale. It was a huge success, and proved a great way of getting everyone to play together and to inspire the young musicians with what it feels like to be part of a big orchestra.

The inspiration was the celebration of 100 years of flight and the part that Southampton Airport has played in the history of flight, including the first test flight of the legendary Spitfire plane. Led by Michael Omer, students from Woodlands School in Southampton took Mozart’s experiences and the inspiration for flight to create a new musical work over four weeks. The première took place in the main terminal of Southampton airport on 27 January 2011, making a connection between the teenage Geoffrey Wellum, the teenage composer Wolfgang Mozart and the students, themselves all teenagers bursting with new ideas. It featured a song “I Have Touched the Sky” and a rap called “Two Different Lives”, highlighting the contrasts between young Wolfgang and Geoffrey. The performance was featured on local BBC television and shows that you really can perform music to anyone, anywhere!