Excitement overflowed at the Royal Albert Hall last week as children from Special Schools in Coventry performed their own newly-penned song to an audience of 5000 people.
The youngsters from Baginton Fields Academy and Sherbourne Fields School, all of whom have moderate to profound special educational needs, performed their piece at AC Academy Does the Royal Albert Hall, a music gala organised by the choir and music charity Armonico Consort.
In a thrilling evening, they shared the stage with 2,000 pupils from 50 mainstream schools, as well as professional singers from Armonico Consort, Orchestra of the Swan, and dancers including Strictly star Karen Hauer.
They were helped in their composition task by Armonico’s specialist leaders William Carslake, Patrick Stockbridge and Ella Rainbird-Earley who led six workshops encouraging the children to develop their own ideas for what became ‘Precious Energy’, a song about building a machine to save the environment. They then produced a piece with full orchestral accompaniment and a part for the entire Royal Albert Hall audience to sing along.
Workshop leader Ella Rainbird-Earley said, “Creating Precious Energy with the children from Sherbourne Fields and Baginton Fields schools was a wonderful experience. I feel grateful to have worked with such willing and creative young people who had such big, fearless ideas on how we could protect the world and all its precious natural resources.”
Patrick Stockbridge added, “Precious Energy was a joyous celebration of the talent and enthusiasm of the students who collectively created their own lyrics, composed melodies to these words, choreographed movement (a combination of BSL, Makaton and actions) and performed their piece with passion, encouraging the audience and massed choir to join in.”
Other highlights of the concert included the massed choirs singing extracts from ‘Carmina Burana’, including the famous opening ‘O Fortuna’, in Latin, Toby Young’s 2020 composition and Covid lockdown response ‘My Letter to the World’ and popular numbers including ‘Power in Me’ and ‘Happy’.
Through its music education programme AC Academy, Armonico Consort is committed to enabling children with special educational needs to engage in the creative process, helping them to learn and develop the skills and self confidence to create, rehearse and perform at the highest level.
The charity is currently fundraising to deliver more such projects, encouraging people to donate an hour of their salary or retirement equivalent to its ‘What a Difference an Hour Can Make’ campaign. To help enable more projects, please visit www.armonico.org.uk/donate-an-hour.
