CHILDREN from 20 schools will sing and perform in the pedestrian shelters around St Aubin’s Bay on 6 April next year in what is described as ‘the largest platform for musicians in Jersey’.
The event is being mounted by the charity Music in Action, which has replaced its annual Jersey Sings concert – in which schoolchildren performed at Fort Regent’s Gloucester Hall and later at the RJAHS in Trinity – with ‘a Covid-safe Island festival’. It aims to draw around 2,000 spectators to the seven-hour open-air event.
Jersey Sings Across the Bay will make use of the shelters as temporary venues and staging points for a rolling programme of performances by primary and secondary-school children, with 40 ensembles taking part.
Groups will perform in or around the huts or shelters, spaced every 200 metres around St Aubin’s Bay.
The charity is collaborating with Andrea Vogler – an expert in junk percussion – who has already started working with the schools to prepare for some of the more unusual musical contributions to the event, including a percussion orchestra comprising children performing on buckets and spades.
Ms Vogler, a previous adjudicator for the BBC Young Musician of the Year’s percussion section, has played with orchestras including the Halle, BBC Philharmonic and English National Ballet and works regularly with the Royal Northern Sinfonia, Manchester Camerata and the Northern Chamber Orchestra.
In addition to her public appearances, she is experienced in community activities, including running pioneering group music therapy sessions for people living with dementia and their carers as a member of Manchester Camerata’s award-winning Music in Mind team. She is on the teaching staff at the Royal Northern College of Music, Junior RNCM and Chetham’s School of Music.
Toni James, development manager of Music in Action, said that they were now looking for sponsors interested in supporting young people and helping to provide ‘a joyous event involving many in the Island’.
‘It will have profound effects on the wellbeing of the children to take part in such an uplifting series of workshops and the showcase will be bigger than anything Music in Action has done before,’ she said.
The charity is looking for an event sponsor at £8,000 and ten sponsors of the individual performance huts at between £1,000 and £2,000.
Corporates will be invited to enter teams for a sponsored walk and food vans, and the cafés along the route from the Lookout café to The Kiosk will be open for business.
Music in Action provides important community initiatives helping wellbeing of Island children, education through workshops, therapeutic concerts in care homes and platforms for community artists.
Jersey Sings, which has become an annual fixture in the event calendar, is now in its fifth year and its new open-air format also offers the opportunity for local musical ensembles to take part in the event.
Those interested in finding out more about the event or how to participate can email admin@musicjersey.com or call the Music in Action team on 07393 170799.
