Ten third-year Music students were privileged to attend the world premiere of Beyond This, a collaborative work by renowned composer Mark Anthony Turnage and inmates of HMP Lowdham Grange in Nottinghamshire. The piece is one of twenty new compositions commissioned as part of the 2012 Cultural Olympiad. It was developed during a week-long workshop led by Turnage and the Irene Taylor Trust for Music in Prisons, the leading charity dedicated to providing musical opportunities for prisoners.
Students from the Department of Music attended part of the workshop and the final live performance at the prison, amongst a select audience of press and prison inmates. The visits tie into a new third-year Music module, ‘Can Classical Music Change Lives?’, which evaluates national and international projects that use music to overcome conflict and social disadvantage.
Read the BBC report of the premiere performance:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/entertainment-arts-16610563
Posted on Thursday 26th January 2012