· our work with young people ·
The New Scorpion Band enjoy working with children, and have undertaken several major outreach projects, culminating in shared concerts in local venues. Most notable have been the “Recorder Extravaganzas” at the Turner Sims Concert Hall, Southampton, where we have performed together with up to a hundred young recorder players! For this we undertook the arrangements and produced a new composition for the events as well as visiting schools in advance to prepare the young players for the concerts.
We have worked with children of a wide age range from reception classes to college students. Even for some of the older students this has been their first exposure to traditional music; we are aware of this responsibility and their enthusiastic reactions have reinforced our belief that folk music has an important role to play in today’s society. Our workshops also offer many fascinating insights into social history, which will benefit students in other areas of their education.
A concert in a school will introduce children to our impressive collection of instruments, giving them an opportunity to see and hear them in action, and includes plenty of audience participation, with lively songs and dance music. We often follow this up by shorter sessions with smaller groups and/or visits into classrooms; our visit can include teaching simple folk dances, so that the children can enjoy moving to live music from the band.
Where a school has its own band or orchestra, we are happy to work with them, either using their own music, or we can send music in advance, tailored to suit the children’s abilities, for them to prepare before our visit.
For music students we can lead workshops, introducing them to the folk repertoire and giving them an opportunity to experience the joy of performing traditional songs and dance tunes to which they may not otherwise be exposed. Whilst we will be playing traditional instruments such as violin, concertina, mandolin and bagpipes, the students are often studying more modern instruments – we have had very interesting and stimulating workshops involving saxophones and drum kit!