The sheer excitement of their young audiences has always been one of the great rewards as Southern Pro Musica celebrate the 30th anniversary of their Children's Concerts.
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00:00 Good morning, my name is Phil Hewitt, Group Arts Editor at Sussex Newspapers. Always lovely to
00:06 speak to Jonathan Wilcox. Now Jonathan, you are heading a very important tradition, aren't you,
00:11 when you bring the children's concerts to Chichester, to Guildford, to Southampton
00:16 in January. And this is something that goes back, what, 30 years in 2020? It does, yes,
00:22 yes. I'm Jonathan Wilcox and I'm Musical Director of the Southern Pro Musica, which is a professional
00:26 chamber orchestra that does concerts of all sorts all over the South. And back in 1994, we decided
00:32 to try and put on a concert specifically for children. And we did that actually in Petersfield.
00:39 And from those small acorn beginnings, since then, over the years, nearly 30 years now,
00:44 we've done nearly 150 children's concerts right across the South, homing in on three wonderful
00:51 venues, one Chichester Festival Theatre, one at Southampton, the Central Hall, and one at Guildford,
00:58 G-Live, which is the big concert hall. And what all those venues have in common is the fact they
01:03 give a wonderful experience for children to be able to see as well as to hear. Chichester Festival
01:08 Theatre, particularly with its thrust stage, allows the orchestra to be pretty much in amongst the
01:13 children. And our aim is to give children aged six to 11 their first experience in many cases
01:22 of hearing live music of a full symphony orchestra playing exciting, colourful repertoire.
01:28 And you were talking about the excitement of your audiences. They love it, don't they?
01:32 Tell me more about the atmosphere of these concerts.
01:35 Well, the atmosphere beforehand, the bubbling away you can hear like children in the playground.
01:41 And then we come on and we start with something really arresting. This year, it's going to be
01:45 the last stage of Rossini's William Tell Overture, which starts with a very exciting trumpet and
01:51 horn fanfare. And you can just see the children go like this, "What is that?" And they're engaged
02:01 so intently. During the music, actually, they're surprisingly sort of quiet. But the moment that
02:09 the music stops, they're going, "Yeah, fantastic, fantastic." And one of the attractions now for
02:15 the last about eight or ten years, we've had as compare for these concerts, Neil Henry,
02:22 who's a wonderful man. He's an actor, he's a musician, but he's also a magician as well.
02:27 And he actually does sort of magic tricks as part of his introductions to the pieces. For example,
02:35 this year, we're doing the finale of Haydn's Trumpet Concerto. And in showing the children
02:41 what a trumpet is, he'll suddenly realise that there's a string of sausages inside the trumpet.
02:46 And he'll sort of say, "Excuse me, I think you've got something in there." And he'll extract a great
02:50 long string of sausages out of the trumpet. It's a way of engaging with the children in a sort of
02:56 attractive way. And from your point of view, it must be lovely to think that you are giving these
03:00 children memories which will last a lifetime, won't they? The impact, the excitement, it will
03:05 always be. Absolutely, yes. And schools give us tremendous feedback. They say that the children
03:10 have been talking about nothing else since, you know, what was that instrument? And we give them
03:16 quite a lot of preparation help in as much as they know what pieces of music are going to be played,
03:21 we feed it to the schools. And always the concerts conclude with a song for children,
03:27 which is accompanied by orchestra, which we do a little rehearsal as part of the concert.
03:32 And we give the music, including a recording of it and rehearsal aids to all the schools,
03:38 they can access it via the website. So that those who've got the capacity to do it can learn the
03:44 song in advance, which gives them, you know, another element to it. And over the years,
03:49 we've found what really works about eight or nine short pieces, which are introduced in a way that
03:58 allows the children to know what they're going to look for, what they're going to listen for,
04:02 which instruments are going to be more prominent. And for many of them, they've no idea that an
04:07 orchestra is made up of different families of instruments, the strings, and then the wind and
04:11 the brass and the percussion. And so it's a mixture of education and entertainment.
04:17 And it sounds truly lovely. And to just give those dates again, you're in Chichester Festival
04:21 Theatre. We're in Chichester on Tuesday, January the 16th. And Guildford G Live.
04:26 And Guildford G Live is Wednesday, January the 17th. And then the Central Hall in Southampton
04:34 on Thursday, January the 18th. And there's a concert in the morning from 10.45 to 11.45.
04:41 And in the afternoon from 1.30 to 2.30. Ideally fitting in with the school day.
04:45 Well, that's absolutely perfect. Congratulations on the 30th anniversary of these concerts.
04:51 Thank you. And each season now we reach round about 5,000 children with each of these series,
04:57 which is just wonderful. And I'm really looking forward to this in January again.
05:02 That's a major achievement. Lovely to speak to you. Thank you.
05:04 Thank you, Phil.