And so it begins, we’ve pressed the play button on the Ingenium Academy 2018 adventure. It’s only been a day and we already have so many amazing things to share with you. We are so excited about all the stories and memories to come.

 

 

After breakfast Ingenium began with a whole school warmup, to get us all set up and ready for the brilliant day ahead. Then without delay, it was straight into music making!

Our musicians on the chamber course were keen to get their instruments out and play their first notes together in their groups. Various, interesting combinations of instruments could be heard throughout the Music School here in Winchester.

 

 

Tim Redmond started bright and early with our young conductors. In their informative session, Tim introduced the basic conducting techniques and helped them uncover the secrets that hide in all the different score editions.

 

 

The pianists started the morning with a lovely gathering where they got a chance to meet all of the piano team. Throughout the day all of our  young pianists had an individual lesson with our inspiring piano staff as well as time for private practice. In their afternoon technique class, Simon Callaghan was telling them all about how important it is to be relaxed when playing the piano, especially in the context of a performance or when playing really difficult passages.

 

 

In the morning, the composers divided into groups with different instrumentation and went straight into composing their own short piece based on a given motif.

 

After lunch,  Michael Betteridge brought everyone together for a Big Sing where we all warmed up our vocal chords and sang our hearts out. It was wonderful to make music together as a whole school.

 

 

Session 3 was a unique opportunity for our young composers to hear their compositions played by the students on the Chamber Music course. They will be working together over the course of the week to develop their pieces and hopefully we will be hearing some of them in our concert on Saturday.

 

 

Before our exciting first day came to a close it was time for the Evening Activity -a gripping, Murder Mystery themed activity filled with thrilling puzzles and laughter. Our students battled it out in teams to solve the Mystery of the Music School.

 

 

Musicians of the day

 

Conducting

Katie: for finding a “Eureka” moment in her conducting when everything clicked and fell into place.

 

Chamber Musician

Vassia: for his strong rhythmic pulse that helped glue the group together.

 

Pianos

Finn: for brilliantly tackling a very difficult piano part on the first day.

 

Composer

Matteo D for being incredibly open minded all day and keen to step out of his comfort zone whilst being very empathetic to all the other people in his group.

 

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