The London Schools Symphony Orchestra had another successful year in 2024, performing to well over 1000 London school pupils, touring to Belgium, and performing three concerts at their home, the Barbican Centre in London.
LGfL supports the LSSO and has developed strong relationships with it.
If you have not visited the dedicated LSSO site within our Learning Resource area, it's a gem with a concert archive, information about the orchestra, advice for young musicians, a chance to meet members of the orchestra, and even how to attend a concert with them.
Here is Bradley Wilson, conductor in residence 2022 - 23, explaining why the LSSO is so important for schools in London.
It's been a vibrant and exciting year for the LSSO. Here are some highlights.
The LSSO Conductor in Residence placement in association with Black Lives in Music ran into its second year. Enyi Okpara conducted music by Anna Meredith and Anna Clyne with the LSSO at the Barbican Centre and was appointed Assistant Conductor with the Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra, of which the young musicians in the orchestra were very proud. In addition to the excellent guest conductors (and Enyi), the musicians received coaching from musicians who perform at the Royal Opera House, London Chamber Orchestra, London Symphony Orchestra, Philharmonia, Chineke! and the Aurora Orchestra. They included teachers and professors from the Centre for Young Musicians and all four London conservatoires.
Karen Ni Bhroin conducted the first concert of the year. She opened the show with Ethel Smyth’s The Wreckers Overture before moving on to Rachmaninov's Rhapsody on a Theme of Paganini and Berlioz Symphonie Fantastique. Clare Hammond, a Royal Philharmonic Society prize winner, joined as the soloist for the Rachmaninov.
In the Spring, Enyi Okpara made his LSSO debut conducting Anna Merdith’s bombastic Nautilus before the orchestra performed Janacek’s Cunning Little Vixen Suite and Bartok’s psychological-Bluebeard’s Castle performed by opera singers Shana Moron-Caravel and Alaric Green from the Guildhall School of Music and Drama and conducted by Dominic Wheeler. The opera opened with a recorded introduction spoken by orchestra members while they started to play.
In the summer, Timothy Redmond returned to conduct the LSSO with Peter Moore performing as trombone soloist in Jonathan Dove’s Stargazer. The piece sees the trombone soloist as the ‘stargazer,’ peering at space through his telescopic trombone, firing musical shots into the atmosphere. Peter was the youngest-ever winner of Young Musician of the Year. Jonathan Dove has long been associated with the LSSO and Centre for Young Musicians, having been a student in both.
The programme opened with Anna Clyne’s Masquerade (conducted by Enyi Okpara) and included Elgar’s Enigma Variations and Mahler’s Totenfeier, the rarely performed original sketch of his second symphony.
The orchestra had great audiences for its concerts in Belgium, with the final concert in the Walloon capital, Namur, being sold out. French-speaking Belgian TV came to film some of the show and interviewed the musicians in the orchestra.
Along with other orchestras and music services, including the National Children’s Orchestra, LSSO staff took part in a pilot scheme looking at accessibility for young disabled musicians in orchestral music led by Open Up Music. The LSSO, through this partnership, looked at ways of making the orchestra more accessible to students with disabilities and was proud to have included students from that community in the orchestra last year.
London Grid for Learning professionally filmed all three of the LSSO’s Barbican concerts.
For the whole filming of the 2024 programme click the LSSO archive button below.
To visit previous concerts, use the drop-down category filters to locate specific years, orchestral pieces and related resources from the LSSO repertoire