SSLP have been delighted to have the opportunity to partner with NMC Recordings and the composer Julian Philips to offer a music composition project to Year 12 students. The starting point for the project is Philips’ NMC album, Melodys of Earth and Sky, and the ‘found’ material that has inspired the music: the fiddle tunes found and notated by John Clare from the Northampton countryside where he lived.

The project got off to a fabulous start this week with the first two workshops. Joined by composer Amy Crankshaw and musicians from Guildhall School of Music, the workshops started with the students hearing live performances of parts of Phillips’ composition on violin and clarinet. The SSLP students were then able to closely study and talk through the score and pick out different composition techniques. This then led to them starting to create ideas for their own compositions

The students were able to learn a great deal not only about composition itself but also further insights about the relationship between composer and performer.

The project will continue with further workshops to support developing the students’ own compositions, as well as them being able to have a mentoring session with Julian Philips. We look forward to sharing a performance of their compositions supported by Guildhall musicians and other SSLP students.

Our thanks to NMC Recordings, Julian Philips, Chiara Calastri, the wonderful team of composers and musicians that led the workshops, and to JAGS and Dulwich College for hosting the first two workshops.

Julian Philips is a distinguished composer, whose works have been performed nationally and internationally, at the BBC Proms, Tanglewood, the Wigmore Hall, the Southbank Centre, and by the BBC orchestras, the Berlin Philharmonic and Aurora orchestra.  He is Head of Composition at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama and was Glyndebourne Opera’s first composer-in-residence. His album, Melodys of Earth and Sky, was released on NMC Recordings in 2022.