Orchestrating Change BBC CONCERT ORCHESTRA Friday night may well be music night, but when the BBC Concert Orchestra is not recording the world's longest-running live music programme, its instrumentalists are engaged in a host of educational and community outreach projects. Temporarily sojourning in Watford whilst its new home in BBC White City is being completed, the BBC Concert Orchestra runs education projects across the capital and has a three-year residency at Chichester Festival Theatre.

Last winter, the latter incorporated primary school children composing musical portraits along the lines of Elgar's Enigma Variations.

In July, more than 2,000 children drawn from 45 Hertfordshire primary schools descended on Watford 's Colisseum for two concerts, including rousing renditions of the South African song, Babathandaza. This kind of musical extravaganza has long been a staple of the orchestra's Concert Connections education programme.

Kids' concerts in Blackheath Halls (November 2003) and Watford Colisseum (May 2004) have been broadcast on Radio 3's children's programme, Making Tracks, and last summer, 16 members of the orchestra gave workshops in nine Hackney primary schools in preparation for a concert for 800 children and their families as part of the BBC Proms Out+About scheme.

Next year, the BBC Concert Orchestra intends to turn its attention to secondary schools. 'We would like to target the age group at Key Stage 3 because traditionally a lot of children give up instruments when they change schools, so it's a bit of a trough,'explains learning manager Peter Hayward. 'We are looking to re-engage them with the power and excitement of orchestral instruments.'

The BBC Concert also does its bit with older students. Eight short-listed composers from the Royal College of Music will next year be treated to a masterclass on the art of arranging before having their pieces performed on Friday Night is Music Night, and last January, the orchestra's residency in Chichester included workshops led by the jazz pianist, Julian Joseph, for the Mid-Sussex Youth Jazz Band, the Western Area Swing band, and jazz students at University College, Chichester. The orchestra also provides support for music technology students, inviting them to work alongside BBC technicians in the recording studio and to visit the outside broadcast van when Friday Night is Music Night is being recorded.

Last February, the orchestra work-ed with the Jewish group Burning Bush to create Vessels of Sound. This project introduced the music of the Ashkenazi and Sephardic traditions to north London sec-ondary schoolchildren, members of Trinity College and the Jewish Youth Choir. The project culminated in performances at the Royal Festival Hall and the Jewish Free School in Harrow . This year, the orchestra is joining forces with the BBC Singers to work with community projects run by Arsenal and Chelsea football clubs. As well as including a performance of football-related music, a new 40-minute piece by St Paul 's music teacher Peter Gritton will call on a vast array of schools and bands from the boroughs of Islington and Fulham and Hammersmith.
'The original initiative was about getting young boys to sing with confidence and without self-consciousness,' explains Gritton.
'Singing is so bound up with the terraces. You hear people singing at the tops of their voices when they are adults, so this is a great way of getting young people to really go for it. This is all about sowing the seeds.'

ROYAL SCOTTISH NATIONAL ORCHESTRA (RSNO)

Based in Glasgow 's Royal Concert Hall, the RSNO performs regularly to communities in Inverness, Aberdeen , Dundee, Edinburgh , and Perth , and travels south to the border country of Dumfries and Galloway . In July, the orchestra staged an outreach week across South Lanarkshire that brought string quartets to shopping centres; offered family concerts across the region; and put ensembles into local tourist attractions, such as Chatelherault House and Calderglen.

The RSNO is also always on the lookout for new venues in its home city. 'It's important that people come to the concert hall – that's our natural home and it's simply the best conditions to listen to the music,' explains education development manager Ewan Small. ‘But there are lots of places dotted around Glasgow where we can perform, so that people don't have to make the effort to come into the centre of the city.'

A sextet drawn from the RSNO has recently performed at a primary school on the Keppoch Campus, a new interdenominat-ional educational centre in one of the city's most deprived communi-ties. According to Christine McCandlish, vice chair of North Glasgow Arts Regeneration Network and the cultural co-ordinator for Glasgow City Council, the performance was a smash hit, thanks to the tailor-made repertoire and the crowd-pleasing banter of the musicians.

‘The audience felt the warmth and humanity of the orchestra and they could imagine the musicians as their neighbours. And there was just so much interaction with the audience. Those musicians had them eating out of their hands – the audience wouldn't let them stop.'

Transport to and from the con-cert was provided free of charge, and thanks to a donation from the Abbey Charitable Trust, £1 tickets for the Royal Concert Hall were offered to locals. According to McCandlish, the concert 'opened up an area of the arts where the door was shut. The people who were targeted were very unlikely to visit the Royal Concert Hall', but there was 'a huge take-up of tickets' following the performance.