Learning for the Fourth Age was delighted to be able to invite the Street Orchestra of London to Wyggeston’s Hospital for a special musical performance on Friday 14th July. This special event lasted around one hour and had an attendance of almost 50 people living in the sheltered flats, William House, and the care home next door, Agnes House.
It was wonderful to see the responses of older people living at the fantastic Wyggeston’s Hospital – from John conducting the orchestra to half of the audience getting up and dancing at the end and those with memory loss tapping their hands along instinctively with the music. Here is a short video of John in his element – best to listen with the sound on if you can: Video
After years of working together successfully with DMU‘s Square Mile and other projects, we were delighted to be offered the opportunity to host this event. The opportunity came about as an extension of DMU’s ground-breaking partnership with the Philharmonia Orchestra and we hope to be able to do more work with DMU’s music development in the future.
The Street Orchestra of London is founded on the belief that every human being has an equal right to enjoy quality live music. Symphonic music should sound everywhere and anyone should be able to come into contact with it. More information is available about them and their great work here.
The Street Orchestra of London is a project created and conducted by one of the Philharmonia Orchestra musicians that creates pop-up orchestral performances playing pieces of all conceivable styles. SOL strives to bring orchestral music to everyone, to every possible audience and in every possible location. The creative team behind SOL includes Gabriel Prokofiev (grandson of the legendary composer, Sergi Prokofiev)!