Introduction to live performance

Around the World in 80 Minutes

Around the World in 80 minutes is a whistle stop tour of music from across the globe. The show covers areas of the national curriculum for key stages 1 and 2 in music and geography and requires plenty of participation from the youngsters!

Featuring music from Asia, Europe, Africa, North and South America the tour includes performances on instruments ranging from the Hungarian Cimbalom to Indian Tabla.

Psappha’s musicians are highly experienced in the field of music education and perform on a wide variety of instruments including percussion, violin, double bass and piano. The presentation includes visual material to back-up the musical content.

School Workshops

School Workshops take place over a number of weeks and lead to a performance of the work created. Members of Psappha have been active in education work since 1993, and in 1995 Psappha was awarded the Swatch City Life Award for the best concert series and education work of that year. In 1998 members of Psappha took part in a series of training sessions with the award-winning London Sinfonietta Education Department.

July 2000 saw the successful conclusion of Psappha’s largest project to date, based on Peter Maxwell Davies’ Mr Emmet Takes a Walk. Taking place at The Lowry in Salford, it involved 120 children from all over the North West. A week of education work in Paris schools in January 2001 with the aid of an interpreter showed that language need not be a barrier to the sharing of musical knowledge. Closer to home, Psappha recently provided schools in the Liverpool area with a project based on music performed in the ensemble’s Spring Series of concerts at Liverpool Hope University.

Composers’ Workshops

Psappha ensures that all works to be included in Composers’ Workshops are rehearsed in advance in order that composers gain as much benefit from the sessions as possible. Past workshops have taken place at the Cheltenham Festival, The Queen’s University of Belfast, Manchester University, Cardiff University, Leeds University and The Royal Scottish of Music and Drama.

Since 2002 Psappha has been contemporary-artists-in-association at Manchester University and gives nine composition workshops each year for masters and doctorate degrees.