A First Experience of Live Music: Billy Hui at Stoller Story Sounds
Gemma Ashcroft, Learning Engagement Manager at Manchester Baroque, led these interactive workshops.
Manchester Baroque Fellow Billy Hui shares his experience of Stoller Story Sounds, a creative collaboration with The Stoller Hall and Chetham's School of Music. Combining live flute performance with storytelling, illustration and interactive workshops led by Gemma Ashcroft, the project introduced children aged 3–5 to the magic of live music.
By Billy Hui, Manchester Baroque Fellow
In late September this year, I had the pleasure of performing in three Stoller Story Sounds concerts, in collaboration with the Stoller Hall and Chetham’s School of Music.
My role in this project was to curate a programme of musical extracts and perform them alongside storytelling and live illustrations, presented by the wonderful Emily Capstick and Lizzie Finlay, respectively. This was followed by workshop sessions led by Gemma Ashcroft. It was great to be given quite a lot of freedom in choosing which musical excerpts to include, and I thought it would be a good idea to include a mixture of music from different periods, played on both the modern and Baroque flutes.
The story was about a robot who wakes up and finds itself in a forest, gradually becoming more aware of itself as it interacts with different animals and elements of nature. In the end, I arrived at a programme of music that spanned from Telemann, Vivaldi and Couperin to Mozart, Reinecke, Smetana and Hindemith. Each piece represented a character or an element in the story. For example, I used Couperin’s Le rossignol en amour to represent the bird and the third movement of Hindemith’s Flute Sonata to represent the robot.
A performance like this isn’t without its challenges. As I was the only musician performing that day, I had to find musical extracts that made musical sense when performed on solo flute or take some creative liberties with pieces that didn’t. One such liberty was to attempt both flute parts of Smetana’s Vltava from Má vlast to illustrate the river in the story. With our audience being children aged 3–5, it was impossible to know in advance how they would react to each part of the story and each interactive activity. We therefore needed quite a lot of flexibility in the moment to respond to the needs of each group and to strike a balance between keeping the story flowing and maintaining the integrity of each piece. Each of the three performances ended up being slightly different that day, with some groups being more active and some being calmer.
It was a real privilege to bring what could have been their first experience of live music to so many children. I was also grateful to work with such talented colleagues across art forms to introduce historical and modern flutes to a young audience and their families. On a personal level, I found it greatly rewarding to see the joy an event like this brings to children and their families, and to have played a small part in the beginning of their engagement with live music.
This was my first engagement as a Manchester Baroque Fellow, and I very much appreciated the opportunity to connect with new colleagues and new audiences through the Fellowship. I look forward to building upon this in the months ahead!
