Creative Quarantining: #1 Making Music
We’re here for you during the pandemic and putting together resources on activities you can do that involve more than just staring at a screen (because there’s a lot of that right now). We’re making an effort to find groups that might be connecting online, but are then using that connection to engage in a real-world activity – together. For the first round-up in the series here’s some suggestions on how you can make music:
The Sofa Singers is a free, weekly, online singing event from James Sills. His weekly online event sees 500 people come together for a 45-minute rehearsal where they learn a classic song and sing it together, apart. Their next event is 7th April at 7.30pm BST. Registration opens 6th April at 7.30pm BST.
Gareth Malone’s new initiative, ‘The Great British Home Chorus’, brings together both amateur and professional performers around the UK to sing with others online. Register here.
The Stay at Home Choir offers another opportunity to join a virtual choir. Vote for the next project and get involved here.
Operatic tenor Jeff Stewart is offering online singing lessons. Stewart teaches as the Royal College of Music and the Royal Welsh College of Music and Drama, also running amateur choirs. He has experience in giving lessons over the internet and is offering to work on repertoire and sing songs in a session with students.
Couch Choir asked the internet to ‘stop misery scrolling’ for a minute and over 1,000 people from 18 countries submitted a video of their performance of “Close To You” (Burt Bacharach) in just TWO DAYS. Keep an eye out for future requests for submissions and songs.
Keep checking back as we’ll update this post with new singing opportunities – and other options to make music together – as we find them.
Stay safe everyone and keep using your screen time wisely.