We are half way through our Vaughan Williams’™ Folk project an exciting project looking at the folk songs collected in East Anglia by composer Ralph Vaughan Williams.
One of the strands of this project involves a Mentorship Programme for musicians aged 16-25. We are delighted to be joined by musicians Finn Collinson and Emma Beach (of The Finn Collinson Band www.finncollinson.com) leading a 10 month Mentorship scheme involving 9 young musicians. The search for our musicians began in September 2022 and in early November the EATMT project team selected 9 promising young musicians to take part in the Mentorship scheme.
The musicians have joined us from across East Anglia and beyond and we’re delighted to welcome both self-taught and classically trained musicians: From Norfolk, Peter McCauley, Anna Treutler & Leila Hooton; from Cambridgeshire, Lauren Peck; from Suffolk, Oliver Thompson, Sarah Stock & Heather Moss; from London, Elye Cuthbertson and from Cornwall via Leeds, Abbey Thomas. As well as bags of enthusiasm, they bring whistles, flutes, guitars, fiddle, saxophone, banjo, melodeon and voice into the mix and there are a number of song writers amongst them.
A selection our musicians met for the first time at the Vaughan Williams in the East Conference in late November and then all online together in January with a meeting hosted by Mentors Finn and Emma. In early February, all 9 musicians travelled to Stowmarket once again negotiating the rail strikes and rail maintenance where they spent a day with Finn, Emma and guest tutor Kate Griffin (of Mishra www.kategriffincreative.com). All tunes worked on were taken from a selection of the collected song-tunes that Ralph Vaughan Williams collected in the first 10-15 years of the 20th Century.
They came to the day having spent January individually working on the song ‘Bushes on Briars’. where they shared their ideas and new tunes with mentors Finn and Emma. The next workshop was spent with Kate who shared her experience of song writing and re working traditional material which looked at more of the collected song tunes. The afternoon saw 3 break out groups each chosing a song from the collections. Each group then presented their newly arranged song-tune to the whole group. Each group played/sung their arrangements and discussed the process. Each group approached this task in very different ways and so discussing this enabled the musicians to learn from each other. Everyone individually was able to participate and introduce their own ideas and then see how collaboratively this was incorporated.
Sound Recordist Jake Lee Savage (www.jakeleesavage.com) joined us for the day capturing some wonderful music making as well as interviewing each musician who shared their musical journeys. These recordings have formed the next podcast for the project which can be found HERE.
Over the coming months, Finn and Emma will regularly meet online with the musicians who are all working towards their next physical meeting in July for a weekend of music making in preparation for 2 final showcases one at FolkEast (www.folkeast.co.uk) on Friday 18th August and one at Traditional Music Day in Stowmarket on Saturday 2nd September.
We were grateful to the Osier Cafe for providing an excellent lunch and to Heather Tooke and the team at Stowmarket Town Council who enabled us to use the Stowmarket Community Centre for the day as well as to our funder The National Lottery Heritage Fund. You can follow the Project at www.eatmt.org.uk/vaughan-williams-folk/
Alex Bartholomew, EATMT