Superb performance as West Sussex's finest young musicians come together virtually

Young performers from across West Sussex have combined online for a beautiful video performance of Bach’s Brandenburg Concerto No 3.
Ben DowsettBen Dowsett
Ben Dowsett

The YouTube video offers a great sense of togetherness in our days of social isolation.

It can be found at https://youtu.be/g14gAwbNG_g

The recording was masterminded by Ben Dowsett, head of West Sussex Music Academy and new part-time director of music at Collyer’s College, Horsham.

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The performance brings together students from Horsham, Chichester, Crawley and Worthing among other places across the county.

Ben was on the point of launching a new sinfonia for West Sussex Music’s high-end string players and had even got as far as issuing invitations. But then the shutdown hit.

“So we came up with the idea of doing something virtually.”

Crucial to the way Ben saw it was that it had to be something challenging: “It is really easy for people to do videos of pop songs all done with click tracks. It is all fine and good for morale, but it doesn’t really challenge the performers, and I wanted something that would really challenge the young musicians.”

Hence the choice of one of the Brandenburg Concertos. The idea was to stretch the students.

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“I sent out an invitation to those people that had agreed to play in the sinfonia, and they were all up for doing it. They are aged 15-18 and there are about 25 of them from right across West Sussex. And I sent them their parts.

“String players love their bowing, and they love to be told about their bowing. Adam Barker (assistant head at West Sussex Music) played the basic violin parts to show them the bowing.

“His partner is a cellist, and she played the bass line, as it were. So the students had models to follow.

“They then had to practise their parts and record themselves playing them.

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“In their ear they had a recording playing that I had sent them, but they recorded what they were themselves playing, and they sent the videos to me, and I put them together.

“It gets easier the more you do it, but I suppose it must have taken me about 20 hours. They all recorded them on their phones, and modern phones are quite good at recording as they always auto do the levels. If they are playing too loudly, their phones will have thought to turn it down a bit.”

Ben is delighted with the result: “I am very pleased with it. I was expecting to have to cheat a bit, to use an original recording and put my students over the top of it, but I didn’t have to do that at all.

“And I think it has taught them a huge amount. One of the things we struggle with with students is performance and what they look like.

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“They can just sit there and there is no sense of performance. But with this, they had to video themselves and look at themselves on the video. And they really had to practise their parts. Some of them worked really, really hard on it.”

The key thing, as Ben puts it, is not to “look slovenly” – and he is pleased they have achieved it.

“You want them to look professional, and I think they were really, really aware of what they were doing, and I am very, very pleased with it.

“After we had five or six videos, I put it together to show what we were aiming at, and that really got them going. And I have had a lot of contact with the parents as well, and they have been really pleased that their son or daughter had something to work towards.”

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Other videos are being made. Here is the county saxes playing Mister Sandman (https://youtu.be/Ae_Lba2BngA).

“They have really embraced the virtual way of working and are now working on their third piece, though obviously somewhat more light-hearted that the Bach!”

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