Music plays a central role in school life at King Edward’s. Each year a selection of our musicians visit primary schools to perform to audiences ranging in size from 40 to 700 children.
There are currently two music programmes available to primary schools.
Concert Party takes some of our best musicians to primary schools throughout the city on Friday afternoons, giving a short concert at each. The group talk about their instruments, show the children how they work and what is possible, and then perform, separately and together.
A number of dates are available for the 2023 autumn term, which you can register your interest below.
Both our Junior and Senior Swing Band tour local primary schools each year, giving a 30-minute performance that features a mixture of classic and contemporary big band music.
To register your interest for our next Swing Band Tour, email: outreach@kes.org.uk
The Swing Band Tours, as well as 2016’s Romany Wood project, feature in the Schools Together Group’s series of music partnership case studies, ‘All Together Now…’. Read about the case studies of Romany Wood and the Swing Band Tours.
In 2019, almost 400 pupils from primary schools across Birmingham performed music they had created by taking inspiration from fairy tales in a special concert organised by King Edward’s School. The four-month project was designed to help children and their teachers find a way into music through listening, composing, art and narrative, whilst also fulfilling many of the aims of the National Curriculum in music. This was followed by a special illustrated performance of Peter and the Wolf and The Firebird.
In the 2021-22 academic year, we hope to launch “This is Your Voice”. This project provided workshops for primary school music teachers and culminated in a spell-binding performance in the Ruddock Hall in June 2022.
In the words of the children of Sladefield Primary School:
Our world is a special place
Where people live and learn,
We go to school everyday,
To help us find our way.
The first performance was of ‘Our World’, as well as four other new songs, written as part of our This is Our Voice partnership programme. A choir of 150 primary children performed these songs in front of a live audience. It was described as a joyful and magical moment.
