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We have had such a blast in the music department this week. The fabulous, award winning West End composer, Pippa Cleary joined KS1 for an assembly and composition workshops.
Pippa’s most recent work includes ‘The Great British Bake Off Musical’ which has just finished its run at the Noel Coward theatre, and ‘Adrian Mole the Musical’ at the Ambassadors Theatre. Pippa also wrote the opening number for the Olivier Awards shown last month, lead by the fabulous Hannah Waddingham.
In February, Pippa became the first ever female composer to have 2 shows running simultaneously on London’s West End (‘Bake Off’ and’ My Son’ at the Ambassadors Theatre).
Pippa is incredibly talented and over the 2 days that she was here, she wrote 12 very different songs with the children. She spoke to the children about how to begin writing a song. She asked for the style they wanted, the tempo, what they wanted it to be about (theme), who was singing the song, i.e was it a person, animal, a fruit etc.! She then asked the children to give her an example of a song they liked the style of so that they could use it as inspiration. This ranged from pop artists such as Michael Jackson to Matilda the Musical. Once they had this information they thought of an opening lyric and it flowed from there. They learnt about the importance of rhyme and the difference between perfect and half rhymes. Pippa was fully on board with the weird and wonderful ideas that were flying round the room and brilliantly streamlined them into fantastic compositions. The range of styles and themes was vast! We had a song about a burning bush with a burning tush! A ninja bunny running away from wolves, and a party in the fruit bowl… to name only a few!
The children thoroughly enjoyed the process and were so proud of what they were able to achieve in just one session.
Pippa also lead an assembly with all of KS1 and spoke to the children about her background and showed the children some of her work over the years. She even sung them her first ever composition that she wrote aged 4 which she astonishing still remembers!
Now that the children have met with Jeff Wayne and Pippa, I hope that they can begin to appreciate that there is a very talented person behind every piece of music that they hear and perhaps some children may even feel inspired to write their own music.
More information about Pippa can be found on her website – www.pippacleary.co.uk
