Abingdon News No.54

14 May 2020 Three Abingdon School pupils, Lachlan Keene, Roddy McVie and Ashwin Tennant, featured in a remotely recorded video by the National Schools Symphony Orchestra, NSSO. The “Sunrise Project” was recorded over the Easter holiday, when there should have been a residential course. The music is an extract from the opening of the symphonic tone poem, Also Sprach Zarathustra, by Richard Strauss. The music will be more familiar to many as it was used for Stanley Kubrick’s iconic 1968 film, 2001: A Space Odyssey. It is both amazing and heart-warming to see the extent of musical creativity going on in these challenging times, both at a local, regional and national level. Watch the video . National Schools Symphony Orchestra Musicians play on Lock down did not prevent our musicians, and music teachers playing together. Our Jazz musicians, under the guidance of Simon Currie, each recorded their separate parts of a track from their homes and used their phones to record themselves. The recordings were then compiled to form a band. Have a listen to the very accomplished end result in the video . Oliver Glover in the Fourth Year submitted a beautiful recording of Gabriel’s Oboe as his entry for a competition that his teacher, Maddy Aldis-Evans, ran for her pupils. The piece by the composer, Ennio Morricone, is the main title theme from the 1986 film, The Mission . Listen to the recording . Abingdon Music