MORE than 200 musicians have joined forces to create An Anthem for East Lothian.
The performance took place in St Mary’s Parish Church in Haddington as part of the recent Haddstock festival.
East Lothian Council instrumental music service hosted An Anthem for East Lothian, in collaboration with Lammermuir Festival, under the baton of renowned conductor Sian Edwards.
The ensemble came together to mark the start of a new partnership between the music service, East Lothian Arts Services Youth Music Initiative and the Lammermuir Festival.
The performance has been made available digitally and can be viewed on the instrumental music service’s YouTube channel.
James Waters, CEO and joint artistic director of the Lammermuir Festival, said: “We are delighted to have launched our new partnership with the East Lothian Council instrumental music service and their inspirational team manager Jonathan Gawn in a community-wide celebration of the beautiful music/beautiful places of our county.
“After the challenges of the last couple of years, the Anthem performance, together with our Youth Music Initiative-funded primary school opera projects, has enabled hundreds of young people and adults to share a musical pledge to cherish and protect the beautiful world in which we live, and we are hugely looking forward to continuing and developing this creative journey with these fabulous young musicians in our next full-scale Lammermuir Festival Community Opera next year.”
An Anthem for East Lothian was commissioned for the instrumental music service by Lammermuir Festival, with music by Lliam Paterson (arranged by Peter Kemp) and words by Laura Attridge.
The project was designed to bring together instrumentalists and singers from across the county to perform together in a celebration of the county and its people.
East Lothian Council’s instrumental music service symphony orchestra, instrumental music service pipers and instrumental music service instructors were joined by Preston Lodge High School Pipe Band, professional musicians from McOpera, Dunbar Voices and our Anthem Community Choir to premiere the new work.
As part of Haddstock 2022, East Lothian Council’s instrumental music service took over the church for two days of activities and performances.
On the first day, more than 140 pupils from various school music groups from Knox Academy, Dunbar Grammar School, Haddington Primary School, Letham Mains Primary School, Law Primary School and Aberlady Primary School performed to capacity audiences.
Some of these young musicians also returned the following day to perform in the anthem ensemble, featuring more than 200 musicians and performing to two further capacity audiences.
Jonathan Gawn, East Lothian Council’s instrumental music service team manager, said: “This was many of our young people’s first public performance to a live audience and I really can’t imagine a better first live performance experience than this.
“We are very lucky to have an internationally renowned festival such as Lammermuir Festival on our doorstep and we can’t thank them enough for giving our young people the opportunity to work with a professional conductor such as Sian Edwards or the professional players that came to join us from McOpera.
“This was also a superb opportunity for us to collaborate with our friends from Preston Lodge High School Pipe Band, Dunbar Voices, Haddstock Festival and Edinburgh College, and we look forward to further developing these relationships in the future.
“The instrumental music service had over 350 musicians performing at Haddstock over the two days and the atmosphere at all the events was incredible.”
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