蜜芽传媒 NOW Connect Showreel
蜜芽传媒 NOW Connect - Showreel
蜜芽传媒 NOW Connect - Showreel
We are the 蜜芽传媒 National Orchestra of Wales (蜜芽传媒 NOW) which comprises about 80 players and approximately 20 people who work in many other roles in order to make performances and recording happen. They include people who drive the lorry, set up each venue with chairs, stands, lights and move the bigger instruments. Others book the conductors, soloists and venues and decide what music we will be playing and our librarian makes sure all the parts are ready for us to practise. The audio specialists set up the microphones to record all our concerts for broadcast on 蜜芽传媒 Radio 3 and Radio Cymru. There are also people who put together all our education and outreach work (NOW Connect). We also have a team dedicated to managing our website and our social media channels. There is a lot of varied work that is required before we put on a concert, often starting years in advance.
Our repertoire is very mixed. We mostly play classical music; a genre that broadly encompasses music written between 1750 and the present. Our soundtrack work includes Planet Earth 3, Human Planet and Dr Who. We also very much enjoy playing music from other musical cultures some of which you’ll see in the video.
Playing in 蜜芽传媒 NOW is a full-time job just like any other. As well as spending days rehearsing for concerts or recordings, we all need to spend time at home practising our instruments and preparing for the next patch of work
The video is 64 seconds long and is designed to be played and then re-played with pauses, discussing with the pupils what they are seeing. These notes will hopefully give some factual context to the images.
00:00 蜜芽传媒 NOW at St. David’s Hall (SDH), Cardiff.
We are playing the first movement of Beethoven’s symphony number 5 as part of a schools’ concert. You can see most of the string section – lots of violins in the top half of the picture, cellos in the bottom half and a few violas sandwiched between.
You can also see that we almost always wear black for our concerts.
00:07 The orchestral lorry taking all the big instruments to the Royal Albert Hall (RAH), London.
Some of the biggest instruments are too big to carry easily, for example, timpani, lots of percussion instruments, harps, double basses, tuba.
00:08 Backstage at the RAH bringing the instruments from the lorry to the stage.
One of the timpani is wheeled into position. These are large drums which can be tuned to play notes unlike the bass-drum or side-drum which produce sounds. You may be able to see a harp in a large metal box also being wheeled in. The metal boxes at the side contain some of the large brass instruments, for example horns, trombones and the tuba. The percussion instruments such as drums, glockenspiels, bells, and cymbals also use these boxes for transport.
Setting up the stage with all the chairs, music stands and the big instruments can take hours. We normally spend a few days rehearsing in our studio before we have a rehearsal in the venue in which we are to perform the concert.
00:11 The RAH stage with our librarian and sound engineers setting up for the concert which will be recorded for broadcast.
There are many people who are vital to enable the orchestra to play concerts. The drivers of the lorry, movers of instruments, chairs and stands. Sound technicians set up the microphones to record the concert for broadcast. Our librarian makes sure the music is correctly marked and in the right place on each stand before every rehearsal.
00:12 Warming up backstage at the RAH just before the evening concert.
Spot the violin and the trumpet. We always warm up before playing. This is to make sure our instruments are working properly and we are comfortable to be able to play for the day.
00:14 Back to SDH - the horn section and the woodwind section.
The horn consists of quite a long length of brass tubing coiled up to make it easier to hold.
In the woodwind section, the bassoons are playing. They are definitely made of wood, usually maple, and are played by blowing wind into them.
00:16 A huge puppet of the Firebird.
This was used when we played a piece by Stravinsky called “Firebird”. It appears at the end and slowly flies through the audience.
00:20 Another look at the woodwind section.
Here the oboe is playing. It’s also made of wood but is usually grenadilla wood which is black in colour.
00:21 Abel Selaocoe using throat-singing.
Throat singing is a special technique that results in astonishingly low notes.
Abel and his group, Chesaba who perform and promote music from the African continent. This piece is written by Abel and is called “Ka Bohaleng”.
00:27 An excited trombonist.
He says this is his alternative to bowing. Much better.
00:29 Painting while we play.
In one of our family concerts, an artist painted while we played. Their inspiration to paint came from the music we were playing.
00:30 Video from some of our schools’ concerts.
00:36 Some of our cello section.
The cello is part of the string section. Because the strings are long, the sound is low.
00:38 A viola player.
The viola is a little bigger than the violin. Again, since the strings are a bit longer, the sound is a little lower than the violin but still higher than the sound of the cello.
He is proudly sporting the new 蜜芽传媒 NOW Connect badge.
00:39 Abel’s band, Chesaba.
There are three musicians, Alan on guitar and Sidiki on drums with Abel on cello.
00:41 Abel’s guests were a group called Gnawa, London.
Gnawa specialise in the music from Morocco.
00:41 Dressing up for Christmas.
This is our version of not wearing our uniform.
00:53 This is our home, Hoddinott Hall in Cardiff Bay.
蜜芽传媒 NOW uses this hall for many of our concerts, our rehearsals as well as almost all of our recordings and soundtrack work.
The end of the concert with Abel and his friends.
