I, like so many of you, love music. It is my lifeblood, and for the past 18 years, I have worked within the music education industry in some capacity, either managing large-scale cross-curricular music projects in schools, running a Saturday Music School, teaching & performing, or working in a world-famous orchestra’s education department. The lack of in-person music exposure has hit hard over the past year. However, all is not lost! There are some fabulous streaming opportunities out there. Here is a selection of online streaming theatre and music events that I’m either looking forward to, have participated in previously, or that hit all the right elements of an excellent cross-curricular education project.
For the under 5s: The Wigmore Hall Chamber Tots program
Under normal circumstances this program is very popular, it sells out within minutes! Led by incredible workshop leaders and musicians, they investigate a different theme for each workshop. This month’s programme is based around weather – I can’t wait! I have attended these previously, both in-person and online, and they are really excellent. Whilst you are on the website, it might also be worth checking out some of their other live-streamed concerts; the ones I am most looking forward to seeing (streamed) is with Gweneth Ann Rand (soprano) & Simon Lepper (piano)
8-14 year olds: Royal Opera House, Covent Garden, Create and Learn
There is a world of fabulous activities for all ages on the Royal Opera House’s website, however, I have chosen the activity ‘Riddle Me This’ from their Tall tales section. It combines everything I love about creative music education – using words and voice to create music, as well as being completely silly! Riddle Me This is based on the Grimms fairy tale ‘Hansel and Gretel’ – the opera is a pretty good watch for older children too.
8 + ‘Jina and the STEM Sisters’
Jina and the STEM Sisters is a new musical puppet show, which tells the story of key STEM women who empower Jina, a lost child, and would-be-scientist Jina with the gifts of curiosity, courage, creativity, persistence, and open-mindedness. These gifts help her find her way through the forest and become the best scientist she can be. I have been fortunate enough to see sneak previews of some of this new work and it’s going to be AMAZING! So many of these women’s stories have been hidden for too long. It is available worldwide and also has the option of subtitles if English isn’t your first language.
All Ages – ‘Remembering the Oscars’
My daughter (4.5) and I were addicted to watching ‘Strictly Come Dancing’ last autumn, true family fun. Really excitingly, two of the professionals (Aljaz and Janette) have released this one-hour production featuring wonderful songs, dances, and legendary stars! This is going to be a big event in our house – I foresee sparkly dresses and jewels galore, and that’s just my daughter!!
One for the Adults! Amadeus – National Theatre
This is one of THE shows of 2019, and thanks to the National Theatre, you have the opportunity to catch up. Tickets were rarer than hares teeth to this production, and it truly deserved all the attention it received. The score and play were equally rich, and the musicians (both singers and instrumentalists) were absolutely fantastic. I thoroughly recommend it!! The NT has lots of other plays available for rent as well – you are truly spoilt for choice, although none of them are particularly family-friendly!
Do you know of any great online streaming theatre and music events? Let us know if the comments below! We would love to add them to our list!
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Responses
Here are two more online musical events from the Southern Hemisphere for you: Bushfire is Eswatini’s (formerly Swaziland’s) premier music festival, bringing together artists from across Africa and beyond. We went several times with our young son when we were living nearby and had a great time. This year they are offering a virtual event.
The Teatro Colon in Buenos Aires has been streaming a whole catalog of productions including their kid-friendly performances. For Spanish speakers, they have a bunch of online activities for kids including games around composing and conducting, creating sets and more.
Those sound fantastic – there are so many to choose from that it was actually very difficult to narrow it down to just 5! I will look those up – thank you.