Rig in action
Watch The Rig in action at festivals and events, and read some of our past blogs to get a better sense of what Play The Rig is all about. Over the years, we have worked on education projects as BBC Ten Pieces champions and alongside London Symphony Orchestra, Great Ormond Street Hospital, CBeebies and BBC Philharmonic Orchestra.
In action with...
Stephen Hawking School and the LSO
CBeebies "Show Me Show Me"
Festivals
Community events
Blog Posts
BBC Ten Pieces schools workshop tour 2014 What an exciting adventure we’ve just had! Funded by the generous people at Arts Council England, we have visited 10 schools across South London over the last 6 weeks and conducted wacky musical workshops based around the fabulous BBC’s Ten Pieces project that aims to encourage a generation of children to get creative with classical music. We took 5 of the published Ten Pieces and together learnt about their composers, instruments, melodies, rhythms and fun facts! We used our Bells Mini Rig to play the tunes of Grieg’s ‘In the hall of the mountain king’; Beethoven’s ‘Fifth Symphony’ and Mozart’s ‘Horn Concerto No.4’; we used our improved Rhythm Mini Rig to improvise storm sounds like in Britten’s ‘Storm from Peter Grimes’; we learnt facts about all 5 pieces by playing games using our bespoke playing cards; we learnt the scary and thrilling stories of Stravinsky’s ‘Firebird’ and the Grieg by playing a quiz; and we heard the beautiful melody of the Stravinsky through our *NEW* Music Box Mini Rig which has 1940’s car horn ear trumpets at each end…..and all of this in an hour…. pheeeew!! But that’s not all… our website now has 3 more ‘How To…’ video guides for everyone to watch and you can see a video that shows us leading the workshops in Plumstead School! Even if you didn’t participate in the workshops, have a look and try making yourself an instrument at home – what about a home made Hosepipe Horn?!
BBC Ten Pieces schools tour, spring 2015 We were so thrilled so received a second round of funding from Arts Council England to work on part two of the BBC Ten Pieces project. In autumn 2014 we had put together a schools tour that covered five of the ten pieces and this second tour enabled us to run workshops covering the other five pieces. We used the same set up as last time but with some new Rig adaptations from our fabulous new Blacksmith, Steve. In the workshops the children learnt about programmable music boxes and bone conduction as we played ‘Zadok The Priest’ by Handel through our Music Box Mini Rig. On the hand bells we looked at ‘Night On A Bare Mountain’ by Mussorgsky (we all practiced our Russian accents saying his name!) and ‘Mars’ by Holst. The children learnt that the thickness of the metal changes the pitch of the bell. We covered ‘Short Ride In A Fast Machine’ by John Adams and other general musical questions in the ‘Pairs’ playing cards game. The children remembered facts that they had read on the cards and we talked about these later in the workshop. Lastly, we composed our own body percussion piece, inspired by Anna Meridith’s ‘Connect It’. The children created their own sounds and movements within the piece and with the older children we added the idea of a musical canon. They were all so thrilled that they had created their own piece of music, and were excited to carry this on with their friends in the playground. Phew! Well done everyone involved – another successful Rig tour!
BBC Ten Pieces Tour 2017 – what an adventure! What an adventure we had during March and April continuing our work with BBC Ten Pieces. With Arts Council England funding, we visited 9 schools in South London as well as Steven Hawking SEN school in east London and Great Ormond Street hospital school. During our workshops we went on a scary journey with Peer Gynt to the Hall of the Mountain King and then became soldiers from Mars preparing for war with The Planets by Gustav Holst! We brought our Music Boxes Mini Rig and bespoke playing cards to help us to find out more about the pieces