This blog post was first published on Ben Sellers’ Drake Music blog…
As a musician and workshop leader with an understanding of music as a process, a state of mind, and a tool for growth, I believe that focussing too much on the ‘final product’ of a project can sometimes be counter-productive. However, the #DM20 Commission, a composition written by and for deaf and hard of hearing adults and children, would be judged on it’s final product alone, and to be meaningful would need to use themes, musical material and musical intent generated by the participants themselves. Therefore, both the means and the end of the workshops needed to be original, engaging, and reflect the personalities of the participants.
The first step to success was to make sure the participants could make beautiful sounds quickly. There is, in my opinion, no better family of instruments suited to this task than tuned percussion – marimba, balafon, vibraphone etc. Fortunately, Drake Music’s Associate Musician Jenni Parkinson is a marimba specialist, and brought some of her collection into our improvised workshop space- the Drake Music London office…
