Blog on Cupp seminar: Orchestral music making and its real impact with Andy Sherwood

This week we hosted Andrew Sherwood for a well-attended seminar on music-making and its relationship to wellbeing. Andrew is Professor of Violin at Trinity Laban Conservatoire of Music & Dance and conductor of many ensembles, including the Brighton Youth Orchestra. He shared his wealth of national and international experience as a violinist and conductor, through which he has supported many young people and witnessed the impact of orchestral music making. Andrew took us through a brief history of the orchestra and its current composition of instruments that creates a perfect vehicle for all musical arrangements and collaborations. This sparked some interesting discussion around what the future of the orchestra looks like, including the relationship with digital music.

Andrew also spoke to the growing research body around the impact of of music and its relationship to wellbeing. We have certainly witnessed a growing interest locally in this relationship with many local groups focusing on music-making such as Open Strings and Audio-Active. This year our CUPP seed fund is supporting a collaboration between New Note Orchestra, the first ‘recovery’ orchestra in the world and Arts & Humanities academic Conall Gleeson.

The university has a longstanding partnership with the Brighton Youth Orchestra, which rehearses at our Falmer site every week. There are possibilities for further collaborations, such as with students on our Digital Music & Sound Arts course, some of whom attended the seminar. We look forward to seeing what these collaborations around music may bring…