Performances and practice sessions have always been a part of life for members of the Bangalore School of Music’s Junior Orchestra, meeting as they did every Saturday with their conductor Grace Biswas to hone their musical abilities.
However, with the lockdown stretching indefinitely, the orchestra and their conductor decided to break the monotony with some music.
“When we decided to put up a song online, I wanted it to be something the audience would connect to as well as something my students would enjoy playing. We had performed ‘Viva La Vida’ by Coldplay earlier, but we chose it because the music itself has a lot of scope to incorporate the sounds of the violin, viola and cello,” says Grace.
“What mattered the most was its uplifting tune; the lyrics don’t play much of a part in this selection,” she says with a chuckle, adding, “Since we are a string orchestra, we only concentrated on the melody and the harmonies that were part of it. This was our first virtual video, so we wanted to try something popular that the students would feel happy creating.”
So over a period of three weeks, members of the junior orchestra comprising students from different grades and different levels of musical prowess worked on their rendition of ‘Viva La Vida’.
Grace who was appointed conductor of the junior orchestra last year, has over 20 years of experience in Western classical music and she plays the violin as well as the viola and cello.
“When I took over, I tried not to stick to only one particular genre but expand the repertoire of my students. So apart from classical music we also play some Hindi film and pop songs. ‘Viva la Vida’ (Spanish for ‘Long Live Life’) was also one way of saying the pandemic wouldn’t get us down,” she adds.
Grace credits her students for their hard work that is apparent in the video and Sam Job, the strings teacher at BSM, for the excellent way he put it all together. The orchestra is currently working on the Harry Potter theme among other musical pieces.