“On Wednesday 10 October I was lucky enough to be asked to play in the Royal Albert Hall for the National Schools’ Primary Proms. As part of my studies at the Royal College of Music on Saturdays, I play with an octet which is super friendly and something I have never done before so I was hugely excited to be able to make my debut performance at the RAH with them. The Primary Proms is run by Music for Youth, which aims to “provide young people across the UK with free, life-changing performance and progression opportunities, regardless of background or musical style”. I hadn’t really appreciated the scale of the project until I bumped into some children who had travelled all the way from Scotland to see the prom!
During our sound check (which was way too early in the morning) we were all miked up and I was very shocked when I turned around to see my face projected across the two, huge screens at the back of the stage. At first the hall seems intimidating as it is such an enormous space but when it fills up (especially with 5000 chatty children), the atmosphere blows you away. We did two performances of “Scenes from Porgy and Bess” and were really pleased with both, however I think the highlight for most of us was showing the children our instruments at the end and seeing if they could guess what they were called. For me, this was probably a once in a lifetime experience and I don’t think I’ll ever manage to perform to 9000 people in one day again!”