Darwin Ensemble

The Darwin Ensemble Chamber Orchestra is strongly committed to musical education and outreach. We are interested in working with education authorities and with individual schools and school music teachers to broaden and enrich musical experience for students, teachers and parents.

We can offer a range of opportunities from master classes for young instrumentalists (whether as individual players or in chamber groups) to performance practice workshops for school orchestras and conductors.

One of the areas we specialise in is workshops for young composers. Pieces written by school pupils are rehearsed in consultation with the composers themselves. These rehearsals are ideally open to whole classes rather than just the composers. We explore with the composers the interpretation of their musical ideas, together with technical details of performance practice, tempi, dynamics and timbre. This kind of detailed work can inspire young composers, and help them better to express their exact intentions on paper. Final ‘results’ are then performed—either informally or to a wider audience—and recorded for the composers’ use as exam submissions and/or composing portfolios.

We are also interested in ideas from teachers and music departments for how we might be useful in adding to the musical experience you provide for your students.

Thank you for providing our pupils with the opportunity to have their compositions worked on and performed by the Darwin Ensemble. It was such an enjoyable day for us all; the interaction between the composers and performers was positive, engaging and industrious … an exciting and rewarding experience. Sophie Buckingham: Music teacher at George Watson's College, Edinburgh

members of DECO returned to St Giles on March 19 for another workshop - this time a composition competition and workshop