Thursday, April 16, 2020

Llan music teacher plays in virtual orchestra performance



* The virtual orchestra in action.

A music teacher from Llangollen joined around of her counterparts from the UK and around the world for a unique online performance of a song aimed at lifting people’s spirits during lockdown.

Elan Mair Roberts, who runs two Flintshire youth choirs and has been musical director of countless smash-hit amateur productions around north Wales, joined in the virtual orchestral session playing her violin on Elbow’s One Day Like This.

It went out on Facebook at Easter and was repeated on ITV news a few days later.


* Elan Mair Roberts played her part.


* Music teacher Joe Austin whose idea the virtual orchestra was.  

She explained: “The man who organised it, Joe Austin, is a music teacher at The Priory School in Shrewsbury and is originally from Ellesmere in Shropshire.

“We first met when we worked together on a show three or four years ago.

“The way it worked is that he pre-recorded himself playing the drums and then we all in turn sent in our video and audio recordings from which he put it all together.

“People from as far away as Hong Kong joined in on it.”

Elen has been a peripatetic music teacher for just over 28 years, specialising in strings, piano and vocal training.

She runs both the Flintshire County Junior Choir and County Youth Choir and recently toured Tuscany with them.

Elen also formed a partnership to run a memory choir as part of the NHS mental health campaign and was recently nominated for a Betsi Cadwalader award for services to patient wellbeing through song.

On the local amateur stage scene she has been at various times musical director for Llangollen Operatic Society’s junior section the Young ‘Uns and also for the main society with their award-winning productions of Sister Act, The Producers and 9 to 5, which was nominated for an amateur stage “Oscar”. 

Apart from this Elen has been musical director for the Moreton Hall School productions of Grease, Little Shop of Horrors, School of Rock, The Addams Family and Chicago.

On top of this she formed Llangollen Youth Choir, and was also in charge of music for Llangollen's show choir Stage2Stage.

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