In the weeks leading up to the festival, the students have taken part in an extended workshop process, exploring contemporary repertoire and working closely with the music. Several workshop sessions have allowed the young musicians to prepare the pieces in depth – and to experiment creatively with the concert format itself.
The programme brings together works from the Educate·S series for trumpet, horn, cello, percussion, violin, clarinet, and piano, with music by composers including Fuzzy, Mette Nielsen, Ejnar Kanding, Pernille Louise Sejlund, Nicolai Worsaae, Ib Nørholm, and Morten Olsen.
In addition, some of the students have composed their own ensemble pieces, inspired by the works they are performing. The final programme will therefore be shaped as a sequence of new musical constellations, where the students themselves experiment with how the music is presented and realised in concert.
Pernille Louise Sejlund and Nicolai Worsaae will attend the final workshops leading up to the performance and will collaborate with the students, offering artistic feedback on the music, interpretations, and concert format.
About Educate·S
Educate·S is a series developed by Edition·S featuring instrumental solo works written specifically for music school students. Each volume contains ten pieces by ten contemporary composers, developed in dialogue with an editorial team and music school teachers to ensure that the music suits the intended performers.
Since the first two volumes for piano and violin were published in 2016, the series has expanded to include music for percussion, guitar, accordion, cello, recorder, and viola, creating a substantial body of new repertoire for young musicians.
The initiative was conceived by composer Østen Mikal Ore, who explains:
“The idea behind Educate·S is to revive and renew the historical tradition - from Bach to Bartók - of composers writing directly for young students. The aim is to create a bridge between larger artistic works and smaller teaching pieces, without compromising the artistic ambition of the music.”
For Ore, it is equally important that young musicians encounter music from their own time:
“Children and young people relate naturally to their own contemporary world - from literature to architecture and digital culture. They should not be deprived of the imaginative sounds and musical worlds that open up when today’s composers create new music.”
Through workshops and concerts like the one in Holstebro, the series creates a rare meeting point between living composers and young performers, allowing students to engage directly with the music, its ideas, and the people who wrote it.