Description
For decades the Grand Union has been foregrounding the lives, culture and musical heritage of some of the UK’s most underrepresented ethnic minority communities. Many live in London’s East End, where the company has always been based and worked, alongside its national and international touring commitments.
Our countless intergenerational, interfaith and cross-cultural projects bring people together, projecting a musical image of how Britain can be at its best: inclusive, creative, cohesive, tolerant; above all, its spirit animated by its rich cultural diversity.
Since the 1980s we have collaborated extensively with African-Caribbean, South Asian, Chinese, East European, West and South African and Latin American artists, giving voice to the communities from which they spring, expressing Britain’s ever-broadening demographic through large-scale music-theatre shows based around their experience and stories, many of them migrants themselves.
Fifteen years ago we also set up our own Youth Orchestra for young people to experience music-making outside the Western education model: playing by ear, responding to others, learning with experts from other traditions, embracing the energy and spontaneity of jazz. Nothing else quite like it is on offer to young musicians, and this integrated youth programme is regarded as a major innovation in the field of music education.
“Mainstream the Grand Union Youth Orchestra is not. Difference is to be celebrated here, not shied away from, it is rooted in the orchestra’s history and its current creative output. What makes GUYO so unique is that it encourages complete creativity. It is certainly an exhilarating environment to learn in.”
Local global harmony… it’s the Grand Union Orchestra way!
‘Pan-stylistic, pan-rhythmic, pan-cultural, pan-everything, Grand Union represents a unique and radical vision of multicultural Britain.’ (Duncan Heining – London Jazz News – June 2020)
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