Charity profile: Live Music Now
Live Music Now facilitates thousands of interactive music programmes every year in care homes, hospitals, special schools, and other community and healthcare settings. They work with a diverse range of people that rarely, if ever, have the opportunity to experience live music – some of whom are very disadvantaged. LMN selects young, professional musicians, who combine exceptional performing skills with special qualities of insight and spirit; they enhance the musicians’ skills through training and a distinctive and sensitive approach to performance, and send them out into the community to perform for older people and children with special educational needs across the UK.
Taking part in regular music-making is not only enjoyable for children, but has been proven to make a major contribution to their learning, social and personal development – from developing conversational skills and teamwork, to improving concentration, motor skills, creativity and self-confidence. Live Music Now is one of the few music organisations to offer bespoke activities for children and young people whose access to live music is restricted due to special educational needs and disabilities (SEND). Everyday activities which others take for granted can pose major challenges: communicating with people around, expressing feelings, joining in a group activity. In each of these respects music can transform people’s ability to respond, and for many of the children LMN works with now, the performances and workshops will have been their first experience of live music.
When I’m not on a crazy nation-wide Bach project, one of the other hats I wear is running the New Paths Music festival. One of our proudest achievements at New Paths has been our collaboration with Frederick Holmes special school in Hull: the euphoria of the children there in performing music they had created alongside our professionals; the pride they and their families took from being at the heart of a large music festival; and the skill and dedication of the staff at the school were utterly inspiring. It brought home to me the critical importance of music in these children’s lives, and the very real practical and educational barriers that often prevent this. The need for expertise and training in working in this environment is so apparent. My own fleeting insight into this huge world is what prompted me to support the incredible work that Live Music Now does.
LMN also works in mainstream schools that don’t easily have access to live music, perhaps because of geographical isolation or economic barriers, as well as in a range of Early Years settings, and with music hubs across the country. But their work is not all with young people. The charity has been working for years to bring joy to older people through music sessions in hospitals and hospices, and in the community at large, combatting loneliness with programmes such as ‘Songs and Scones’. For patients living with terminal or life-limiting conditions, a regular programme of interactive music sessions can have therapeutic benefits and enhance quality of life; for people with mental health problems the experience of engaging with live music can be life-affirming and stimulating. The simple joy of listening to music can take the stress and worry out of hospital visits or give the morale of hospital staff a boost. The neurochemical benefits of music can boost the body’s immune system, reduce anxiety, and help regulate mood; the professional and scientific understanding of music’s power to influence body and mind is growing all the time.
Live Music Now works with around 320 musicians each year, and has undertaken over 80,000 workshops reaching over 2.8 million people. At the heart of LMN’s work is the training of young professional musicians to work in these fields: soloists or small groups are selected from a range of musical traditions – classical western music, world music, jazz, rock and folk – to join the scheme. The selected participants receive invaluable training and professional development in the field of music outreach, as well as paid performance opportunities across the country and the outset of their career, and experiences which are perhaps amongst the most musically enriching that there are. The charity states, “It is our role to inspire young professional musicians to use their talents for the benefit of those who are otherwise excluded from the joy of live music.” Live Music Now was dreamed up by legendary violinist Sir Yehudi Menuhin, combining his experiences performing during the Second World War with his abiding concern for the development of our most talented young musicians. Menuhin said, “Music, amongst all the great arts, is the language which penetrates most deeply into the human spirit, reaching people through every barrier, disability, language and circumstance. This is why it has been my dream to bring music back into the lives of those people whose lives are especially prone to stress and suffering… so that it might comfort, heal and bring delight.”
