Unique musical project forpupils

A Paisley school has signed up to a musical project orchestrated by Scotland’s national music school.

Paisley Grammar School is taking part in a unique peerto-peer, school-to-school musical project orchestrated by Scotland’s national music school.

This is in partnership with professional musicians, composers and Scottish author and poet Alexander McCall Smith.

A two-year cultural endeavour, The Seven Hills Project is run by St Mary’s Music School and brings together the literary genius of Mr McCall Smith.

Having originated in Edinburgh, the project is now expanding into secondary schools outside the capital through workshops and performance, where pupils can develop their musical ideas into compositions that take their inspiration from a more local landmark.

Once complete, the pupils’ work will be performed and recorded by the young musicians of St Mary’s Music School.

From this month through to the end of the year, pupils from Paisley Grammar will attend a series of online and live compositional workshops with Scots composer Jay Capperauld, who created the inaugural work for the Seven Hills Project based on Arthur’s Seat, alongside St Mary’s Music School head of strings and director of the Seven Hill’s Project, Valerie Pearson, Music School senior pupils.

Gerard Hennan, who teaches music and music technology at Paisley Grammar, said: “As a department, we are always looking for new ways to engage our young people in composition.

“Many of the pupils come from different musical backgrounds which, in itself, provides a diverse array of ideas and stimuli.

“However, this will be the first time that many of them have had the opportunity to compose and hear their ideas performed live by likeminded peers.