various: classroom projects

Trunk presents a beautiful compilation of rare and brilliant music made by children in schools. The album features some incredible sounds -- from charming folk songs to full blown avant-garde experiments. Many of these recordings are exceptionally scarce (some selling for close to £1000 these days) and it's unlikely anyone will have heard any of these since they were first recorded. Recordings made by British children are hardly ever heard. Over the last few decades some schools went to the trouble of privately pressing their own LPs for plays, concerts or celebration -- and with very mixed results. Jonny Trunk has collected these scarce UK recordings and compiled the very best ones for Classroom Projects, the first collection of its kind, presenting recordings made between 1959 and 1981. As well as excellent small group versions of traditional songs, there are specially written instrumentals, covers of Italian composer Scarlatti and even songs about drunk driving. Also, we have work encouraged by John Paynter, a free-thinker, educator and true maverick. Part of the University Of York music department, he not only believed that music lessons at school were of the upmost importance, but he also introduced pupils to the modern composers of the post-war period (such as Stockhausen). So instead of music lessons with a group of pupils all blowing the same basic tune on recorders, he encouraged experimentation with tape machines, haiku and creative thought. As a result, some of the recordings on this album sound like conceptual music from Paris in the late '50s, and not from secondary schools in Bedford in 1969. Overall the compilation brings together some inspired musical moments, some unexpected oddness as well as a warm rush of nostalgia as the small choir from St. Brandon's School (now closed) sing "Bright Eyes."