MiSST Concert held at the Drury Lane Theatre -April 24th (Photo by kind permission of Andy Paradise – Paradise/PhOtO)
Ed: W. Bro Michael Le Gray PSGD sent this report on a very worthwhile cause which has the support of his Lodge.
Despite its title, The Lodge of Harmony No 255 was not conceived as a musical lodge, ‘Harmony’ alluding to the fraternal fellowship within our Lodges. Nevertheless, there has long been a thought that we might use this misapprehension for charitable purposes in some way by encouraging musical attainment for pupils in our schools.
When a news item was spotted lauding the endeavours of the Music in Secondary Schools Trust (MiSST), which provides musical instruments and lessons to schools with a proportion of students from deprived backgrounds, who otherwise might never have such opportunity, research revealed that MiSST was about to celebrate its tenth anniversary.
Founded jointly by the Charles Wolfson Charitable Trust and Andrew Lloyd Webber Foundation, the Trust currently works with over thirty state schools, with some eighty more on the waiting list, for pupils to learn an instrument (donated by MiSST) through personal tuition, and play in groups, bands or small orchestras, resulting in remarkable improvement in learning skills, personal conduct, confidence and sense of fulfilment, and much improved grades in other key subjects. In other words, life changing enhancements.
Some 20,000 students have benefitted to date and, as charitable donations permit, will be expanded throughout the country. Seven of these present beneficiary schools are located in the historic masonic Province of Middlesex, The Lodge of Harmony proposed to the Middlesex Province Relief Fund that they jointly donate £500 each to mark this amazing milestone, with immediate support being offered.
The anniversary two-hour concert was held at The Theatre Royal, Drury Lane to a packed house on 24th April 2023. Three hundred children, some with impediments, embraced primarily classical orchestrations ranging from Handel, Rachmaninov, Vivaldi and Beethoven to Ellington, with many impressive solo performances, and, of course, Andrew Lloyd Webber who joined the ensemble on stage to lead them, at the piano, with ‘Any Dream Will Do’, which so perfectly reflected the many hopes and dreams of those young people that came true that evening.
So, if anyone in Middlesex is aware of a school struggling to achieve, perhaps this may provide a potential solution which all Middlesex masons can lend their name to.
See also- https://www.misst.org.uk/
Photo by kind permission of Andy Paradise – Paradise/PhOtO)
Photo by kind permission of Andy Paradise – Paradise/PhOtO)
Photo by kind permission of Andy Paradise – Paradise/PhOtO)
