FROM MY ROOM ORCHESTRA Trinity Laban YouTube channel

Early in lockdown, Trinity Laban launched a pioneering season of works created and performed by students and staff self-isolating at their homes around the world. Among the first major pieces they unveiled was a fabulous recital of Pachelbel’s beloved Canon In D by the string department’s aptly-named From My Room Orchestra. Their YouTube performance has since been seen almost 20,000 times.

Now the 29-piece ensemble has reconvened and joined forces with the internationally acclaimed Smith Quartet and three TL dancers to round off the conservatoire’s digital summer season with a truly wonderful take on a contemporary classic, Philip Glass’s great 1983 composition Company, which has been beautifully edited into a YouTube concert film by John-Marc Gowans.

The piece, written as a string quartet, has four short movements and lasts little more than eight minutes. But what joyful minutes they are!

TL’s head of strings and violist Nic Pendlebury and his Smith colleagues Ian Humphries and Rick Koster (violins) and cellist Deirdre Cooper play the opening bars before the youngsters join in in groups until all 29 are in full flight, their virtuosity enhanced by the onscreen dance interpretations of Federica Bertani, Laura Rønning Engholm and Hannah Thomas.

So hats off to violinists Emma Ariza, Pik Lee, Hannah Littlechild, Paris Rizaz Pintzopoulos, Daniel Pukach, Charlotte Richter, Anastasia Eloise Stahlmann, Zuriñe Corcobado, Maria Januszewska, Anna Kuzmina, Martha-Maria Mitu, Helena Mole, Gregory Scotland and Naomi Wilmshurst, violists Peter Fenech, Lucas Gomes de Freitas, Ivan Illingworth, Natalia Solis Paredes and Jessica Thorp, cellists Roxanna Albayati, Thibault Blanchard, Amelia Callard, Ludovico Colombo, Talia Erdal, Isabelle Gray, Eliane Soedirman and Daniel Springate and double bassists Jessica Price and Nathan Knight. They have helped to create a marvellous musical experience.

The film is now available on Trinity Laban’s YouTube channel along with many other pieces from the summer season. I can’t recommend it too highly.