Sharing the joy of music-making with everyone

Water City Music inspires young musicians to perform at striking venues across the UK.

Led by artistic director Michael Bochmann MBE, we bring together musicians across the whole spectrum of abilities and experiences to enjoy playing together, and learning from one another.

The impact of Covid-19

Since 2013, we have been known for our children’s music festivals in partnership with the Tower of London as well as local community events across South London. As these could not take place during the pandemic, we developed on line performance opportunities for children. These included the creation of two on-line choirs for children across the country, featuring over 1000 children, recorded in their homes and, laterly, in their school bubbles.

2021

In October 2021 we were able to bring back our live events, with 150 children performing at the Dragon Connects Festival at St George The Martyr Church (StGTM) Southwark. During the day, music students performed in nearby care homes.

Our first Classical Light concert took place at Northleach church in Gloucestershire in October 21 in partnership with Orchestra Pro Anima. 60 school children performed in this professional concert.

We set up an afterschool academy of music lessons at St George’s with students from Kings College London (KCL). Over 30 children per term benefit from these lessons.

Tower of London choir, also featured on Sky News:

‘Walking in a Winter Wonderland’ sung by 1000 children countrywide: 

2022

Our programme for 2022 aimed at bringing different generations together to perform. We held Classical Light events at Stow On The Wold, Leominster, Northleach and Burford. We continued to deliver community concerts for schools at StGTM, as well as a Dragon Connects event in November, as well as the KCL Academy tutoring. We also returned to the Tower Of London for the first time with several schools performing to visitors in December

We developed a set of music teaching resources for schools. Our first is now available on this website.

2023

This year we continue to look for opportunities to expand our programme whilst still delivering our historic events:
StGTM concerts, KCL Academy and Dragon Connects.
We will also increase our reach for Classical Light events, in Tetbury, Burford, Northleach, Malmesbury and Malvern.
We are working with several new partners to develop exciting opportunities which we hope to be able to share soon.

All Water City Music events are free for schools to take part.

We are grateful to all our partners and supporters, in particular Arts Council England for their support.