Events in Giardini Naxos – Naxos Park, from London the orchestra of the Hillingdon Music Hub

EVENTS AT GARDENS NAXOS

Fifty students from London's Hillingdon Music Hub are arriving in Sicily for an award trip that includes three concerts with free admission. The school annually prepares young musicians for the UK Conservatory and top orchestras. The first will be hosted by the Naxos Taormina Archaeological Park, Thursday 14 July, at the Nike Theater, The exhibition will be open to the public from 19.30. Letojanni's shows will follow (15 July, Piazza Cagli, h. 19.30) and Acireale, Sunday 17, in the Parish of Saints Cosma and Damiano (ore 20, provincial road to Santa Maria Ammalati 155).

Conducting the orchestra arriving in Sicily will be M ° Melvyn Care whose "baton" has led various ensembles at the Royal Albert Hall and the Royal Festival Hall in London. “We welcomed with sincere enthusiasm - commented Gabriella Tigano, director of Naxos Taormina Archaeological Park - the proposal to host in Naxos the young London orchestra that returns to live music in Sicily after the restrictions of the pandemic. For them the charm of the archaeological site of the first colony of the Greeks in Sicily and the Nike Theater, a stage between the sea and Etna ".

THE PROGRAM

Hillingdon's program is particularly inclusive, with a repertoire of contemporary music arranged for the orchestra and including film soundtracks, musicals and pop songs. Among these the songs of "Jersey Boys", Clint Eastwood film about the history of the Four Seasons, rock group of the sixties. And then the Abba, i Blues Brothers, Overbearing, Chicago and many other songs that accompanied the cinema of the last part of the twentieth century and entered pop culture. Hillingdon Music Hub students start playing around 8 years, are placed in junior groups and, crescendo, in increasingly professional ensembles.

The best students continue their musical studies at the Conservatory and at the University until they find a place in orchestras in the United Kingdom and abroad. The award trip to Sicily comes after the two-year pandemic during which young London musicians continued to study with weekly online sessions. Today, in Sicily, they finally return to making ensemble and live music.

By car you can reach the Nike Theater in Giardini Naxos from Villa Maria in about 20 minutes.