The Bridgewater Hall offered music students and early music enthusiasts the chance to take part in a workshop on Purcell's The Fairy Queen with Philip Pickett and the New London Consort.

In February 2011, the New London Consort visited The Bridgewater Hall with their exciting interpretation of Purcell’s Fairy Queen, directed by Mauricio Garcia Lozano. The Learning and Participation department also offered local students the chance to work with Philip, Mauricio and harpsichordist David Roblou in workshops at the Bridgewater Hall, exploring performance practice and staging, early music notation, and the company's approach to their current production.

The event was attended by both participants - mainly solo singers from RNCM and Huddersfield University - and audience members interested in observing how Philip and Mauricio led the workshop.  Each participating student prepared an extract from The Fairy Queen and performed it individually, with leaders working with each of them in turn to improve their staging, musicality and understanding of its content.

In the afternoon, the group sat down to discuss how to 'crack the code' of early music notation - or lack of it.  Today's composers have the notational means to convey almost every expressive nuance of their works, but Baroque scores contain little more than the notes, relying on the performer's musicianship, knowledge, understanding and taste to bring the music to life.

Performers must delve ever more deeply into the musical conventions, techniques and philosophies of the past if they are truly to understand and rediscover something of the distant sound-worlds of Monteverdi, Purcell, Bach and their contemporaries... and do full justice to the brilliant and passionate masterpieces they created.

Students and audience members were keen for more events like this to take place at the Hall, and found the entire day an essential boost to the development of their own performance.  They left the day eager to try out Philip and Mauricio's tips and approaches in their own work, and to look out for clues to the creative process in the following week's performance of The Fairy Queen.