Jacqueline Wilson’s Wonderful World

A PDF version of this programme can be viewed here:

Alan Langford
Galop from ‘A Little French Suite’

Igor Stravinsky
Circus Polka

Keisha White
Someday – Theme from ‘The Story of Tracy Beaker’

Kevin Sargent
Theme from ‘My Mum Tracy Beaker’

Mason Bates
Nymphs from ‘Anthology of Fantastic Zoology’

Julius Fučík
Entrance of the Gladiators

Anna Clyne
Masquerade

Einojuhani Rautavaara
Melankolia from ‘Cantus arcticus’

Hans Christian Lumbye
Copenhagen Steam Railway Galop 

Dani Harmer Tracy Beaker
Emma Maggie DaviesJess Beaker
Isabel CliftonHetty Feather
Chloe LeaKaty Carr
Dame Jacqueline Wilsonreader
Mei-Ann Chen conductor

There will be no interval

This concert will be broadcast by CBBC in December and also by BBC Radio 3 (on 31 December at 7.30pm) and Radio 4 (edited, on Christmas Day). These will be available on BBC iPlayer and BBC Sounds for 30 days after broadcast.

Welcome to Jacqueline Wilson’s Wonderful World! Jacqueline Wilson believes that anything can tell a story – music included. Lots of composers, especially the ones we’ll hear today, are really good at conjuring up faraway places using magical sounds. As you listen to their music, you can go on a journey with them in your imagination. So prepare to set off on a musical adventure that will take you from the Arctic Circle to the Roman arena to a circus and a masked ball – with a detour to Denmark for a ride on a steam train! Along the way, we’ll meet some of your favourite characters from Jacqueline Wilson’s brilliant books, including the courageous Hetty Feather – and, of course, Tracy Beaker.

You’ll have heard of superheroes who have a normal day job as well as a secret hero identity. But did you know that they really exist? Alan Langford was one of them! His real name was Alan Owen and he was known as a BBC music producer. Then, in his spare time, he would put on his composing cape and become Alan Langford, composer extraordinaire. He wrote lots of light, charming orchestral music, like this mischievous ‘Galop’ from A Little French Suite.

Look around and you’ll probably notice that people in the audience are on their best behaviour (at least, I hope they all are!). Russian composer Igor Stravinsky wasn’t always so lucky: at the first performance of his ballet The Rite of Spring, the audience caused a kerfuffle because they were so shocked by the newness of what they heard and saw! Stravinsky was one of the most important composers of the 20th century, inventing colourful sounds like a scientist in a laboratory. But he wrote his Circus Polka as a bit of a joke, for a ballet featuring 50 ballerinas and 50 elephants – all dressed in pink tutus!

Once in a while a musician writes a piece of music that stays in the memory of almost everyone who hears it. What’s their secret? Is it hours of hard work? Or a flash of inspiration? Perhaps it’s a little bit of both … Keisha White’s Someday (the theme tune to The Story of Tracy Beaker) is one of those songs – Stormzy called it ‘one of the most prominent pieces of Black British music’. Singer-songwriter Keisha White grew up in London and was already working as a musician by the time she was a teenager!

Next time you watch TV, try to imagine what the show or film would be like with no music, just the actors talking. Would it be as exciting? Would that bit that makes your eyes go really wide because you can’t believe what’s happening be … a bit boring? Music is one of the best ways we can create different moods, and this is something British composer Kevin Sargent understands really well. He’s written music for loads of films and TV programmes, including My Mum Tracy Beaker.

Mason Bates is an American composer and DJ who has an exciting and unusual approach to writing music. He once said that he always tries to ‘bring something fresh into the concert hall’, and he likes to include puzzles and games in his pieces. Bates enjoys mixing different musical styles into a bubbling potion of sound: electronics, jazz, techno and classical. Some of his creations are really funny as well, especially the crazy creatures in his Anthology of Fantastic Zoology! These creatures include ‘Nymphs’, the nature goddesses from ancient Greece.

Julius Fučík played in marching bands, so it will come as no surprise that many of his own pieces were written for similar groups. Fučík was a Czech musician who grew up in Prague, where he learnt to play the bassoon, with its lovely, deep sound, and had composition lessons with the most famous Czech composer of them all: Antonín Dvořák. Fučík was fascinated by the history of the Roman Empire, which inspired his most famous piece, the Entrance of the Gladiators.

Anna Clyne is from the UK but now lives in the USA. She started writing music when she was very young – at the age of 7! – and likes to encourage and support young composers as part of her work. Clyne once said that ‘musical compositions are living, breathing things’ because she loves to hear the way her music changes with each performance, as though it has a life of its own. Written for the Last Night of the Proms in 2013, her Masquerade recaptures the secret thrill of a masked ball.

Finnish composer Einojuhani Rautavaara believed that writing music is a bit like gardening: he loved the way musical ideas can develop and blossom into something beautiful, like flowers or plants. But he didn’t like things to be too neat, and he said that his music is like an English garden: ‘freely growing’. Rautavaara liked to bring the natural world into his pieces as well, and his Cantus arcticus (or ‘Arctic Song’) uses recordings of birdsong from the icy Arctic Circle.

Hans Christian Lumbye was from Denmark and wrote some of the most popular dance music of his time: popping polkas, wonderful waltzes and giddying galops that would leave the dancers out of breath! As a teenager he played the trumpet in an army band, and later he worked at the Tivoli Gardens in Copenhagen – one of the oldest amusement parks in the world. Lumbye liked to entertain people with fun pieces like the fizzing Champagne Galop or this chugging Copenhagen Steam Railway Galop.

^{Programme note © Joanna Wyld
Joanna Wyld is a writer on music whose work embraces a broad spectrum of eras and styles. She has won awards for her creative writing and has written family concert notes for the BBC Symphony Orchestra, BBC National Orchestra of Wales and Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra.}

Biographies

Mei-Ann Chen conductor

Taiwanese-American conductor Mei-Ann Chen has been Music Director of the Chicago Sinfonietta since 2011. This season she also became Chief Conductor of the Austrian orchestra Recreation – Grosses Orchester Graz. In addition, she is Artistic Partner of Houston’s ROCO (River Oaks Chamber Orchestra), Artistic Director and Conductor of the National Taiwan Symphony Orchestra Summer Festival and Conductor Laureate of the Memphis Symphony Orchestra, having served as its Music Director from 2010 to 2016. To date she has conducted more than 110 orchestras worldwide.

Highlights of this season include return engagements to the Helsinki and Oslo Philharmonic orchestras, Liechtenstein Symphony Orchestra and Het Residentie Orkest (the Hague), and debuts with the Santa Fe Pro Musica and Spain’s Basque National Orchestra. She will also make her debuts with the New York Philharmonic and San Francisco Symphony, adding to previous US conducting engagements with the Baltimore, Cincinnati, Chicago, Houston, Indianapolis, Oregon, San Diego, Seattle, Toronto, Tucson and Vancouver Symphony Orchestras.

Dame Jacqueline Wilson reader

Jacqueline Wilson wrote her first novel when she was 9 years old and she has been writing ever since. She is now one of the UK’s bestselling and most beloved children’s authors. She has written over 100 books and is the creator of characters such as Tracy Beaker and Hetty Feather. More than 40 million copies of her books have been sold. 

As well as winning many awards for her books, including the Children’s Book of the Year, Jacqueline Wilson is a former Children’s Laureate, and in 2008 she was made a Dame. She is also a keen reader and has amassed over 20,000 books, along with her famous collection of silver rings.

Isabel Clifton Hetty Feather

Isabel studied at the Singer Stage School, Leigh-on-Sea, from the ages of 10 to 18. She is now in her second year at the Urdang Academy in London.

She took on the role of Hetty aged 10 and has played the role in all six series of Hetty Feather,
as well as in The Christmas Adventure.

She has also appeared in the lead role of Riley in the short film Honey.

Emma Maggie Davies Jess Beaker

Emma is 11 years old and has been acting since the age of 6 in local productions including Fiddler on the Roof, Matilda and Annie. 

In 2019 she took up the role of Jess Beaker in CBBC’s My Mum Tracy Beaker. She has also recently completed filming The Beaker Girls with Dani Harmer. 

Emma has also previously appeared in the short film Lavender, for which she won Best Young Actress at Prodigy Film Festival.

In her spare time she loves to bake, make jewellery and sing with her elder brother Tom in his band. She also loves to read Jacqueline Wilson books! Her favourites are My Sister Jodie, Little Darlings and My Mum Tracy Beaker.

Dani Harmer Tracy Beaker

Dani played Tracy in The Story of Tracy Beaker, Tracy Beaker Returns and My Mum, Tracy Beaker.
In 2010 she won the Children’s BAFTA for Best Drama. Dani’s Castle was created in 2012, offering Dani her first opportunity as producer, aged 23.

Other roles include Molly Venables in three series of After You’ve Gone and Young Jo Brand in Little Crackers, as well as appearances in Trial and Retribution, My Family, Pie in the Sky, The 10th Kingdom, Beast, Touch Me, I’m Karen Taylor,The Beeps and Coming of Age.

Aside from being a contestant in Let’s Dance for Sports Relief and in Strictly Come Dancing, she has starred in panto productions, played Janet in the 40th-anniversary UK tour of The Rocky Horror Picture Show and played Viola in Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night. In 2013 she opened The Dani Harmer Academy of Performing Arts in Ascot, Berkshire, for children aged 6 to 18; she is also an Ambassador for the Make-a-Wish Foundation.

Chloe Lea Katy Carr

Chloe is 15 years old and lives in Manchester, where she studies at the Salford TV Workshop and A Will and A Way Theatre School.

She is currently a series regular in Apple TV’s Foundation. She has also appeared in The Dumping Ground and Scott & Bailey.

In 2018 she was awarded a Young Perfomer BAFTA for her performance in the title-role of the TV series Katy, based on Jacqueline Wilson’s book. 

In the same year she won the Monologue Slam UK Youth Round and was named the Royal Television Society’s North West Best Breakthrough Talent, as well as being nominated for the Royal Television Society Best Breakthrough Talent Award.