Worlds End Music

Welcome to Worlds End Music, an organisation set up to bring together local professional musicians with local music lovers.

Next concerts

Monday 29th May

3pm, Children’s Concert;

7pm, Evening Concert.

St Mary’s Church, Worlds End Lane.

A Walk in the Wood(wind)s!

Save the date – Worlds End Music is doing a bank holiday delight! A woodwind quartet (oboe, flute, clarinet and bassoon,) made up of local professional musicians will be putting on a double bill. A Children’s Concert at 3pm, designed to introduce young children to the wonderful world of woodwind instruments; and at 7pm, the usual format of an hour long concert with no interval. Both concerts will be held at St Mary’s Church, Worlds End Lane. (Please note, this is the church halfway up the hill, not the one at the bottom by the Shell garage!) We are lucky enough to be welcoming back Karen Jones, our very own Chelsfield-dwelling world-renowned flautist, alongside fabulous musicians Sarah Harper, oboe; Sarah Thurlow, clarinet and Jo Stark on bassoon. This should be a fascinating and lovely pair of concerts designed to entertain you on a late spring bank holiday. Come and walk in the world of Woodwinds!

A huge thank you goes to Gary Ryan, who played a truly wonderful evening concert last month, showing us the tremendous versatility of both his own artistry and the guitar itself. Worlds End Music has adopted a new financial model recently, with any profits from the concerts going to a charity of choice – thanks to Gary and you, the audience, we just made a donation of £832.26 to Peanut Ward, the paediatric ward at Queen Victoria Hospital, East Grinstead. The charity was chosen by Gary due to the care his daughter received there as a young child. Peanut Ward has written to express their gratitude and informed us that the donation will likely go towards either a virtual reality headset for children undergoing procedures, or their summer camp for kids who have suffered burns, or overcome some other physical trauma.

The idea for raising money for charity came to me after you, the audience, alongside my fellow professional musicians, raised £2,108 at our Concert for Ukraine. The financial model is that the musicians are paid (I can’t keep asking musicians to play for nothing – they have to earn a living after all!) and once expenses have been met, any remaining profit will be donated to a nominated charity. In this way we can continue to have world-class concerts but also make a difference to our community. The Christmas concerts donated £549 to the Bromley Food Bank and although the next concert is expensive to put on, so there won’t be a huge amout to donate, we are still going to try to raise some money for Bromley Better Beginnings – a charity which is currently raising money for an initiative called ‘A Healthy Home for Every Child’. Thanks to your audience support, we are not only able to put on world class concerts in the local area, but also make a difference to people’s lives.

INTRODUCTION

Long, long ago, before there was a worldwide pandemic, I had the desire to do some music-making close to home. The pandemic really brought this into focus. During the lockdown, deprived of our usual connections with audiences, many musicians played on our doorsteps and driveways after the Thursday evening ‘Clap for Carers’. The intimate joy of performing to a community of which you are a part is very special. Because of this experience, and with the extraordinary help and encouragement of Philippa Rooke, I set up an organisation to bring local professional musicians together with local music lovers. There are many fantastic professional musicians living in the area of Green Street Green, Chelsfield and Orpington so we don’t have to go far to find world-class music and bring it to your doors!

Worlds End Music is named after Worlds End Lane. This is the road where St Mary’s Church, one of our venues is found. Our other venue is St Martin of Tours in Chelsfield, which is found at the other end of Worlds End Lane, on Church Road. I walked down the lane many times during the pandemic, as I was pondering this new musical venture. I’ve named it with a smile, as it has felt slightly apocalyptic the past year or so! This little enterprise will do its best to counter the effects on your soul of the complicated times we’re living in and we hope you enjoy the concerts and wish to become involved.

Worlds End Music also has the desire to nurture local young talent and as a result, we aim to bring a Young Artist to feature in as many of our concerts as possible. Our first year celebrated the talents of recently graduated trumpet player Louis Barclay, from Green Street Green, violinist Scott Storey from Beckenham and talented young singer Jonathan Brookes. Scott has recently been appointed co-leader of the National Youth Orchestra and has won a place at the Royal College of Music to study joint viola and violin. Louis is going to be returning to Worlds End Music in the Autumn with his brass quintet, Cromwell Brass. Next year we will be inviting local young professional cellist, Henry Hargreaves, amongst others. Our recent charity event ‘Concert for Ukraine’ led to a slightly altered criteria and we went out of the area to invite accomplished young Ukrainian/British cellist, Nina Kiva, to play with us – with special permission from Sir Karl Jenkins, we performed the Benedictus from The Armed Man for reduced forces, with Nina as angelic-sounding soloist. Truly a special moment, with huge thanks to Sir Karl for his generosity.

With a rapidly growing audience who have demonstrated their desire for local, quality music-making, I think we’re safe to carry on with plans for next year! Huge thanks to all of you, our supporters and audience, for coming to concerts despite the threat of Covid; to the churches for hosting us and particularly to Phillippa Rooke – without her guiding hand this venture would never have got off the ground. If you would like to be kept informed of our future ventures, please enter your email below. If you would like to contact us, please email info@worldsendmusic.com If you’re not a fan of email, you can call 07971 440850. Worlds End Music currently has no funding – at some point we will look at charitable status and Friends, in order to better finance the venture but in the meantime we would be so grateful for your help in just spreading the word so we can grow our audience!

Rebecca Gilliver