Stories, Sites, and Sounds: The Making Of

Twelve members of the Chineke! Junior Orchestra created three new pieces of music, celebrating cultural diversity, our collective heritages, and diversity in classical music. The pieces are inspired by historical figures from Kenwood House and Osborne House, whose stories are lesser-known.

In groups we created original pieces of music, about the lives of Dido Belle, Abdul Karim, and Sarah Forbes-Bonetta, working with Shout Out Loud, composer James B. Wilson, and Chineke! Orchestra musicians – violinist Charlotte Barbour-Condini, clarinettist Anton Clarke and trumpeter Gabriel Dias.

James helped us to plan our musical ideas and shape the music using a visual graphic score on Jamboard, whilst the Chineke! Orchestra musicians helped us to shape the performance, technical quality and expression of the music we composed. 

Nearly all of the creative and collaborative work was done remotely as we still couldn’t get together in person. We only had one or two live rehearsals together before the final filmed recording at Kenwood House!

Sharing notes on Abdul Karim's life, we worked out which bits of his story we would like to tell, and that the composition would be based on an Indian Raga scale – a pattern of notes from Classical Indian music. 

Focussing on the emotions Abdul may have experienced during his time with Queen Victoria, we created several ‘scenes’. These formed the basis of our piece: Abdul’s arrival in England, his friendship with the Queen, tensions in the Royal household, and his loss of status.

We wanted to capture Dido’s proud character and her voyage by sea from the British West Indies to England. In this group Jamaal, brought together all of our different musical ideas into one score which is rich in ideas and a true musical journey! 

It starts by exploring the influences of Caribbean music, especially calypso, then evokes a storm at sea, followed by a sailor’s sea shanty and then, ending with an arrangement of Joseph Bologne, Chevalier de Saint-George’s, Symphony No.1.

Inspired by Sarah Forbes Bonetta’s reluctance to get married, and the wedding march by Queen Victoria’s favourite composer Felix Mendelssohn’s, we created an alternative wedding march, bringing Mendelssohn’s together with contemporary Afrobeat music to reference Sarah’s African roots.

The piece ends with a slow and despondent bass solo bringing a sad conclusion to what should have been a joyous wedding day.


Mejedi, who plays trumpet in our group, brought the whole score and our creative ideas together and was the principal composer of the music.