THE Anvil Arts Educational Programme should be emulated and swept out across the country.

The young people of Basingstoke and Hampshire are so fortunate that there is an Anvil.

The Hampshire Music Service is considered to be one of the best in the country and this, together with the work being initiated by Anvil Arts, gives our young people such an advantage.

I was very conscious of this when I went to see Mandela in Mind, a musical collaboration between Anvil Arts, Testbourne Community School and North Waltham, Overton and Whitchurch primary schools.

The teachers in these schools are to be congratulated on the way they have supported this project, which has been of such benefit to their pupils.

Howard Moody, composer, conductor and project leader, led an amazing band of musicians – Adrian Zolotuhin, Zara McFarlane, Tunde Jegede, Ken Also and Buster Birch – and they, together with artistic producer Rebekah Bernstein, gave us an unforgettable creatively inspiring evening.

The starting point was the poem Invictus by English poet William Henley; this was the poem Mandela used to recite whilst imprisoned. The original songs were created by the performers themselves during five workshops and blended with traditional songs associated with Nelson Mandela. For everyone connected with this project, it was especially powerful as most of the material was created before Mandela’s death.

Three of the schools were dressed in multi-coloured T-shirts creating a rainbow effect typical of the African nation as a whole. One school only was dressed in white shirts and they were chosen to recite the poem at the beginning sotto voce after a very long high-pitched note. It was eerie but startlingly effective.

The music that followed, composed by different groups, was truly beautiful and it was a question of how do you follow that - with a Japanese virtuoso playing a J S Bach violin solo maybe? Of course - absolute perfection.

Then we had four pieces inspired by the life and example of Nelson Mandela. This is where I really admired the way singer Zara McFarlane called each choir forward with a gentle wave of the hand; the children got up slowly and quietly and walked from their tiered seating as a group to the front of the stage -  certainly the most effective, yet simple, way of organizing a large choir.

Zara then led them in a spirited version of Down By the Riverside and she followed this with Caged Bird which she sang solo – this and Tunde Jegede playing on the kora were little gems of musicianship.

The finale began with the spiritual Wade in the Water which the youngsters clearly enjoyed, followed by Nkosi Sikelele Africa, one of the best national anthems, and, with Howard Moody on the Bechstein grand piano leading the musicians and singers, they sang sincerely and proudly. 

No African child could have sung it more proudly but these boys and girls were from rural Hampshire! They were, of course, singing it with all their hearts for children less well-off than themselves.

All proceeds from the programme go to partner schools in Mityana, Uganda.

Hannah Williams