For the fifth consecutive year, the Vivendi Create Joy Fund joined the crowd at the popular Music for Youth Proms in London’s Royal Albert Hall on November 23 to 25.
Vivendi’s solidarity program has supported Music for Youth, a British organization that encourages thousands of young people from disadvantaged neighborhoods to pursue personal growth through music, since 2009.
The Music for Youth Prom concerts showcase the impressive talents of some 3,000 of the UK’s most gifted young musicians in a mix of classical, folk, pop, traditional and rock music unseen in any other concert of its kind. Beat boxing singer Trey Qua joined Coda, a small vocal group made up of students 16-19 years old, for songs which they chose and arranged, and Voodoo Blood from Manchester, are some of the young talents discovered through the Frequencies program funded by Create Joy.
There is no Proms without Elgar’s Pomp and Circumstances March Land of Hope and Glory sung with one voice by 5,000 people gathered at the Royal Albert Hall! But this year, Joe Broughton, composer, multi-instrumentalist and artist in residence at Music for Youth, with whom Create Joy cooperated in the past, called for an additional Finale with words around freedom, music, humanity and hope which had a particularly strong resonance after the terrorist attacks in Paris.
Pete Letanka, MD of Music for Youth, mentioned the sponsors and said “our supporters Vivendi have travelled from Paris to be with us tonight’ followed by a huge cheer for the company and lots of shout outs. We are very grateful for this tribute to the five colleagues from Universal Music and Canal+ Group who died during the attacks. David Hamid stressed that music and musical connections are even more important in these fragmented times we live in.
