Tag: OHMI

The amazing ‘Bader’s big Band‘ have their first performance at 7.oopm on Friday 7th September at The Royal Birmingham Conservatoire where OHMI will be holding their 2018 Conference & Awards.

This promises to be a musical treat of an evening where guests will be able to hear The Petry Sisters playing Vivalid’s Double Cello Concerto and virtuoso French Horn Player, Felix Klieser, making his UK debut with Mozart’s Horn Concerto No. 4 as well as Bader’s Big Band in their first ever public performance.

The 2018 OHMI Conference will bring together its annual OHMI awards with a major conference for academics and practitioners in which the barriers to music-making faced by those with physical disabilities will be explored. It will bring together current and planned research with the experiences of disabled musicians, teachers, and the work of charities and government agencies. The two-day conference will also feature concerts and demonstrations using recently developed technology and instrument designs. The challenge to enable full and undifferentiated participation in music for people with physical disabilities is a subject only recently receiving attention. It is hoped that sharing knowledge through this conference will stimulate further and more rapid developments in the coming years.

Tickets, £18 full price and £9 concessions, are now available and can be obtained through www.ohmi.org.uk. You can buy them for the whole first day of the conference or just for the evening concert. You won’t be disappointed!

Bader Grant Recipient, OHMI (The One-Handed Musical Instrument Trust) has sent us this update. This fantastic organisation is going from strength to strength and the Douglas Bader Foundation is proud and delighted to be able to support them.

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Douglas Bader Grant Update – Hemihelp Fun Day

On Sunday 4^th September, The OHMI Trust team and brass teachers from Birmingham Music Service and Surrey Arts attended the Hemihelp 20^th Anniversary Fun day in Frensham to provide interactive instrument workshops for children with disabilities.

Over the course of the day, 38 children and their families took part in workshops on either adapted brass or adapted recorders. Each workshop was attended by both children with hemiplegia and their families. This created opportunities for families to experience playing an adapted musical instrument, and raise awareness directly with families affected by disability about the option of music as a hobby or even more.

We send our particular thanks to the Douglas Bader Grant Scheme for their generous donation which allowed the first of these workshops to take place. With the support from the Douglas Bader Grant Scheme, we have purchased 10 stands and brackets to be fitted to previously donated brass instruments. These instruments can be used in our upcoming conferences around the country, allowing us to reach many more families across the UK.

Because of this donation, we were able to offer families the chance to try out not only a trumpet, but cornet, flugelhorn, tenor horn and trombone, all with stands and brackets fitted in order to make them fully accessible for those with an upper limb disability.

It is testament to the need for these kind of access days that 3 of the students who took part in a workshop on the 4^th of September expressed an interest in, and are now signed up to take part in The OHMI Teaching Pilot in Surrey, launching in a couple of weeks. Without these experience opportunities, many families would not know that there are musical instruments out there to try.

Several of the families who took part in workshops – in particular the recorder workshops, had children who were still very young, so would not be suitable for the current OHMI Teaching Pilot. However, 2 families have signed up to the OHMI recorder loan scheme, and others now know they have the option to contact The Trust again when their child is of a more suitable age to learn an instrument.

The OHMI Trust has another workshop booked in October in partnership with REACH in Glasgow, where more music workshops will be available for families attending the conference.

(Click HERE to download a copy of the original article above. It will open as a pdf in a new tab and can be kept for your records.)

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To find out more about The OHMI Trust and to get details about the workshop in Glasgow in October, please go to the OHMI Website or visit the previous DBF Post where you will find information and contact details.

 

 

2014 Bader Grant recipient, OHMI (The One-Handed Musical Instrument Trust) is holding a competition challenging people to create an instrument that can be played without the use of one hand and arm. The deadline for this challenge is 30th June 2015 so you need to get your designs in fast for a chance of winning a prestigious award from this wonderful and very worthy organisation.

The 2015 OHMI Competition

Entrants to the One-Handed Musical Instrument Competition are challenged to develop musical instruments that can be played without the use of one hand and arm. It can be an adaptation of an existing instrument or a new design that is capable of emulating a traditional instrument. See below for details on the awards and the rules.

The final date for accepting entries is June 30th 2015. Judging by an independent panel will take place a few weeks thereafter. We are still working on plans for the awards ceremony, but will post details as soon as they are fixed.

Enquiries, in the first instance, should be sent to us using the contact page or by calling us on 07849 726309.

Entries can be made in any format just as long as they provide a full technical and musical explanation of the instrument. Email entries can be sent to rachel at OHMI dot org dot uk (sorry for spelling it out, but this helps avoid the spammers). Postal entries can be sent to The OHMI Trust, Tyndallwoods Solicitors, 29 Woodbourne Road, Edgbaston, Birmingham, B17 8BY.

 

(Please note that the links above won’t work – you’ll have to copy and paste them)

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RULES
There are three prize categories for competition instruments:

PLAYABLE – For instruments capable of performance without further development. Adaptations must have all the capabilities of the original instrument. Where an entry uses new technology, perhaps electronics, it must closely copy the musical characteristics of the instrument it is emulating.
CONCEPT – For the most technically promising solution(s) to the challenge. Entries may be made in any form – paper, video, drawings, etc., just as long as they explain and describe the concept in detail to the competition judges. Several past entries have been projects in development – playable, but not yet to the high standard required.
ENABLING – For apparatus (straps, stands, harnesses etc.) that make a traditional instrument accessible for one-handed playing.

Qualifying Instruments:
The instrument adapted or emulated must meet these qualifying conditions:

i. The instrument is, or was once, commonly found in a musical ensemble (examples are orchestras, jazz bands, folk groups, or rock groups).
ii. The instrument does not already use any electronic devices. For example, an electric organ would not qualify.
For the benefit of clarity, competition instruments can use electronics or any other technology. It is the original instrument being adapted or emulated that cannot be electronic.

The Competition Rules
1. The competition instrument must be a “qualifying instrument” (see above).
2. The competition instrument must be capable of being performed by one person without the use of one hand and arm in any capacity.
3. The competition instrument must be portable by one person unaided, excluding any loud-speaker systems. If loud-speakers are used they must not contain any special elements or circuitry that are an important part in the instrument design itself (other than for sound output).
4. As part of the judging for the Playable category, a performance may be required. The performers of the instruments need not be the competition participants. The competitors may elect the performer of their own choice.
5. Neither the competition organisers (The OHMI Trust) nor any of the judges are permitted to take a legal interest in any copyrights, intellectual properties or manufacturing rights in the instruments. All rights will remain with the creators.
6. Competitors agree to licence to the competition organisers at no cost all copyrights and performance rights in any recordings of the competition auditions and performances that the organisers may make.

Although not a rule or competition requirement, the competition organisers wish to encourage all competitors to make their work “open-system”.