Mainland Music Foundation
Objectives
Mainland Music Foundation (MMF) is a UK registered charity set up to deliver high quality performances of classical music. We aim to deliver programmes that speak strongly to key issues in people’s lives and in the world around us, open people’s minds to different issues and perspectives, and offer the chance to hear music by composers who may have been unjustly neglected.
The charitable objects of the Foundation are “the advancement of the art of music for the benefit of the public through the provision of concerts, festivals, recitals and performances”. The trustees plan to fulfil those objectives by arranging concerts at venues in London and further afield, given by professional musicians who have an established national or international reputation.
Nature and Music is our current focus, but we also have further projects in the planning stages, in particular themed around issues of equality.
Charity details
Mainland Music Foundation is a Charitable Incorporated Organistion (CIO) registered in England and Wales under charity registration number 1195924.
https://register-of-charities.charitycommission.gov.uk/charity-search/-/charity-details/5180293/
Trustees:
James Stephen Barr
Noriko Hart
Peter Michael Hart
David Hirschman
Susan Elizabeth Worsey
Contact
Email: mainlandmusicfoundation@gmail.com
Website: www.mainlandmusicfoundation.com
Facebook: www.facebook.com/MainlandMusicFoundation
Background
Reiko and her husband David Hirschman both have long standing involvement in the professional classical music world. Over the past 20 years they have been arranging concerts and tours at venues include Wigmore Hall and the Southbank Centre through a predecessor company, Mainland Productions Limited.
Mainland Productions Limited was a company limited by guarantee incorporated on 23 January 2001 with company registration number 0414588 under the Arts Council England not for profit model articles of association. No dividend, bonus or profits were paid to members. The objects of the company were to “promote, maintain, improve and advance education by the encouragement of the arts, including the arts of drama, mime, dance, singing and music, and to formulate, establish and prepare schemes therefor provided that all objects of the company shall be of a charitable nature”.
During 2001, Mainland Productions Limited delivered a substantial project of multiple performances and educational workshops around the UK by “Ensemble Tozai”. The project formed part of Japan 2001, the festival of Japanese culture in the UK established by the Embassy of Japan. Comprising four Japanese musicians specialising in traditional Japanese and Western classical music, the unique combination of violin, piano, shakuhachi (bamboo flute) and taiko percussion performs traditional Japanese music and works by living composers, including a new work ‘Toru’s Mist’ commissioned from Gavin Bryars. Performances took place at London’s Southbank Centre, Belfast Festival, Brighton Festival, Swansea Festival, Abersytwyth Arts Centre, Birmingham Barber Institute, Durham Musicon, Glasgow Tramway, Nottingham Djanogly Theatre, and Southampton Turner Sims amongst others. Educational workshops took place in schools around County Durham and Wales. Funding for the commission was obtained from PRS Foundation and the South East Arts division of Arts Council England. Other funding for the project was secured from various grant-making foundations (Sasakawa Foundation, Daiwa Anglo-Japanese Foundation, Japan Foundation) and corporate sponsorship (Japan Airlines, Ricoh UK Limited).
Between 1999 – 2005, various performances featuring individual members of Ensemble Tozai were arranged including at Southbank Centre, St George’s Bristol and Wigmore Hall. In 2006, in conjunction with the opening of Cadogan Hall and the commencement of the residency of the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra, we presented a chamber music concert with the principal woodwind players from the RPO (Principals of Sound) in collaboration with Reiko Fujisawa. Further performances were arranged in following seasons around London and Cheltenham. In 2011 and 2012, we presented fundraising concerts in support of “Music for Life”, a project run by Dementia UK and Wigmore Hall that has pioneered and developed interactive, creative music workshop programmes for people living with dementia. These were followed by a series of concerts in 2013 featuring Principals of Sound, Ensemble Tozai and members of the Allegri String Quartet.