Mahler is the real Slim Shady

Some people who live around the National Concert Hall have never been in it. That all changes tonight when a group of Synge Street students reinterpret Mahler in rap on the NCH stage. It's all part of the NCH's 'outreach' programme, writes Brian Boyd

As you probably know, the second movement of Mahler's First Symphony is a lusty and hearty Austrian "Landler", replete with yodels and foot stomping.

Just as well. Down in the basement of Dublin's Synge Street Secondary School, a group of Transition Year students is wearing hoodies and "freestyling" as they get to grips with the late Romantic music composer.

Mahler's huge tapestries of shifting moods and tones are well appreciated here. The student furrow their brows, listen to each other's suggestions and then come up with some hip-hop verse: "Yo, y'all listen up, 'cos I'm gonna tell ya about my man Gus, Gustavo from Austria, made his music with the Orchestra; We've been digging his beat, with these guys giving us heat, to make a melody to sing to you now".

Joining the students are four musicians, led by bass player Ninian Perry of the Royal Scottish Academy of Music and Drama. The percussionist, saxophonist and clarinettist noodle away in the background, holding the musical fort, as the students write down lyrics, scribble them out, debate turns of phrases and rap of Mahler: "He told it like it is, so we're gonna tell ya what he woulda thought if he lived like us now. We're rappin 'bout his Symphony, the second movement he wrote a "Landler" see, so what you hear is what you get for coming here, now move your sweet asses and listen up right . . . "

It's fabulously entertaining stuff, this cultural collision between trained classical musicians and students raised on the works of Eminem and Dr Dre.

And it's no idle exercise - tonight at the National Concert Hall, the Synge Street students will take to the stage of the John Field Room in the National Concert Hall, in Dublin, to perform their unique contribution to Mahler's First Symphony. They'll be joined by primary school students from St Enda's Primary School in Whitefriar Street, Dublin and adult members of the St Andrew's Resource Centre in Pearse Street.

Each of the three groups will be presenting their own take on Mahler's work - the primary school students will be reinterpreting the symphony's first movement, with their own lyrics and a range of dance movements, while the adults from the Resource Centre will be joining in on their xylophones, bodhrans and guitars. By way of contrast, later on in the evening, the Royal Scottish Academy Symphony Orchestra will take to the main stage of the Concert Hall for the "proper" rendition of the Symphony. It's sort of like a Classical pro-am.

The two-tiered approach is the idea of the NCH's "Education and Community Outreach Programme". Lucy Champion, the manger of the programme, says it was set up five years ago to "encourage people, regardless of age, background or location to regard and use the NCH as a practical musical resource and to help change the public's perception of classical music as being an elitist activity". The programme has travelled all around the country, putting on all manner of projects and encouraging active participation in classical music - and it's all done with lashings of "fun".

This particular project, "Mahler's Music", was inspired by Champion's realisation that many of the people who live, study and work in the immediate geographical area of the NCH, had never even been inside the building. "It really stuck me early on with this project that one of the students who lives very close to the NCH actually had to ask me where it was," she says. "From the three different groups participating in this, it means there'll be 50 people performing tonight at the NCH, and it's great that, for many of them, they'll be able to say that their first time they were at the NCH, they were performing there."

Enthused herself by the enthusiasm of the Synge Street students, she says it's been a musical exploration from "Mahler to Slim Shady" and that the four musicians from the Royal Scottish Academy who have been working with all three groups over a number of weeks, and will join them on stage tonight, have also benefited from the experience. "It's helped that it's been an inter-generational project - the musicians are going from working with primary students to secondary students to adults. There seems to be a new breed of classical musicians now, some of them have told me that they only studied their course because they specifically wanted to work with these "Outreach" programmes - it's good news for how classical music will develop and be perceived in the future."

NINIAN PERRY, from the Royal Scottish Academy of Music and Drama, who heads up the musical side of the venture, is one such "Outreach" musical expert; in the past he has worked with elderly Chinese groups and asylum seekers, encouraging an active participation in the works of the classical composers. "There's no special reason why we're using Mahler's Symphony Number One here," he says, "although it is greatly loved by musicians because of its tunefulness. It's as appropriate as any tune could be appropriate and useful, because Mahler is usually best known for his fifth Symphony, which was used in the film Death In Venice, but we don't really focus too heavily on the work itself, instead we look at the inspiration and ideas behind the work and bring the students in that way."

Not really a fan of the "take a CD into a school and play it to the students" approach, Perry works by making the students "get their hands dirty". "Because we're working in situations where music is not on the curriculum, we find that a certain amount of confidence has to be built up - people are nervous about what contribution they can make to this classical work, but we get around that by playing musical games, and even trust games, which frees up creativity," he says.

"If you look at how we worked with the Synge Street students, we all found that the second movement of the Symphony, which was their area, had a lot of flapping, kicking and satirical verse in it, and because the students' most popular form of musical expression is hip-hop, we though, let's use this talent and create a rap song."

By bridging these differing forms of musical expression, Perry believes that participants in the programme are encouraged to access music, of whatever form, and learn that everything along the musical spectrum is available to them.

"But the best thing here is that these students will actually be performing in the NCH. They're all non-musicians, but the elation and sense of achievement they get from the performance is fantastic to watch, and where they go with it from here is up to them."

The students will be performing their Mahler-inspired works at the John Field Room at 6 p.m. tonight - entry is free - and at 8p.m. the Royal Scottish Academy Symphony Orchestra will be performing Mahler's First Symphony, tickets are available from the NCH box office.