Music Nation, a weekend of live events across the UK, swings into action on March 3. From amateur and youth choirs to the UK’s leading orchestras and opera companies, Music Nation is the first nationwide countdown event for the Cultural Olympiad’s London 2012 Festival.

Amateur groups play a significant role in the celebrations. Making Music, the UK’s number one organisation for voluntary music, has 13 of its members performing over the weekend, and has also commissioned an overture, Traditional Values, by Orlando Gough. One of the work's first performances is at London’s Roundhouse in Camden on Sunday March 4, as part of the Voices Now festival. The multi-choir performance, given by the BBC Singers with the Hertfordshire and Berkshire Youth Choirs, is being broadcast live on Radio 3’s The Choir. The piece will then be performed by various amateur groups until September 9, the closing date of the London 2012 Paralympic Games.

Elsewhere, the Choir With No Name – whose members have been affected by homelessness – perform an upbeat concert in Birmingham, women’s choir A Handbag of Harmonies lead a massed singalong in Chester, and the Cobweb Orchestra – recipient of the 2011 Gramophone Award for Music in the Community – give a series of celebratory concerts in Gateshead.

As for professional concerts, audiences can take their pick from the London Mozart Players in Basingstoke, the BBC Concert Orchestra in Devon and Cornwall, the BBC Scottish Orchestra in Glasgow and many more besides.

Radio 3 is dedicating its weekend programming to Music Nation, and there is additional programming on other stations including Radio 1 and BBC Scotland. But with an event involving more than 25,000 participants at 45 locations, there’s every chance of supporters being able to attend an event in person. As Roger Mosey, the BBC's director of London 2012, says, this geographically ambitious project is ‘an attempt to have great music-making across the UK…as near to as many people as possible’.

Sarah Kirkup