The Orchestra Who Came to Tea: Part 2

Hope and despair on the village green

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Hi everyone and ‘Happy Friday’ wherever this finds you. Let me open this week by just saying thank you. I am truly amazed by the depth of connection writing this newsletter has already brought to my life. I read every reply and appreciate them so much.

I decided last week to pre-empt this week’s storytelling with a video. If you missed it, you can find it here.

The Village Green

Right outside my front door, there is a pretty sizeable village green, surrounded by a lot of the things you find in most villages in this region of the North East of England, former coal mining country; a country pub, a hotel, a church, rows and rows of red brick terraces, a street called ‘Front Street’ and a war memorial bearing the same surnames as the descendants who still live around it.

I pass over the village green several times a day on my way to school and back with the children and, as I do, I observe things like the horse foot prints in the mud (evidence of local traveller culture), the poppies that have blown off the memorial and the trees that have stood there since before the wars and the mines came to pass. On our way home, my smallest daughter, moved by seeing her wonderfully compassionate teacher shed a tear for fallen soldiers during a story time more than a year ago, often stops to restore the poppies to their rightful place and to straighten all the crosses; a small act of witness from a 6 year-old for lives of young lads from round here who mattered, who still matter.

Yesterday, I sat a while on the village green and thought about writing to you all and a woman sat down beside me. Her face was pretty obviously freshly wounded and within seconds she had both lit a cigarette and opened an alcoholic drink, both smells that provoke unpleasant distant memories for me and yet I remembered my own words uttered here just a week ago, “Grant me the grace to not be one who looks away or crosses the street to avoid the sorrow of others, but forgive me when I fail” and so I tried my best to copy my youngest child in her attentiveness to the memorial and simply be still and present. Without any prompting, this woman poured out a story of domestic abuse, addiction and pain and within minutes, her friend picked her up in a car and she was gone. I didn’t know her but her story isn’t too different to many folks where I am from in the world. I’ve seen enough depth of stories like these to know how vulnerable we all actually are to things going terribly wrong.

The memorial on the green reads in ‘In memory of those who gave their lives in the first and second world wars and subsequent conflicts, so that we may live in peace’. So that we may live in peace. In peace. I’m not sure the ‘subsequent conflicts’ part is over for many. What peace can we really expect for those whose grandfathers never came home from war and whose fathers spent much of their lives labouring under the ground so that we might have have coal for our hearths, but who now live under the official banner of the label ‘left behind’ area. Who decided that we are leaving all these people behind? Just, why ARE we leaving people behind?

So, back to the orchestra.

In the context of some life stories like the lady above, it might seem almost tone deaf to think that something as frivolous and middle class as an orchestra could make a difference. It’s got the air of a paternalistic pet project about it in some ways. Who needs classical music when food is scarce? If you dad is gone and your mum is unemployed and addicted, should I really be handing you a bassoon of all things?

In her book ‘Bittersweet’, Susan Cain recounts the story of Vedran Smailović, known as ‘The Cellist of Sarajevo’, a musician who dressed in his concert finest and played his cello every day in the sniper’s sights in the rubble during the siege of Sarajevo to honour the victims of the conflict and bring beauty to the despair.

‘You ask me am I crazy for playing the cello in a war zone, he says. Why don’t you ask THEM if they’re crazy for shelling Sarajevo?’

We ask is it crazy to bring something like an orchestra to an area where essential needs are not being met, but isn’t the real insanity that people’s need for food, safe shelter, mental health care and more are not being met in a developed nation? Isn’t the madness that we each arrived on this planet in the same way, a naked and beautifully vocal baby who was soft and spotless and innately creative, but that some truly beautiful things should only be accessible to a few of us?

In my own life, an introduction to classical music has been transformative. I still remember the first time I heard Maria Callas in my Irish granny’s wee living room or found the otherworldly sounding Allegri’s ‘Misereri Mei’ on CD at school, or heard Massenet’s 'Méditation from Thaïs’, a piece of music that still helps me release my tears. The day a most beloved music teacher put an oboe in my hands changed the trajectory of my whole life and opened up a much wider world. I will never forget the powerful whole body tingles of taking up the oboe chair right in the centre of a conservatoire orchestra for the first time and more than that, I’ll truly never forget those who held open the doors to me, a person from the ‘wrong background’ for classical music, so that I might participate in the magic and see the world by becoming a musician- a state school teacher called Mr Boland who pushed us to try an instrument by laying them all out on a table one day and who gave me keys to practice after hours, a visiting woodwind teacher Ms Gough who led my by the hand to auditions in places I’d never heard of, a fantastic oboe teacher named Stephen West who pushed me past the fear and made me laugh, who trusted and loaned me his own special instrument and arranged free concert tickets for me and my granny to see the RSNO, the folks who anonymously fund scholarships and bursaries. We need more people who hold open the doors.

The day ‘Street Orchestra Live’ came to the village green was a beautiful one, but even more beautiful was the week that followed; the excited chatter of people who’d had a chance to try an instrument, the sudden possibilities of setting up a local singing group, the folks who would say “I used to sing/play and I want to again”, the residual and gorgeous joy of something beautiful and unexpected happening out of nowhere and a creative spark truly lit inside some people, visible in their eyes.

Yesterday, as I reflected on it all, I gravitated back to those words ‘That we may live in peace’ on the war memorial and the big village green just beyond it. I cannot help but dream about some sunny day in the future when that village green could be filled again with the music of a huge orchestra, with singers and storytellers and dancers from around the village, a creative expression that might show that more peace has truly arrived. Maybe all the musicians will be from a 1 mile radius, maybe children will take the lead. I’d love to see it happen, I’d love to connect the different worlds I’ve been a part of and hold open some more doors to help things happen.

It all puts me mind of the Siegfried Sassoon poem ‘Everyone Sang’ signalling the end of war…

Everyone suddenly burst out singing;
And I was filled with such delight
As prisoned birds must find in freedom
Winging wildly across the white
Orchards and dark green fields; on; on; and out of sight.

Everyone's voice was suddenly lifted,
And beauty came like the setting sun.
My heart was shaken with tears and horror
Drifted away ... O but every one
Was a bird; and the song was wordless; the singing will never be done.

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I invited an artist I really admire to contribute this week, someone I know shares my passion for illustration, orchestras and widening access and is a trailblazer in these areas. Beloved author-illustrator James Mayhew is known for his work combining storytelling, live art and orchestral and chamber music. His book ‘Once Upon a Tune’ was just long-listed for the Yoto Carnegie Medal and a quick glance shows you why. In James’ own words, here is why classical music has mattered to him…

“I always loved how music tells stories - I grew up in a tiny rural village and went to ordinary state schools. There were no concert halls in my world! But my parents had a couple of LPs with gorgeous covers - and that’s why I played them - and I started drawing and painting as a response… storytelling music like “Scheherazade” or “Sleeping Beauty”. Years later, music filtered into my books - Koshka’s Tales, the Ella Bella and most recently, Once Upon A Tune. Back in 2007 I was asked to work with a local amateur orchestra, to see if what I did for books could work live on stage.

What I love about it is inspiring new audiences, breaking down those preconceptions of what so-called “Classical” music is, and how there really is something for everyone. It’s so much more than a nice tune and people seem genuinely fascinated to realise what a lot of famous music actually represents, and how it creates an atmosphere or describes a narrative.

It all sounds very middle class but in fact the RSNO are carefully targeting deprived demographic regions. We began the tour in Motherwell, and most children had never seen an orchestra before. Some didn’t know how or when to applaud. But the rapt attention and high fives after the concert demonstrated more than any hand-clap. Projects like these, backed up with superb, free resources online, really help open up a world which in fact includes not just music, story and art, but history, geography, sociology, mathematics. Children come away inspired not just by musicians and instruments, but by the theatre, the lighting, the technicians, everything and every part of the team. It’s such a rich experience. I’ve also seen how, in schools, it is often the autistic children, those with special educational needs, or just those who are sad or a bit lost, who shine the most. I get the children painting to music, and the results are wonderful, liberating and full of creativity. I remember once an elective mute was so inspired he began talking; the teacher was in tears. Music can be emotional. It can also be funny, happy, dramatic, scary and wild - and deeply healing. Classical music isn’t just elegant Mozart or gentle bed-time lullabies. It is many things to many people, it brings people together, it creates communities”

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I finish by simply acknowledging that this week will mark one year since the outbreak of war in Ukraine. I think of the boys whose names are on the memorial outside my house from 100 years ago and how they are not so different to the young men who have lost their lives over the last year in this conflict. Oh that we all may live in peace.