Tuning in…
Tuning in…
Castaway
1 appearance
A double bass player and founder of Europe's first black and minority ethnic orchestra.
On the island
Eight records
Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra, Grant Llewellyn
It was the first piece of music that was played in public by the Chineke! orchestra.
Variations in C major on 'Ah, vous dirai-je, maman', K. 265
My Dad was holding me and I was asking him about what we were looking at, and that's when he told me that they were called stars, and so he sang to me Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star, and of course I think of that as my first music lesson.
We've got quite a lot in common, and particularly the song that I'm going to choose, My Baby Just Cares for Me, because if certain fateful things had not happened in my life, I possibly could not have followed the classical music career that I was fortunate enough to follow. She was classically trained.
It's called High Life Music, and the only time I ever heard this music was when we had family parties, gatherings with friends and extended family, and we danced and danced to it. ... And this particular track, Sweet Mother, kind of sums up our mum as well.
Richard Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein II
Even my parents got caught up in the whole excitement about The Sound of Music coming to Canterbury. We got tickets. ... We, of course, wanted to be every single child in that film. We rushed out and got the music, and we've sung it all our lives.
Family is everything to me. My core family, my extended family. And then when I first left home and I lived in a house with four other girls, other music students, they became like my next family.
In conversation
Presenter asks
6:03Given that, as you explain it, there are not enough examples of black and ethnic minority people learning instruments and having great players to look up to that they see on the concert stages, has it been a problem for you getting players of a good enough standard? Because there is not, culturally, that environment for those players to have flourished as kids?
Well, it's been mind-blowing for me on the journey I've had to find the players because I could count on the fingers of one hand how many musicians of colour I had worked with throughout my entire career on a regular basis and three of those were singers … The assumption is that we're not good enough. People of colour aren't good enough. But of course that's not true. You know, people of colour are great musicians. It's just having the access and opportunity at the right age in life to learn.
Presenter asks
7:21What was it like when you went onto the concert stage that evening [for the first Chineke! performance at London South Bank in 2015]?
It was the most extraordinary feeling that I will never forget in all of my days. We had a standing ovation as we walked on to the stage. We had no idea how we were going to be received. The concert sold out. There were queues leading outside of the building, and that cheering and standing ovation before the first note was hair raising.
The keepsakes
The luxury
Presenter asks
10:48How did [your parents'] respective families react to their romance and then their marriage?
Horrific from my mother's side. Um she was told never to darken their doorstep again. And she did as she was told. … My mother carried on writing to her family, telling them how she was getting on … the man of her dreams. I came along. I was baby number one. She was still writing to them by the time I was born. And funnily enough, when I was about three months old, the doorbell rang one evening, unannounced, and it was my grandmother. Goodness. Unannounced. And she spent a week with us. … She got on like a house on fire with my dad. That was the last time Mum ever saw her mother.
Presenter asks
11:48[Your parents were] a young couple in London in an era of casual daily ingrained racism. How hard was it for them to make a life, to find a flat to live in, to get employment?
There were those signs that people were allowed to put onto their rental properties. … they'd inevitably get there, and there would be a sign saying, no blacks, no dogs, no Irish. They thought, we'll take a chance, we haven't got a dog. … the more that the society tried to push them apart, the more they clung together.
Presenter asks
17:25To those of us who can think of nothing worse than running 100 metres very, very quickly, tell us what the sensation is when you're good at it. What does it feel like?
Free, just at one with everything, really.
Presenter asks
21:20In recent years, when it comes to classical music, some orchestras have introduced blind auditions where candidates play behind a screen. What do you make of it? Is it a good idea?
It's very contentious. … it comes as no surprise to me that since that's been introduced, there are 25% more women in orchestras in America, for example. You know, it's not just for the colour of your skin, it's your gender as well. … I now know many colleagues of colour. … most of those have won positions in the United States because they've won them from behind a screen to appointment. Every single one of them have been eliminated from audition rounds as soon as the screen has gone away. That's not a coincidence. This is absolutely true. This is empirically true.
“I walked on to a stage with hope and excitement.”
“We had a standing ovation as we walked on to the stage. We had no idea how we were going to be received. The concert sold out. There were queues leading outside of the building, and that cheering and standing ovation before the first note was hair raising.”
“The doorbell rang one evening, unannounced, and it was my grandmother. … She got on like a house on fire with my dad. That was the last time Mum ever saw her mother.”
“My parents would follow leads, oh, there's a room to rent here, there's a room to rent there. They'd inevitably get there, and there would be a sign saying, no blacks, no dogs, no Irish. They thought, we'll take a chance, we haven't got a dog. … the more that the society tried to push them apart, the more they clung together.”
“I now know many colleagues of colour. There's a handful who actually have positions with symphony orchestras, and most of those have won positions in the United States because they've won them from behind a screen to appointment. Every single one of them have been eliminated from audition rounds as soon as the screen has gone away. That's not a coincidence.”