Just The Tonic, Series 1, Episode 5: A Level Playing Field?

Introduction (0:00)

[Music]

0:01 Katie: The People’s Orchestra, whose fantastic work we’ve highlighted throughout this series, open their doors to anyone in the West Midlands who wants to play in their orchestras or sing in their show choirs. Being inclusive is part of their DNA.

0:30 There are around 11 million people with a disability in the UK – that’s over a fifth of the population. And it is great that we have inspirational charities like Drake Music and Nordoff Robbins, who create opportunities for disabled musicians. But disabled people are hugely under-represented in the music industry and in music education. The challenges disabled musicians face range from finding and buying the right instrument, to accessing lessons, to finding opportunities to perform.

1:01 It is hard to believe that in this day and age there are still concert halls where a musician in a wheelchair can’t access the stage. So are we ignoring many talented musicians who don’t fit the standard mould? Strictly Come Dancing‘s first deaf contestant, the actor Rose Ayling-Ellis, is smashing the dancing and changing perceptions around deaf performers and British Sign Language.

[Music]

1:26 So how can we make the music industry a more level playing field for disabled musicians? I’m Katie Derham, this is Just The Tonic, the podcast series that explores the power of the arts to enrich people’s lives. In this episode I’ll be exploring the challenges disabled people face, and finding out what we can do to make sure they don’t miss out. We’ll be hearing from Klara Filip from The People’s Orchestra…

1:54 Klara Filip: I do think that people should make more of an effort to show disabled musicians, because you don’t often see someone in a wheelchair…

2:00 Katie: …and from Andy Sandham, co-founder of The People’s Orchestra, who is on a mission to make sure everyone has equal access to learning an instrument.

2:06 Andy Sandham: Personally, I think that playing music should be available to everybody. My family could not afford to get me lessons on an instrument. They couldn’t afford a teacher, they couldn’t afford an instrument. And so this is one of the reasons that I’m so passionate about trying to make sure that anybody can do it.

2:26 Katie: And I’ll be chatting to the multi-talented musician and conductor Charles Hazlewood about Paraorchestra, the world’s first fully integrated orchestra of professional disabled and non-disabled musicians.

2:36 Charles Hazlewood: I’ve been conducting orchestras around the world for about 30 years now, and I can count on the fingers of one hand the number of musicians who identify as disabled I’ve found in any of those groups over that long period of time.

2:50 Katie: It is shocking stuff, and we’re going to be hearing more from Charles later.

Klara Filip (2:57)

2:57 Katie: But first: Klara Filip is a third-year music production student at the British and Irish Modern Music Institute in Birmingham. She plays flute and piccolo in The People’s Orchestra, and here she is on how they’ve helped her.

3:12 Klara: So I have dyspraxia, and use blue paper when reading scores. Dyspraxia is a condition which affects your coordination. The one I’ve got is dyspraxia in kids, also known as developmental coordination disorder, which, especially when I was younger, meant that my muscles were quite weak. So I ended up playing on a flute with a curved mouthpiece, because it was a lot lighter for me.

[Music]

3:48 But playing the flute and playing the piano has helped with my coordination a lot. Obviously I still struggle with it, because it’s one of those things you don’t outgrow, but I found that playing has helped with improving that.

[Music]

4:05 In previous orchestras I was using a couple of coloured overlays for my sheet music, as I found it was easier to read. But when I joined TPO, Liz, the orchestra manager, noticed it and suggested maybe using some blue paper. And so from there we figured out which shade of blue was better for me. It has made a big difference, because I feel like I’m not having to sit as close to the stand just to be able to read the music.

4:46 Katie: It was fortunate for Klara that The People’s Orchestra was able to suggest a solution to make it easier for her to play. But in previous music groups, she found it difficult to speak up.

4:57 Klara: I guess I just felt a bit awkward asking, “oh yeah, can I have a specific colour for my sheet music?” That’s just, I guess, how I am – I just felt awkward asking for something like that. So I do really appreciate TPO printing it off on blue paper, as opposed to me asking, because it shows that they’re actually thinking about it.

5:18 I do think that people should make more of an effort to show disabled musicians, because you don’t often see someone in a wheelchair, using a bionic arm or bionic leg when they need it – or, like in my case, using certain coloured paper for their sheet music.

Andy Sandham (5:40)

5:40 Katie: Adapting instruments for children with disabilities is just one of the many jobs in music that Andy Sandham has. He’s the co-founder of The People’s Orchestra, as I mentioned, with Sarah Marshall. He’s also a music teacher, and he provides a vital service for young musicians in the Birmingham area. Here’s Andy in his workplace.

6:02 Andy: So we have a large unit in Birmingham where we must have 5,000 instruments sitting, and I’ve got all my repair gear around me. I take instruments that children have had accidents with – it doesn’t matter what happens, children will have accidents, they’ll drop something. This trumpet was dropped; it landed on its bell and slightly crushed the bell. I’ve got all the dents out of that. It slightly bent the valve casing, so the valves weren’t working, so I’ve had to re-cut those. And so now, having sorted all that, having sorted out all the tuning slides so everything works, we’ve got a trumpet that can quite easily go back out.

7:05 Now, I work as the main French horn teacher for Birmingham. I do general brass teaching. I do whole-class brass teaching – teaching young children in Year 4 to play as a whole class together. Quite early on in my teaching career I was given some children to work with who had issues. One of them had sight problems, and another one had a cleft lip and palate, and we were trying to work out ways that could enable children with difficulties like that to carry on playing. For the child with a cleft lip and palate, it wasn’t possible for him to play brass, so we moved him on to instruments that he could work with.

7:36 For the children with visual impairment, we worked on trying to produce music for them in different colours. Ideally, if you put things on a mid-green background with greyish printing, it helps an awful lot of sight problems, because you don’t have the massive changes in contrast that people with vision impairment tend to suffer with. So we’ve worked on those sorts of things.

7:58 I’ve also had quite a few pupils I’ve worked with that had physical problems. I had one lad that played the trumpet – he became one of the best trumpet players we had in Birmingham, and he went on to study at Chetham’s – and he was born with no right hand. So we adapted a trumpet for him where it could be grasped totally with his left hand, with an extra finger hook and an extra pair of thumb hooks that went in so he could hold it in the right position, and then a thing that went underneath on his wrist – because his arm went as far as his wrist – to support the instrument from underneath.

8:30 And quite often, some of the work that I do is with OHMI – basically specialists in one-handed instrument conversions for children, and setting up grants for these children to be able to play. I work with them. They have many, many more pupils across the country, but I teach one or two pupils most years, and we get around the problems that they have so they can still continue to play and have a worthwhile experience of music.

8:58 But basically, it’s mainly a case of looking at what the child has and finding ways around it. I had a child I was working with last year who had problems due to oxygen starvation to his brain when he was being born, and he had quite a lot of issues with paralysis, so for him to be able to hold his instrument was difficult. He was playing euphonium, so we built special cushions that could rest on his knees, with cut-outs for the bottom of the euphonium to fit into, that would hold it in place – and then he could support it with his right hand.

9:32 Katie: Andy’s passion for making music accessible has a lot to do with his own circumstances when he was growing up.

9:38 Andy: Personally, I think that playing music should be available to everybody. I come from a family in London – my father was a sculptor – and as a child we would regularly go to bed with nothing to eat. My family could not afford to get me lessons on an instrument. They couldn’t afford a teacher, they couldn’t afford an instrument, and I desperately wanted an instrument. And so this is one of the reasons that I’m so passionate about trying to make sure that anybody can do it.

10:08 It was when I was 16 that I managed to get somebody to believe in me enough to lend me an instrument, even though I didn’t go to that particular person’s school. I took it away, and I got a book out of the library to learn to play from. I didn’t have a teacher. I followed everything that was in the book, and I taught myself totally to play the instrument, right up until the time I went to music college.

10:34 And so I think it’s vital that anybody that wants to play an instrument should have a chance – not just if they’re not able-bodied, but if they have mental health problems, if they have financial problems, if they have housing problems. There’s always some sort of instrument that you can find to help somebody play. And I don’t care what anybody says: playing an instrument helps sort things out. I’ve been through a couple of tough times in my life where things have gone very wrong for me, and literally being able to go out into a field and sit under a tree and play an instrument – you get rid of an awful lot of your woes and worries by doing something like that. It’s such a wonderful experience, and I am passionate about people having the chance to be able to play an instrument. And there are so many things that can hold somebody back from doing that.

11:16 One of the great things with The People’s Orchestra is the fact that when you do your rehearsals, mums can come out and get away from the family and play in an orchestra, when otherwise they probably wouldn’t get a chance to. But I think it’s equally as important that, for anybody that has any form of disability, you can find an instrument for someone to play. There is some sort of instrument that anybody can play. Even if it’s a drum that you only have to hit with a stick, that is still music, and you can make music doing it. I have friends that play all sorts of Indian drum-type instruments – they’re playing a drum, but there’s so much you can do with it. And it’s about extending your mind to have aspirations of doing something, and making that work. So you make music – and music has so many different forms. So I think it’s really important that you help people take on the ideas they have, temper them to meet the possibilities and what is available for them, and then let everybody make music. There’s no reason why anybody can’t.

12:21 Katie: We asked Andy what the music industry could do to be more inclusive for disabled musicians.

12:27 Andy: That is a very, very big problem, because people with physical disabilities will, and always will, struggle with getting either on stage or getting into orchestral pits. It is a big problem, and I don’t know a way around it. It would be so unbelievably expensive to rebuild pits underneath stages so that you have wheelchair access and things like that. It doesn’t happen, and I think that’s very sad. I think possibly people’s perception of what an orchestra or group should be like needs to change a little, so that people with disabilities can get together and play still. But with many of the high-level orchestral, opera, ballet-type things, it is quite limiting, because physically, those are the surroundings that you have to go into. It makes it very difficult.

Charles Hazlewood and Paraorchestra (13:23)

13:23 Katie: One man who recognises that, and is on a mission to change it, is the renowned and evangelical conductor Charles Hazlewood. He has been touring the world conducting orchestras for the past 30 years, but the pandemic made him realise he didn’t want to go back to that lifestyle. He parted company with his agent and with the orchestras he was working with. All his energy from now on will go into Paraorchestra, the world’s first fully integrated orchestra of professional disabled and non-disabled musicians. I caught up with Charles over Zoom and asked him what inspired him to create this fabulous orchestra.

14:03 Charles: Well, the initial inspiration occurred because I’ve got four kids – very lucky to have four children – and my beautiful youngest child, my daughter, was born 15 years ago with cerebral palsy. So, quite understandably, she started me thinking very hard about a whole section of the community. Let’s remember that actually 20% of the UK population identifies as disabled. I started to think about why it is that I don’t meet disabled musicians in any corner of the world where I conduct orchestras. I’ve been conducting orchestras around the world for about 30 years now, and I can count on the fingers of one hand the number of musicians who identify as disabled I’ve found in any of those groups over that long period of time.

14:40 So I was thinking these thoughts: what on earth is going on here? Not only is it a grave injustice that disabled musicians aren’t finding a platform – a brightly lit platform – in music, but also, perhaps even more to the point, what are we doing as a global civilisation? We’re missing out. We’re haemorrhaging talent because it doesn’t fit a conventional mould. So Paraorchestra was born to shine a huge light on the issue.

15:05 Katie: And what were the criteria for Paraorchestra? Were there any, or was that sort of the point?

15:10 Charles: Well, the first and most important criterion, obviously: they had to be world-class players. There’s no point in creating an orchestra where the music is so-so. And all too often – I’m afraid this is a harsh thing to say, but I’m going to say it anyway – all too often people find it hard to put the words “disability” and “excellence” in the same sentence. So when I mooted the idea – this was in 2011, with the Paralympics fast approaching in London – I think what people were thinking was, “oh, it’s a lovely sort of therapy project; it would be so nice to give some poor wannabe disabled musicians a little run for their money”. Now, of course, that made me very angry, because I wasn’t put on the planet to make second-class music. I don’t want to sound arrogant, but I’ve made a career of making world-class music, so I’m not about to start changing my fundamental priority, my fundamental value system. So they had to be world-class.

16:02 In the initial iteration of Paraorchestra – the first group that played at the Paralympics closing ceremony in 2012 – they all had to identify as disabled. But beyond that, it was a completely open book. As you know, Katie, my interest in music is not confined to one particular corridor. I love my Mozart more than life itself, I love my Brahms, I love my Bruckner, I love my Beethoven – but I also love my steel bands, I love my Grateful Dead, I love my Alice Coltrane. So I was only interested in musicians of world-class standard, but they could be playing sitar, laptop or contrabassoon – it didn’t really matter.

16:33 Katie: How did you actually make that happen logistically? Because, as you say, you can welcome people in with open arms, but making it work as a world-class orchestra, with the challenges that come with people’s disabilities – how did that work?

16:50 Charles: Well, the biggest single challenge you face whenever you’re talking about people who identify as disabled is that basically our system isn’t set up to work for them. It perhaps will surprise you – or maybe it won’t – that there’s still an alarming number of concert halls in the UK with a stage you can’t get on to if you use a wheelchair. Then of course there’s a whole issue of assistive technology. A lot of disabled musicians use assistive tech to make music. If they’ve got an impairment which means they can’t play an oboe conventionally, they can play an oboe via a digital portal. Now, one of the challenges we face is that there aren’t people who are skilled in this tech to teach it – not at school, not at specialist music school, and certainly not at conservatoire. So how are people going to get the uplift they need, the training they need, to develop? So we went in at ground zero and started doing that work for ourselves.

17:43 Katie: How’s that been going? Have you seen a change in the number of young disabled musicians who are being taught with that new tech?

17:51 Charles: Well, gosh – humankind moves forward, and positively, but it moves slowly, doesn’t it? Paraorchestra was started 10 years ago. We now have 40 musicians in our ranks who identify as disabled, out of a total playing strength of 80. And a large number of those that have come through, we realise, have been hiding their disability, because that’s the only way they can get on in the music profession. If they’re actually out about the fact they have a disability, they tend to get overlooked, or just mysteriously not booked for things. So there’s an awful tragedy inherent at the heart of this. Of course, no one is heartless, no one is horrible, but people do what they have to do. Orchestras aren’t set up to meet the needs of people with complex needs of any sort; the concert halls, as I’ve already said, aren’t dedicated to it either. So yeah, there’s a hell of a lot of work to be done. I’m hugely proud of the fact that we have 40 world-class virtuoso musicians in our ranks who identify as disabled. That’s a world first in itself.

18:49 Katie: How can we make more change, then? What is the rallying cry? Is it about more musicians who identify as disabled being accepted to conservatoire, for example? Is that somewhere where work needs to be done as well?

18:59 Charles: Yeah, I think the needs for change, and the ideas for change, are many and various. For a start, what we’ve been doing at Paraorchestra very much is looking at the ecology of the institution. You know as well as I know – it’s the hardest thing to say, but I’ll say it anyway – orchestras are quite brutal environments. People are pushed and pushed and pushed, and overworked and overworked, until, well, they expire: they either become an alcoholic, a drug addict, or have a nervous breakdown, and then, in the nicest possible way, they’re shuffled off into the pastures and other people replace them. It’s a tough old world. So, perhaps particularly because of the pandemic, where everyone’s been forced to stop and look inwards a bit, we’ve been looking very, very seriously at how we create a world where every single musician is treated on an individual basis, not as part of a pack. It’s not one-size-fits-all. Every person, whether they identify as disabled or not, has particular strengths, particular weaknesses, particular things that make them shine bright. So our whole thing is about creating a very, very special and bespoke relationship with, and space for, every musician we work with, whether they’re disabled or not. And I think that’s a fundamental part of how things need to go forward.

20:07 But, in honest answer to your question, Katie: we could spend our whole time and all of our energies standing on the rooftops shouting about the injustice and the stupidity and the talent waste of this current situation – or we can do what we are doing, which is be the change we want to see. We can’t expect symphony orchestras to suddenly have a complete paradigm shift; the world doesn’t work like that. This is going to take generations to right itself. All we can do is be out there on the front line, making amazing music with an ensemble which is truly integrated in this way, and therefore much closer to being a reflection of modern society.

20:47 Katie: There is no question that since the inception of Paraorchestra more than 10 years ago, it has absolutely shone a light on this talent pool and this problem, if you like. Has it made change, do you feel? Is progress being made? Are we seeing more disabled musicians in the mainstream orchestras?

21:04 Charles: Look, at the very least we’re all talking about it more, which in itself is a substantial win. My biggest concern, actually, if I’m honest with you, is that the powers that be – in the central corridors of the arts in the UK – look at Paraorchestra, and very much by the same token they look at Chineke!, and it’s almost like they say, “well, they’re out there doing it, so perhaps we don’t need to worry too much – change is afoot, there it is, look at them”. And we feel a little bit like we’re a gilded bird in a cage: “well, look how exotic they are – well done them, they’re doing that work, so we can rest easy”. That’s the unfortunate truth of it, really. So change isn’t occurring at anything like the speed I would like to see.

21:41 Katie: It is interesting to hear how passionate and angry you are about it, actually, because I think you’re right. I think people sort of think it’s amazing what you do, what BSO Resound are doing – gosh, what a lot of good projects there are. But you’re right to be angry.

21:55 Charles: Well, anger is useful, of course, if it’s used in a positive way – just like disruption. It was actually a deeply disruptive act to start Paraorchestra, because it challenged people’s core perceptions and perspectives, and made people in some cases feel very uncomfortable indeed. But the upside to that, I think, Katie, is that even in the early days of Paraorchestra, people – bless them – would come to our concerts because they wanted to support a worthy endeavour. They felt it was something worthy of supporting, and they’d actually feel quite warm inside for having supported a Paraorchestra gig. But the key thing was: they’d come along thinking, “I’m feeling philanthropic, I’m coming to support this worthy endeavour”, but they would leave the gig having had a bloody amazing time. And that’s the point. At the moment where the music is made, the disability becomes irrelevant – just as it does in Paralympic sport.

22:44 But again, let’s be under no illusions. The Paralympics – an amazing British idea, 60-plus years old – it took at least 50 years for anyone to take it seriously. People still thought it was a kind of therapy project for poor wannabe disabled athletes. Now we only see it for what it truly is, which is world-class sport. The same seismic change has to occur in music, but it takes the time it takes.

23:08 Katie: Let me just throw that back at you a little bit, though, because let’s be honest, music is therapy for all of us in some form or other. There must have been some amazing, revelatory experiences that you’ve witnessed for people who had perhaps not, until that point, been able to perform music at a high level on a stage with you conducting them. Let’s just talk for a moment about the positive change that music has wrought in the lives of the people you’ve been working with in Paraorchestra.

23:33 Charles: Well, of course, Katie, that’s true. In fact, of the initial 17 musicians who made their debut at the closing ceremony in 2012, I’d say a good third had never made music with another human being before in their lives before that project began. So that’s pretty seismic and fundamental, isn’t it?

23:51 But you know what? I would actually turn this slightly round. People tend to assume, with very good reason, that because we live in an able-bodied world, people who have a disability are doing all they can to become members of that able-bodied world – like there’s one direction of travel: if you’re disabled, you want to get as close to being non-disabled, because the majority of the world is so. But what I’ve learned through my 10 years working with Paraorchestra musicians is that, boy oh boy, it’s not a one-way direction of travel. It’s a two-way street.

24:20 I’ll give you an example. You know when you improvise – you decide to jam something? I’ve done it all my life; most musicians love to do this. Wherever you are in the world, you might sit down with a bunch of other musicians and have a jam. Now, here’s the scenario, and it always plays out the same. You sit down together, and then there is a terrible pregnant silence – a long, desperate, oxygen-shrinking pause – because no one wants to be the first to throw their hat in the ring. Everyone’s nervous of looking like an idiot, making the wrong call, so they’re sitting on their hands waiting for someone else to be brave. That silence goes on and on and on until it has become virtually unbearable, and then, as if by magic, everyone dives in, and it’s bloody chaos – it’s a mess, it’s a cacophony – and it takes ages for people to start to relax, to start to trust themselves, trust those around them, and begin to make something resembling congruent music.

25:03 Now, with the first four members of Paraorchestra, that whole process took two minutes. Because if you have a disability, in a funny way you are liberated from all the petty issues of ego, self-consciousness and insecurity which beset the rest of us. You’re on to bigger matters. You don’t give a damn about “does my bum look big in this?”, right? You’re already offering something, and then responding to someone else, like minnows in a stream. It’s an incredible thing to observe, and to participate in. There is a courage, and a clarity of purpose, and a sense of what’s important in life – certainly in music, and by extension in life. So it’s a two-way direction.

25:41 Katie: But there are some great disabled musicians who are, I think, getting more of a shout than they used to. Would you agree with that, Charles?

25:49 Charles: Yes. Look, I remain eternally an optimist. I’m not a pessimist; I’m not even a cynic, actually. I’m wholeheartedly optimistic about humanity. I love human beings, I love the world we have. I believe that we always have the capacity to change and evolve. And when people talk about the depression and sense of hopelessness they feel when the old awful truths come round again – whether it’s racist truths, misogynistic truths or ableist truths – all I’d say is: well, yes, but perhaps not quite as bad as on the last cycle. Each time, I do believe we move up. We have MeToo, right? We have Black Lives Matter. We have so many amazing new entities and points of inspiration which are lifting our culture up. And I believe the same is absolutely true in terms of how disabled people might be fully endorsed and embraced into the world of music. 20% of our population, as I say, identifies as disabled – that’s an enormous minority, so let’s not miss out on their talent. The only way is up. The only way is to accept the optimistic possibilities which lie all around us every day.

27:01 Katie: How do you feel about the current status of music and the arts in this country? We all know the power they have – do you think that is resonating in the corridors of power?

27:13 Charles: God, how do I even begin to intuit what goes on in the corridors of power? I’ve become so disgusted and disheartened by our electoral system, by the people who run our country. I don’t know, Katie. What I can say to you is that music is probably just about our number one national export. We’ve got a market share almost more than any other country in the world in terms of international music sales. So cutting off music education – access to music at the root – is about the most absurd decision, or state of mind, that we could have. So goodness only knows. I don’t think the government know what they’re doing, let alone have some kind of Machiavellian plan. It’s dismal – beyond dismal. But we have bright moments of hope. The Proms happens – that’s a moment of hope. Snape, the Snape festival – all these things going on, whether it’s carnival or street parades. Stuff is going on. You can’t stop music – but God knows, you can make it more difficult to do.

[Music]

Close (28:15)

28:15 Katie: Let’s hope we continue to have these opportunities well into the future, and I look forward to hearing what Paraorchestra will get up to next. Thank you to Charles, and to Klara and Andy from The People’s Orchestra, for their inspirational stories – and I hope they’ve inspired you too.

28:35 In the next episode of Just The Tonic, I’m going to be chatting to violinist and music educator extraordinaire, the lovely Nicola Benedetti, about the incredible work she does with her Benedetti Foundation to encourage, help and support children to get involved in music. We’ll also be hearing from staff and young people at Sistema Scotland‘s Big Noise project in Raploch, Stirling – where Nicola Benedetti is a musical big sister – and finding out how their programmes are transforming lives in communities throughout Scotland.

29:06 We’ve heard in previous episodes about the amazing benefits music can have on our general wellbeing, and there has long been a correlation between musical training and academic success for children. But there are other benefits too. What are they? Well, you will have to listen to find out.

29:27 You’ll find all the episodes of Just The Tonic so far on your favourite podcast app. And if you’re thinking about joining a choir or a community orchestra, or maybe looking for musicians to start a band, search online for community arts organisations in your area, or get in touch with Arts Council England, the Arts Council of Wales, the Arts Council of Northern Ireland or Creative Scotland.

29:47 Just The Tonic with Katie Derham was produced by Jill Davis and is a Peanut and Crumb production, supported by The People’s Orchestra and Arts Council England.