Just The Tonic, Series 1, Episode 4: Music for Confidence

Introduction (0:00)

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0:00 Ladies and gentlemen, thank you so, so much for coming. We are The People’s Orchestra!

[Applause]

0:29 Katie: You’re listening to The People’s Orchestra, a fantastic community orchestra based in West Bromwich in the West Midlands. So far in this series we’ve heard from players in the orchestra, and from singers in one of their many show choirs. But The People’s Orchestra is not just about creating opportunities for people who want to perform. It creates opportunities for non-musicians too, giving them the skills and the confidence they need to go on and have a brighter future. I’m Katie Derham, and this is Just The Tonic, the podcast series that explores the power of the arts to enrich people’s lives.

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1:05 In this episode I’ll be taking a look at how being involved in music-making can help people get back their self-esteem. I’ll be going behind the scenes at The People’s Orchestra to meet staff, and some of the people they’ve helped back into work…

1:26 “It’s more than just the orchestra – it’s like a team of people who support you.”

1:31 Katie: We’ll also be hearing from Streetwise Opera, who give people recovering from homelessness the chance to get their lives back on track through the power of opera.

1:40 Rey Trombetta: We pretty much started as a response to a politician’s statement that the homeless are the people that you walk over as you come out of the opera house.

1:48 Katie: Well, they’ve gone on to work with renowned composers like Sir James MacMillan, and I’m delighted to say he’ll be joining me in this episode. I wanted to find out about the opportunities his festival, the Cumnock Tryst, creates in his home town in Ayrshire in Scotland, and we’ll be chatting about why he was so keen to compose music for Streetwise Opera.

2:13 Sir James MacMillan: It’s a wonderful way that the world of the arts can come together with social projects like this, and it allows musicians to work closely with a lot of people who would normally not get access to artistic expression. And you can see the growing confidence week on week.

[Music]

Behind the scenes at TPO (2:40)

2:40 Katie: First up, though, let’s go to The People’s Orchestra HQ in West Bromwich to meet a member of staff who has a key role to play in keeping the show on the road. So I’m here in the beating heart of the head office of TPO, and I’ve got Pete here. Pete, tell me who you are and what you do here.

3:00 Peter Davis: Hi, my name is Peter Davis, and I am officially the clerk to the trustees, but I also do the accounts and the finance function, and personnel, and lots of other things – sell ice cream at concerts – and anything that doesn’t fit into an instrument-playing role or general musical roles. It’s sort of everything else, really.

3:22 Katie: So obviously you are crucial to the running of this organisation. Tell me why you think it’s such a great place to work – what is it that you’re trying to achieve here?

3:32 Pete: One of the things that they do here that makes it so special is they help find people jobs. People come here with a lack of confidence, and within a couple of months they’re working behind the scenes on quite important projects, like putting on a concert. A lot of people turn up at concerts, listen to the music and go home – they haven’t got a clue what goes on in the background and how long it takes. So coming here, when you see that they’ve helped about 200 people get jobs in the last couple of years, it suddenly makes it all worthwhile. But they do it on a shoestring. It’s a very important place for me.

4:13 Katie: As Pete said, The People’s Orchestra audiences might not be aware of just how much work goes on behind the scenes, but as anyone who’s ever been involved in putting on a concert knows, the backstage team are invaluable. Maria and Joel were on the government’s Kickstart programme during their time with The People’s Orchestra, and here’s how the experience helped them.

4:39 Maria: Before I got involved with The People’s Orchestra, I was on Universal Credit, looking for a job. I was really lacking confidence, because every job I’d applied for was not successful.

4:50 Joel: Before I came to TPO, I was kind of in and out of work, and none of it was really what I wanted to do.

4:57 Maria: Working in The People’s Orchestra has given me that insight, to see that it’s more than just the orchestra – it’s like a team of people who support you. And I think music is the cherry on top that makes people happy and brings people together.

5:09 Joel: I studied sound engineering and production at Birmingham City University, which is basically the same thing that I’m doing now at TPO, which is really good, because I finally get to use everything I’ve learned. I’ve actually done some of the interviews for this podcast.

5:25 Maria: It gave me so much confidence. It gives you that burst of joy, which I think is really important for young people who are perhaps not so experienced, because it gives them that experience.

5:40 Joel: I think my time at TPO has really helped with finding a new job. I’ll be leaving soon, as I’ve found a new job in acoustics in London, using some of the skills I’ve developed at TPO. It’s been a brilliant place to work, and I really enjoyed helping out.

5:55 Maria: I have got a job at a bank in Birmingham. The People’s Orchestra really do push you to do well, and to follow your dreams, and just be happy. So I feel like I can do that, and I’m confident to do that now.

[Music]

TPO Bridge: back to work (6:11)

6:11 Katie: So The People’s Orchestra helped Maria and Joel get a foot on the career ladder, but they’ve also helped people back into the workplace who’ve been experiencing difficulties, through TPO Bridge. Now, this is a programme that’s run by Mariann Harris. Here she is.

6:26 Mariann Harris: The majority of people come to us by recommendation through their work coach at their Jobcentre, and people don’t have to be musical in order to grab the support that’s on offer. But what they do have to do is take part with me in a one-to-one initial discussion that shares their circumstances – and, more importantly, how they would like to proceed and move forward. So it’s very focused on them, rather than me filling out a form that ticks a whole load of boxes. That’s not the way it works.

7:07 Certainly, being unemployed can be quite a daunting thing. We all know that if we lose our job, we lose our income, and of course that creates a problem for many in terms of confidence and self-esteem. You lose your income, you’re worried about your bills, but suddenly you drop your title, and everything that goes with being involved with people in a workplace, whatever that may be, starts to dissolve – and very, very quickly, in my experience. So it’s a very positive conversation with me that looks to putting that right, and putting it back on a positive level, that starts to encourage people to acknowledge that things will change for the better.

7:48 Katie: One of the people Mariann has helped back into employment is Lee.

7:53 Lee: The situation I was in: I worked in financial services for 18 years, and I’d done various roles throughout the organisation. But in June 2018 there was a restructure that took place, and unfortunately about 20 of us were made redundant. I did struggle with the situation, because I felt really low after the event. I felt quite negative about myself, and I thought, “why has it happened to me?” and all that type of thing.

8:25 A friend of mine, who also had been made redundant, funnily enough, from the same company, asked me to get in touch with my local Jobcentre. I went to see one of the work coaches in Halesowen, and they referred me to a lady called Mariann Harris. At the time I had very, very low self-esteem, and I thought, “well, where do I go from here?” – because I felt lost, to be fair. Even though I’ve got all these skills, and I’ve done various management roles and coaching roles, I still felt like I was worthless.

8:59 So when I first visited, she asked me about myself, had a look at my CV, and just talked about what I was interested in – just really getting to know me – and then talked about how she could support and help me. So within the space of about six to eight weeks, I’ve gone from almost nothing to being offered a new job.

9:21 Katie: It is so great to hear that the support The People’s Orchestra gave to Maria, Joel and Lee helped them build the confidence they needed to find employment.

Streetwise Opera (9:33)

9:33 I’d just like to say: welcome to Streetwise!

[Applause] [Music]

9:40 Katie: At Streetwise Opera, they help people recovering from homelessness build their self-esteem through the power of song. Here’s their head of communications, Rey Trombetta.

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9:55 Rey Trombetta: We are a bit of a mix between a homeless charity and an opera company. We’ve been around for the past 19 years. We pretty much started as a response to a politician’s statement that the homeless are the people that you walk over as you come out of the opera house. A group of people who were homeless back then heard that statement, and they were very upset, and they said, “well, we’re actually going to put on an opera” – and that’s how Streetwise started. Since then we’ve worked with hundreds of people. Right now we’re working in London, Manchester and Nottingham, delivering singing and creative workshops. We inspire and empower people recovering from homelessness.

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10:41 Katie: Ruben Whitter is a tenor with Streetwise Opera in Nottingham. He’s been involved with Streetwise since he became homeless.

10:50 Ruben Whitter: I thought that opera was for the elites, for the upper classes. I didn’t think that opera was so diverse… [unclear]

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11:20 Friends and family might be some sort of emotional support – someone to talk to, someone who could help me with getting food, or finding shelter, getting on my feet. But no – everyone just thought of just me… [unclear] And this is the worst thing about homelessness: people just assume that you’re just a tramp, just going to sleep in bus shelters. But when you are on the streets, people just walk past you like you don’t exist. And I’m saying, I’m here, and I need help, and I don’t know what to do next.

[Music] [Applause] [Music]

12:12 Rey: We work with people who are recovering from homelessness. They come into our workshops, they sing, they create music, they get inspired and empowered, and just generally have a great time. And then they go off and take part in performances that we put on, which are a great opportunity to show people that those of us who’ve experienced homelessness are not different from anyone else. So that’s one aspect. The other is something that we’re doing right now, which is delivering sessions inside homeless centres – to get people creative, to get people singing, to get people to start to rethink who they are and how they can make the world a bit more beautiful.

12:50 Ruben: Right – I’m not exactly sure how we got to know each other. I think we first knew each other personally, and through our Zoom sessions.

12:57 Rey: Yes. I think it was three days after the Prime Minister announced that people needed to stay home that we launched our first online sessions. Even though it would not be possible to sing as a group online, people needed the company. People needed that little reminder that they are creative people, that they can do stuff that’s admirable, stuff that’s great. For example, during those months we actually created a mini-opera, working with eight different composers. Reuben was involved in those sessions, and I thought he was just brilliant – the way he expressed himself, and the ideas that he communicated.

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13:46 I have my own experience of homelessness, and one of the things that I discovered is that it’s very easy to lose your self-esteem – to embrace this idea that you’re not worthy, that you have nothing to give to the world. And I think participation in the arts – but especially in singing, and in something as unique as opera – is something that really turns that around. It reminds you that yes, you do have a value. So it’s been a real pleasure to see that in Ruben, and in all the other participants that we have in all three regions.

14:26 Ruben: Opera was not started for the upper classes, but it was one of the first forms of theatre that really spoke to the people at large. And I’m so grateful to really get that message to people: that opera and classical music is really for everyone.

14:45 Rey: Yeah, I love it.

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14:52 Ruben: To have my voice trained, and have vibrato, and to have that power come out from your diaphragm – it was really a [unclear] experience. I feel very, very transformed, in the best way.

15:09 Rey: Does it matter if it has a positive impact, or does everyone deserve to be an artist if they want to be? At Streetwise, we believe that the truth, or the answer to that, is pretty much in the middle. We do believe that everyone has the right to sing, and at the same time we do feel that it does have a positive, transformational power. We do believe that people who experience homelessness might need a bit of emotional support, a bit of inspiration and a certain empowerment – but that doesn’t mean that people who experience homelessness are very different from everyone else. I think in these very difficult times that we live in, a lot of people in the UK are pretty much a couple of paycheques away from homelessness. The truth is, a lot of us need empowerment, a lot of us need inspiration, and a lot of us need to be reminded that we are all creative people – that we can just make the world a bit more beautiful.

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16:07 Ruben: It was a consistent reminder that I’m a creative person – a reminder, in my worst moments, which I would not wish on any other person, that actually, now you have a voice. You’re a person; you’re a human being.

[Music] [Applause] [Music]

16:45 Katie: You can find out more about Ruben’s story in a truly inspirational film by Streetwise Opera Nottingham, at the Streetwise Opera website (streetwiseopera.org).

Sir James MacMillan (16:55)

16:55 Katie: As Rey said earlier, Streetwise Opera has worked with many different composers – Anna Meredith, Mira Calix and Gavin Bryars amongst them. In 2016, Streetwise Opera in Manchester invited the celebrated composer Sir James MacMillan to work with them on an abridged version of Bach’s iconic oratorio, the St Matthew Passion. The production featured a new resurrection finale, jointly written by Streetwise Opera performers and James, and it was performed in Manchester’s historic Campfield Market with the renowned choir The Sixteen. I caught up with James over Zoom, and started off by asking him why he felt so inspired to work with Streetwise Opera.

17:37 Sir James MacMillan: Well, it’s a fantastic organisation, and I’ve been aware of their work for many years. What they asked me to do was to imagine a different, or a new, finale to the Passion. The idea was that the text for this new final chorus would actually emerge naturally from the group as it worked with me and with a librettist, and lovely bits of poetry began to emerge from all those taking part.

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18:20 Eventually it was all stitched together into a kind of conglomerate poem by the librettist, and then given to me to set to music. So the text was very much the work of those who were taking part in the Passion project. And then I got to work with the music. I had attended rehearsals, so I knew what they were doing, I knew what their strengths were, I knew what they were capable of. I tried to make the music suit the group. But it was wonderful, I think, to hear their words being sung by them as part of the show, so that they marked and stamped the Bach Passion with their own words, and indeed their own voices.

[Music] [Applause] [Music]

19:30 Katie: What was your impression of the members of Streetwise Opera?

19:37 James: Well, it’s a wonderful way the world of the arts can come together with social projects like this. It allows musicians – and in this case librettists and others – to work closely, and in a very focused, quite intimate way, with a lot of people who would normally not get access to artistic expression. And they’re able to perform not just to their peers and families, but to a public. You can feel the mounting excitement as the chorus members work closely with, in my case, the members of The Sixteen and special animateurs that had been brought in to work with them. It’s a marvellous means of social engagement, to bring artists into the community like that – but because the standards are very high, you really feel it is something that catapults people onto quite a public stage in a very special way.

20:24 Katie: And of course, it’s not just about potentially discovering previously unknown talent in the members of Streetwise Opera. It’s also about giving them confidence, isn’t it – confidence which they can take out into the world afterwards?

20:38 James: That’s right. And you can see the growing confidence week on week. I’ve been involved in similar projects with young people, and older people too, and when we first go in you can feel the shyness of many in the group, and the reticence and nervousness about being asked to do something like this for the first time. And gradually you can feel a confidence coming back – or, in the case of Streetwise, indeed a kind of confidence being built up from scratch. And music and the arts can do that, even sometimes when you’re working with people who might not want to be musicians eventually, or poets or composers. Nevertheless, that sense of achievement and that sense of growing confidence is a marvellous way for that person in the group to grow, and for the group to grow.

21:26 Katie: What’s your background when it comes to engaging with community music?

21:31 James: Well, I’ve been doing this for a couple of decades now. I think it was going back to the 1980s, when there was a kind of revolution in British music-making, with the likes of Gillian Moore, who at that time was with the London Sinfonietta, and Kathryn McDowell, who of course runs the London Symphony Orchestra now. I knew her when we were students at Edinburgh University, and one of her first jobs was running the education department of the Scottish Chamber Orchestra. And you could feel a real excitement with ensembles like that: they were going into schools, going into hospitals, going into community groups, going into prisons, taking their skills in as musicians – and they were very keen to work with composers.

22:19 You feel a great fulfilment being able to work with groups that maybe don’t normally get access to classical music, or to new music, or to composers’ work. And gradually you’re thrown into these amazing improvisatory sessions where people are making music up on the spot – music of a high creative and imaginative value – and gradually something very special begins to emerge from that interaction. It’s grown and evolved over the decades, and I’m still doing a lot of that work, and still trying to make it evolve up here with the Cumnock Tryst, my little festival of music here in Scotland.

The Cumnock Tryst (22:53)

22:53 Katie: Tell us a bit about the Cumnock Tryst, and exactly what you’re wanting to achieve there – engaging with the community, but also bringing wonderful role models, and just great performers, to the area.

23:05 James: Yes. Well, I established the Cumnock Tryst about seven years ago – our first festival was 2014. Cumnock is a little town in East Ayrshire where I’m from originally. I grew up there, I became a musician there. My first music-making was with friends and family and teachers and schoolmates in the community there, and I remember it as a very musical place. My grandfather, who was a very important figure in my life, got me started in music. He was a coal miner, and like many coal miners in the 20th century, he made music: he played the euphonium in colliery bands. He got me my first cornet, he took me to my first band practices. He sang in the local church choir. Men, and indeed women, of these communities loved music of all sorts.

23:52 So I remember Cumnock as an area that, on one level, of course, is an area of multiple deprivation. Many of these post-industrial places, where the mines were important but have disappeared, have had many economic and social problems to deal with, and they’re involved in a kind of social regeneration in many ways. And music and the arts generally can help that regeneration. When we saw what was happening in East Ayrshire, we thought: we can make something happen here musically that can have an impact beyond the music itself.

24:24 So yes, we bring in some of the great musicians of the world. Nicola Benedetti is our patron – she’s also from Ayrshire originally; her grandparents lived in the Cumnock area, she knew the area very well, and she’s been to perform a few times. We’ve had some fantastic choral groups come, like The Sixteen – our very first concert was given by The Sixteen – the Choir of Westminster Cathedral, the King’s Singers, the Scottish Chamber Orchestra and so on. So yes, we have these wonderful concerts, but we engage with the local community. We want them to be involved. We bring them into our festival chorus. Our compositional work in the schools is based on the very scenarios I just described to you: going in, improvising to begin with, and allowing the music – the new compositions by these young people – to emerge naturally from the group. And this is an ongoing aspiration for us at the Tryst.

25:16 Katie: A couple of things I want to pick up on. I love what you’re saying about how composers need to be able to write for amateur performers as well as for professionals. It strikes me that we’ve got a good tradition of doing that, actually.

25:28 James: Yes. The way the Tryst came about was that I looked to what composers in this country had done in previous generations, and I saw that people like Benjamin Britten, of course, and Peter Maxwell Davies wanted to engage in some way or other with their communities. They wanted to be useful to their communities. And it seems to be a British thing – you can trace it right back to the likes of Holst and Vaughan Williams, who saw their roles as composers as part of the community, just as important as writing symphonies and concertos for the great soloists of the world.

26:01 When Benjamin Britten set up his own festival in Aldeburgh in the 1940s, he made that community engagement a very central part of the ethos of the festival. He would write for local groups, local choral groups, local schools – some of Benjamin Britten’s greatest works are for children, like Noye’s Fludde and so on. And you can see that Maxwell Davies did something similar at the St Magnus Festival in Orkney, which he established in the 1970s. I used to trek up there as an undergraduate, and I was in awe of what Maxwell Davies was doing there. Not only were these great musicians coming, but he was writing music for the local schools. I attended the first performance of his Cinderella children’s opera, and I always wondered: would I ever do something similar? And eventually I did. And I began to see that that engagement with the community was absolutely central to the future of so-called serious music in this country. But in retrospect, you’re right – it’s something that the British composer has been naturally drawn to. It’s one of the jewels in the crown of the British musical experience, I think.

27:15 Katie: Looking back at the work that you’ve done so far – and I know you’ll continue to do – with communities, engaging people with music, new music, old music: can you give me a couple of examples of what they’re really getting out of it? What I love about the power of the arts and music is, yes, it’s enjoyment, yes, it’s community and bringing people together, and wellbeing – that wonderful feeling of being in an audience or in a performing group, and how music can transport you. But it is actually more concrete than that, isn’t it, in many instances? People are often learning to live in a new way, and I’d love to hear if you’ve got any stories or examples of seeing that happen.

27:51 James: You’re right. Music allows communities to see something of themselves in a way that they perhaps never saw before. When we formed our festival chorus, it was with people, some of whom had never sung in choirs before, some of whom had never sung before. But we were determined that the chorus was going to operate at a very high artistic level, so we brought on board a marvellous choral trainer, Eamonn Dougan, who is one of Harry Christophers’ protégés at The Sixteen – a member of The Sixteen – and he worked these people very hard. And that sense of worth and achievement that comes from that is something that operates at an artistic level, but it goes deeper. It goes deeper into the individual psyche, and the sense of achievement of working with their colleagues and friends in the community.

28:43 Katie: It’s a phenomenally important piece of work that you’ve done, and I’m sure it has brought pleasure to thousands. I’m sure there were challenges getting it off the ground. For people listening to this who may be inspired to try and do something similar – did you find that your message was landing on fertile ground? How tough was it to actually get it going? Because these things take resources, don’t they?

29:04 James: Yes, it was a step into the dark. But I kind of knew, being from there, I suppose, and having grown up in East Ayrshire, that there would be fertile ground there. Lots of people in my world of music said to me, “why Cumnock?” Many were astonished, I have to admit, that we were thinking about building a festival like this in a community that some did not associate with the “high arts”, as we sometimes call them. But I knew that there was this thirst, and deep engagement with these beautiful things, in communities like that, and I knew that our intentions and our aspirations would take root.

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Close (29:45)

29:45 Katie: My thanks to James MacMillan; to Rey Trombetta and Ruben Whitter at Streetwise Opera; and to Peter Davis, Mariann Harris, Lee, Maria and Joel at The People’s Orchestra – and special thanks to Joel and to Rey for helping out with the recordings for this episode too.

[Music]

30:05 In the next episode I’ll be having a chat with award-winning conductor Charles Hazlewood. He’s reinventing the orchestra for the 21st century with his Paraorchestra, removing barriers to disabled musicians working in the mainstream. We’ll also be hearing from staff and young people at Sistema Scotland‘s Big Noise project in Raploch in Stirling, where Nicola Benedetti is a musical big sister, and I’ll be finding out how their programmes are transforming lives in communities in Scotland.

> Note: the Big Noise segment was trailed here but appears in the following episode, “Inspirational Music Educators”.

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30:38 We’ve heard in previous episodes about the amazing benefits music can have on our general wellbeing – and if you haven’t managed to listen yet, you can find them in your favourite podcast app. There has long been a correlation between musical training and academic success for children, but there are so many other benefits too. What are they? Well, you will have to listen to the next episode to find out.

30:58 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.

31:15 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.

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