19/08/2024
Please read this if you are classical musicians or fans of classical music.
I keep seeing an article being posted about how each Olympic gold medal that Team GB won cost the lottery around £4millon, but there really isn’t a direct comparison.
The reason the lottery gives so much to sport is that people are interested and enthusiastic about sport. It has something for everyone.
Obviously, those of us that are classical musicians or who love classical music need to understand that we have allowed a situation to develop where people see our art form as irrelevant to their lives.
If a million people in this country signed the petition to save the BBC singers, that means that somewhere around 67 million people couldn’t actually care less or don’t even know what the BBC singers are and what they do.
WE have allowed this situation to develop. There are all sorts of reasons for this, which I’m not going to rant about now, but dumbing down the classics is not the answer. Neither, for that matter is slagging off people like Bocelli, Katherine Jenkins etc. because that only makes us look more elitist.
THERE ARE several things we can do about this but it needs to be US who do them.
We need to build from the ground up. We need to provide good music for people on a local level. We need it in places they can get to easily and where it doesn’t cost them an arm and a leg. I and Ben Saul have separately set up recital series, in different venues, where we are getting seriously good players and singers to come and give Saturday morning recitals. The fees we pay aren’t huge but we’re paying people to give recitals and people clearly want to give them. With a little publicity and a modicum of ingenuity, these become easy to run and the public love them. They enable you to raise funds for the venues or whatever you want to raise funds for, and I hear so many people talking about how they have loved pieces that they would never have travelled to the city to hear. We can help you set up such a series. Imagine a monthly recital in each of 100 venues; that’s well over 1000 extra recitals being given each year.
Secondly, those of us running choirs need to make the members understand (and the choir leaders need to understand) that it’s not enough to get the notes right, blend and be in tune. Our job is to move people, and that is only going to happen if we stop being up-tight about the way we sing things and, instead, encourage people to sing with a joy and a freedom which, to be honest, is lacking from most performances.
Audiences get bored really easily and, if we don’t ignite something in them, they will quickly forget the performance. The worry about being good enough, in tune, getting it right etc. in my opinion stops people from enjoying the act of singing on a soul level, whereas encouraging people to find their soul through singing actually tends to cause people to sing more in tune, to blend better and actually, to be much more likely to get it right. That’s why They Shall Laugh and Sing exists.
The other thing is we need to educate people to understand that this music is relevant today and that it speaks so many aspects of our life, geography history etc., not to mention our emotional states.
A couple of weeks ago I posted about a fund raising campaign for ABC of Opera by Mark Llewelyn Evans. ABC is different to any opera education project I have ever seen. In a fun way, it teaches kids about music, composers, history, geography and food, amongst many other things.
More importantly, ABC teaches kids that they are useful, that they are able, that they can understand and that anything is possible. One particular child who was in his workshops, who had learning difficulties that often left him excluded said to Mark “ ABC stands for Any Body Can.” This project is ingenious, it’s unique and Mark’s insight and genius for getting it across to kids makes it far and away the best education project I have ever seen.
Opera houses have flirted with taking it on. Some have tried to rip it off and create their own versions. His gorgeous books have been plagiarised, but nobody has the same vision and is able to present it in the same way as Mark.
If you want classical music to have a future, Mark’s project is one of the most vital projects out there. It has to be seen to be believed.
Mark has run this and helped thousands of kids but it comes at a great cost to him and he hardly makes anything from it.
ABC is now being set up as a charity so they can sustainably reach more kids and progress the project, and so that Mark can do it whilst not being forced to live in constant worry. It literally takes up every waking hour of his life. Many of you know and love Mark and, if you haven’t met him, you would love him if you did.
They need to raise £15000 to make the project viable. Since if first posted about this two weeks ago, a grand total of 8 people have contributed.
If we want classical music to be relevant, we have to be prepared to do something about it ourselves.
I have 100s of friends on here who are classical musicians, and 100s more who love classical music.
If each of us gave the price of a pint or a glass of wine or even a coffee, instead of drinking it, we could help him raise that money in a matter of hours, and we would be investing in our own future.
Whatever you give will come back to you, multiplied.
We need to make opportunities for ourselves. We need to use those opportunities to show the best of what we do, and we need to help projects like Mark’s which seek to create our audience.
Please help Mark in this project and share this if you feel able. Thank you.
Help Mark LLewelyn Evans raise money to support Philanthropy Foundation
