Instrumental

by James Rhodes

  The government is cutting music programmes in schools and slashing arts grants as gleefully as a morbidly American kid in Baskin Robbins. So if only to stick it to the man, isn’t it worth fighting back in some small way? So write your damn book. Learn a Chopin prelude, get all Jackson Pollock with the kids, spend a few hours writing a haiku. Do it because it counts even without the fanfare, the money, the fame and Heat photo-shoots that all our children now think they’re entitled to because Harry Styles has done it.

  Charles Bukowski, hero of angsty teenagers the world over, instructs us to ‘find what you love and let it kill you’. Suicide by creativity is something perhaps to aspire to in an age where more people know Katie Price better than the ‘Emperor Concerto’.

  The response to this piece made me realise that there is a way of doing things that has an impact. That we can all be a little less separate and a little more together. When I got asked to write this book I suggested on Twitter that people join me and that we all write a thousand words a day. And knowing that in a couple of months there will be a bunch of new novels, plays, novellas, short stories out there, that a bunch of us are doing something small and yet giant every day, is special to me.

  It all ties in with what I do every day. Learning a new piece involves the same process. Manageable chunks of time, focus, discipline, honest work. I decide what piece I’m going to learn, head down to the music store, come home with a score, put coffee, an ashtray, a pencil and a metronome on top of the piano and start with the first page. I go through page by page, line by line, figuring out the best fingering to use. I break the difficult technical bits down into chunks and use little practising tricks to learn them. I repeat and repeat, consciously aware of every single note and, over time, over an hour or two or four each day, it builds until I’m walking out on stage a few weeks later and playing it from memory. This is what life is for me. It is exhilarating, inspiring, rewarding and dignified. It applies not just to music and writing but to relationships, love, friendship, care. It is, ultimately, about how we express ourselves and how we value ourselves. And in my small little world, it feels like a revolution. It allows me to replace all of the heavy, negative, bullshit energy in my life with something liberating and valuable. It gives me permission to stop being a victim and contribute something deeper to my world. It is, fundamentally, a transference of negative energy to positive. It is something that can grow by attraction rather than promotion because it works. It needs no hard sell. No sell of any kind. And, miraculously and joyfully, I am living it.

  TRACK EIGHTEEN

  Beethoven, Piano Concerto No. 5 (‘Emperor’), Second Movement

  Radu Lupu, Piano

  There’s a piece of music I’d like played at my funeral. Properly played – live, with orchestra and a decent pianist, not pumped out of speakers in the drizzle as people loaf around thinking about snacks.

  It’s one of the first pieces of music I cried to. Beethoven wrote five piano concertos and the last one is titled the ‘Emperor’ because it’s typically bombastic, heroic and in your face. (Much like Napoleon was, despite being so ickle.) The two outer movements are exhilarating – deluges of notes, cascades of fireworks, electrifying and tumultuous thrills and spills. And they flank a middle move-ment of breathtaking beauty and serenity. It was all a bit much for my younger mind to handle, but now as an adult it simply demonstrates everything that music is and does.

  Fucking Beethoven . . .

  I HAVE ALWAYS FELT THAT the most profound problem with my industry is that it takes the focus off creativity and places it instead on ego. Classical music has become about appearance (sacred or sacrilegious, take your pick), money-making, dressing up, pomp and prestige, rather than simply being of service to the music. And it’s not just the musicians who are complicit but the surrounding industry too. The classical music awards ceremonies are rife with it. Dire, evil, despicable horrors that have nothing to do with music at all.

  The Classic BRIT Awards represent the epitome of what is so dreadfully wrong with the classical music industry. In 2012 I couldn’t hold back any longer and wrote a piece for the Telegraph about just how monstrous they, and the people running it, were. The full text is in the Appendix of this book, but the short version is as follows: if you are curious about classical music you would be better educated, better served, and better off spending thirty minutes watching Leonard Bernstein talk about Beethoven on YouTube than sitting through that stinking, three-hour fuckathon.

  Ironically, for many years I thought the Gramophone Awards (more serious, more glamorous, with bona fide classical musicians winning awards) were the real deal. Until I went to them for the first time expecting a bit of that glamour and depth. It was a huge mistake, and one I found particularly crushing – even these guys, the so-called ‘proper’ end of classical music, were so far up their own asses they could barely breath. This time I wrote about them for the Guardian (again, reprinted in the Appendix) and called it how I saw it. They had the editor of Gramophone write a response on why I’d missed the point, but I remain convinced I didn’t. These guys are totally responsible for the very things they are complaining about.

  When I wrote about this stuff in the papers I got so many supportive and lovely messages, especially from people in the industry who simply couldn’t lend their support publicly and stay employed. Much of the feedback in the comments threads asked for solutions. Quite rightly – it is easy to piss and moan, much harder to offer workable solutions that can bring about change. Only it isn’t hard at all.

  My solution? Fuck the lot of them. Play what you want, where you want, how you want and to whom you want. Do it naked, do it wearing jeans, doing it while cross-dressing. Do it at midnight or 3 p.m. Do it in bars and pubs, halls and theatres. Do it for free. Do it for charity. Do it in schools. Make it inclusive, accessible, respectful, authentic. Give it back to whom it belongs. Don’t let a few geriatric, inbred morons dictate how this immortal, incredibly wonderful, God-given music should be presented. We’re bigger than that. God knows, the music is too.

  There are thousands of students at music college who would love the experience of playing to an audience that doesn’t simply comprise other music students, and if they don’t love or want that experience, they’re not going to last long. Do it for travel expenses in local schools, halls, clubs and think of it as a warm-up for paid gigs. I would (and do) happily perform a few times a year for free at a school or hospital – it helps me prepare for professional engagements, allows me to share something I love, and is hugely useful in building up repertoire and stamina. Get in touch and ask if that’s something you’d like me to do for you.

  Alongside the typical 7.30/8 p.m. recitals, give concerts at 6.30 p.m. for an hour so people can come straight from work and listen and still be out in time for a meal with a hot date or to get home in time to put the kids to bed. Or perform at 10 p.m. when people have had a chance to go out for dinner beforehand and want to finish off the evening with some music.

  Give music away for free. Not whole albums, necessarily, but tracks. Put them up on SoundCloud and allow downloads. Send them via email to a fan list, however small. Get the music out there in the public domain where it belongs rather than in sweaty practice rooms or buried under a million other albums on Amazon.

  Play different venues, from traditional classical ones to clubs. Limelight at the 100 Club, Classical Revolution, the Yellow Lounge and a host of others are all putting on classical music nights. And, if you want to reach a new audience rather than an established one, then when you play don’t programme overly long, terrifically complex contemporary shit to show how avant-garde you are. If that’s your thing then play fifteen minutes of it alongside Brahms and Chopin because, well, they’re Brahms and Chopin and no matter how genuine your love of Stockhausen and Birtwistle, we both know there’s no real competition there.

  Share concerts between artists like Beethoven did. Have some chamber music, some solo music, some songs. Variety is alway
s good.

  Let the audience bring drinks in, engage with them, chat to them both from the stage and on social media. This is a huge point. Recently I was hanging with the boss of one of the major labels over lunch and discussing how they could sell more records. He was telling me how most of their artists are incredibly difficult – they refuse to play certain venues that aren’t deemed prestigious enough, don’t want to do interviews, don’t feel comfortable engaging with audiences. Which is fine until you realise that gone are the days of simply relying on the record labels to drum up business and sell albums and tickets. We musicians need to engage and form a relationship with our audience that goes beyond the few autograph hunters post-gig. Be approachable, respond to tweets and Facebook messages, crack jokes, be human, drop the whole ‘artist shrouded in his own genius’ bullshit. Because if you don’t or cannot do that, unless you are a one-in-a-generation talent, you’re going to struggle. It is no longer enough to simply excel at making music. Make sure your management and label are on the same page too.

  And if they’re not then change them. I’ve been incredibly lucky with my manager. And also with my label, Signum, whose boss Steve continues to be an absolute Don. And yet there is more that I want to do. I am so eager to break away from the self-dug trench that classical music is in that I am in the process of setting up my own record label, Instrumental Records. I want to put together my very own creative hub.

  What if the majority of female classical musicians weren’t marketed on what they looked like? If there was simply no need to record versions of Les Mis for cello and piano in order to flog albums? If labels didn’t tell you what to record, choose the album cover photos, get some old-school academic to write the liner notes, try impotently to plug it to their 1,000 Twitter followers, get it on to Amazon for £14 more than a month after its release date?

  Instrumental is a label where I can give the musicians the opportunity to record what they want. We will design beautiful albums, tour as a label, doing concerts that respect the music, musicians and audience, foster new talent regardless of age and looks, pay musicians the royalties they deserve, give them better all-round control of what they want to do, and encourage and nurture a following on and offline that feeds into the whole musical revolution we are a part of.

  We could put on an awards ceremony that really does celebrate the best that classical music has to offer – not cheap, dumbed-down shit and not back-slapping, self-congratulatory wank. Just brilliant musicians, warm, amenable hosts, laughter, music, inspiration and delight in a sector of the arts that has always aimed either too high or too low and been terrified of everything in between.

  And the best part about it is that it looks as though I will have the implicit support of one of the country’s most powerful TV broadcasters because of the work I’m doing with Channel 4. In many ways, Savile aside, I love and admire the BBC. But they seem to be preaching to the converted; their classical music shows, such as they are, don’t look to try to attract new audiences but seem content with the existing ones. With the backing of Channel 4 and by creating my own label, artist and audience will be on the same page, the music will come first and I will finally have a chance to work towards the dream I’ve had ever since I can remember.

  And if you’re reading this and have something to say then come and join me. Whether you’re with one of the big labels and bored of being treated like shit, or you’ve never recorded before but are hungry to do so, let me know. If you are horrified that rather than finding another, shorter piece, Lang Lang happily cut out over half of a Chopin polonaise at the Classic BRITs without explaining why simply because it was going to be on TV and had to fit under the magical three-minute ADHD concentration limit, if you’re willing and able to talk to your audience, to spread something pure and lovely, to say ‘fuck you’ to the 20 per cent of audience members who’d prefer you to shut up and simply play the notes, then let’s make albums, let’s tour, let’s do something magnificent and brilliant and worthwhile and of service to the music, the audience and the performer.

  I did an evening at the Barbican with Stephen Fry talking about the issues facing classical music. I played and took questions and we debated. We charged £5, it was rammed, and there was a genuine hunger for music, discussion and performance. Imagine touring a group of incredibly talented musicians who can and will take part in Q&As with their audiences, who will engage them and introduce pieces, who will give free master-classes and talks, share their opinions honestly, do what they can to further musical education in this country.

  OK, I know it sounds a little like some utopian vision of mine that occurred while taking a really long dump, but trust me, I will make this happen.

  I went recently to a middle school in leafy Hertfordshire. It was a pre-production trip for a new Channel 4 series. I wanted to see what the state of affairs is concerning music tuition in schools. I was confronted with a class of thirty children who were engaged, eager, passionate and genuinely keen to immerse themselves in music. Their (brilliant) teacher has a total annual budget of £400 for 160 children.

  Necessity being the motherfucker of invention, what I witnessed was a kind of miniature Stomp – dustbins, margarine tins and choco-late boxes used as instruments, a cello that looked as if it had been used as firewood, and a couple of mangled trumpets that were unplayable. There is something hideously wrong with an education system that has all the necessary ingredients for learning – passion, curiosity, incredibly hard-working and inventive teachers – and rewards that with mops and dustbins rather than instruments and subsidies for private tuition.

  How many future Adeles, Ashkenazys, Rattles or Elton Johns are we missing out on simply because they haven’t been given the opportunity to explore music-making? Perhaps more importantly, regardless of future commercial success, how many young creative minds are the government stifling out of laziness, vote-chasing and misplaced priorities? Another one of the arts is biting the dust. In the age of entitle-ment and instant fame that is so encouraged and idealised by Heat magazine and its ilk, at a time where record companies won’t give you a second glance unless you’ve got 20,000 Twitter followers, a million YouTube hits and an album already written and produced, someone felt it a worthy idea to treat music education as an extravagance rather than a basic right. If that doesn’t change, the impact cannot fail to be far-reaching and long-lasting. And so let’s change it.

  Look at what Sir Nick Serota has done with the Tate – once the privilege of a tiny minority, now over 7,000,000 visitors a year come and explore a world that would have been totally alien to most a couple of decades ago. He and his team have somehow loosened the stranglehold on the culture of modern art and flung open its doors to everyone, and they haven’t had to change or dumb down the art works themselves in order to do it. Why not do the same with classical music but without using gimmicks, shit crossover music and boobs to achieve it? In many ways, classical music is the last art form to be opened up to one and all. And, fuck me, it is long overdue. Even more shamefully, it is not just because of the labels, the industry as a whole and the managers that we are in this situation, but also very much because of the artists and musicians themselves.

  Classical music has apparently needed saving for a long time now. The demise of the industry has been predicted for over a decade and there are repeated cries for an urgent overhaul, together with the obligatory panicked squawks for drastic change in promotion, branding and presentation.

  I agree that something needs to change. Not to ‘save the industry’. Not to continue to ensure conductors can get paid £50,000 for a night’s work. Not even to ensure that London’s plethora of world-famous orchestras can continue to survive (although I desperately hope they do). I simply cannot make my peace with the fact that so few people are offered it as a valid choice.

  The Proms has been heading in the right direction for a long time and is something we should be immensely proud of. When it opened its booking lines this year, it sold over 80,
000 tickets in the first few hours. We should be proud to host the largest music festival in the world, attracting the brightest and best talent there is. The concerts are broadcast on radio, online and often on TV. The music reaches millions. What do the Proms do right to beat all the odds when everywhere else there are complaints about dwindling audiences? Is it perhaps the fact that no one gives a fuck what you wear as an audience member? The variety of the programming? Start times that include lunchtime, early evening, evening and late night?

  No doubt all of the above. But for me, the overriding reason for the success of the Proms has got to be the fact that it doesn’t have its head up its arse. It doesn’t speak down to the public; it simply manages to give the impression that whatever your knowledge of classical music, whatever your experience, your likes, dislikes, dress sense, background or intelligence, you are very, very welcome. If you want to clap between movements, then knock yourself out. Don’t know how to pronounce the name of the composer? Who cares? Don’t feel the urge to announce loudly and smugly the name of the encore the soloist has decided to play? Even better. And it does this in a way that few, if any, of the other big halls manage to do.

  The Proms also, of course, flies the flag for the obscene amount of talent our country has to offer – Stephen Hough, Paul Lewis, Nicola Benedetti, Benjamin Grosvenor etc all feature prominently. And if somehow we can translate this idea from the Proms to classical music as a whole in the UK, then the future will look very rosy indeed. It is starting to happen already – more people in the US went to a classical concert last year than to a football game. But we must not allow the momentum to fade away.