Price hike ‘will send music back to 1940s’

Daughter of renowned bandmaster says tuition fees increase will undermine his legacy

A highly controversial hike in music lesson fees will undermine the legacy of renowned bandmaster Louis Barnett, who helped found Perth Youth Orchestra, his daughter has claimed.

Leila Trainor believes the 60% rise in tuition fees will turn the city into a “musical vacuum”.

She has spoken out to urge Perth and Kinross Council to rethink its savings plan.

Mr Barnett set up the music group in 1962.

Mrs Trainor said if the planned increases go ahead “it will plunge the music scene in Perth, for its budding young musicians, back into the limbo of the late 1940s, when opportunities for young people to learn an instrument were very limited”.

“To deny any young person the right to learn an instrument simply due to financial circumstance would result in the musical elitism that my father had largely managed to do away with,” she said.

More than 1,000 people have signed a petition against the new price increase, which begins with a 20% rise in August.

The daughter of a prominent bandmaster who co-founded the Perth Youth Orchestra has said a planned tuition-fee hike will undermine her father’s legacy and turn the city into a “musical vacuum”.

Leila Trainor has pleaded with Perth and Kinross Council to rethink its savings strategy, which will see the price of instrument lessons for youngsters increase by 60% in the next three years.

The first 20% rise comes into effect in August.

Mrs Trainor, whose father Louis Barnett helped set up the youth group in 1962, said if the planned increases go ahead: “It will plunge the music scene in Perth, for its budding young musicians, back into the limbo of the late-1940s, when opportunities for young people to learn an instrument were very limited.”

The move, which was agreed at council budget talks in February, has angered parents, who fear it will lead to pupils abandoning their lessons.

More than 1,000 people have signed a petition urging the local authority to scrap the proposal.

Mrs Trainor said: “Music plays an integral part in all our lives and if the chance to learn to play instruments and create music are denied to those of limited funds, it will create the very musical vacuum that my father fought so hard to fill back in the early 1960s.”

Mrs Trainor, who stays in Northern Ireland, added: “To push ahead with these proposed extortionate increases will undermine my father’s legacy.”

A statement issued with the Young Musicians Parents Association and the Perth and the Perth and Kinross Music Foundation said: “Such an unexpected increase in a utility bill at short notice would be deemed unacceptable, yet the council has seen fit to force this increase on unsuspecting families.”

A council spokeswoman said: “We have no plans to reduce any aspect of the instrumental music service within the local area. Additional funding to support this service was provided in the local authority’s budget on a non-recurring basis. This money will be used to help extend the reach of the service further than at present.”

If the chance to play instruments and create music are denied to those with limited funds, it will create the musical vacuum my father fought so hard to fill