National Youth Orchestra
Andrew Stewart reports on how the National Youth Orchestra of Great Britain’s peer-to-peer mentorship scheme is reaping great rewards
Andrew Stewart explores how the next generation of players is being discovered and developed
Musical inspiration comes in many forms: divine intervention, the adrenaline rush of live performance, even a teacher’s timely ticking-off. Members of the National Youth Orchestra of Great Britain have probably experienced all of the above and more on the road to a place in one of the world’s leading ensembles for young musicians. Thanks to NYO Inspire, part of the orchestra’s extensive education outreach work, they now also mentor their peers, encouraging other instrumentalists to raise their playing games.
Inspire’s annual round of workshops, rehearsals and performances welcomes teenagers from state schools with Grade 6-8 plus or equivalent on their respective instruments. Its ethos of access and inclusion soars high above the threshold of routine box-ticking exercises and diversity quotas to deliver such genuinely transformative experiences as NYO’S Tuning into Change. The three-day course, put on in partnership with Barbican Guildhall Creative Learning, was crowned by a public rehearsal and performance at the Barbican Centre last November, with Gustavo Dudamel, currently music director of the LA Philharmonic and Simón Bolívar Symphony Orchestra, guiding 160 players from NYO Inspire, the National Youth Open Orchestra and
Youth Orchestra Los Angeles through Shostakovich’s Festive Overture, polishing tricky passages and extracting hidden capabilities from all onstage.
Working without a score, singing unfeasibly fast extracts to tonic sol-fa syllables, treating all as equals, Dudamel delivered a motivational masterclass. There are no limits to making music and art, he said at show’s end: ‘Music is the soul of society. Culture, art is the identity of the society. It’s not an element of entertainment.’ Performing together, he added, creates ‘a space where we can learn. I was asking you, generally, to listen to each other, so you learn and you grow, and in music we have to listen and respect each other. If you learn that as young people, you are really changing the world.’ Those words are unlikely to be soon forgotten by this year’s Inspire intake.
Behind the stirring speeches and highoctane coaching, Inspire rests on a solid structure of organisational support and strategic thinking. Since arriving in post in 2008 Sarah Alexander, chief executive and artistic director of NYO, has created the conditions for Inspire to flourish. Above all she’s determined that the nation’s youth orchestra should reflect the nation’s diversity. Only around 6.5 per cent of UK children are educated in the private sector. But without sacrificing standards of excellence, the NYO has raised the representation of state school pupils in its ranks from 35 per cent a decade ago to 51 per cent in 2019. Inspire, meanwhile, with its cohort of 1,000 participants, offers a model of egalitarian music education rooted in British society as it is today, not as it was when the NYO was set up in 1948.
Inspire was established five years ago, following a series of one-day trials. It has encouraged hundreds of young musicians to improve their technical skills, with
66 of them joining the NYO’S main orchestra this year and countless others deepening their enjoyment of making music. ‘The NYO’S present leader came through Inspire, after being nominated by Birmingham Music Services,’ notes Nick Thorne, founder director of Inspire and now the organisation’s head of partnerships. ‘In the long term, thanks to Inspire, music hubs and services will see the NYO as an orchestra open to all, not something remote and inaccessible. Everyone playing at higher grades can now get involved, whatever their backgrounds.’
Inspire and Open, NYO’S schools outreach programmes, have strengthened NYO partnerships with music hubs and services at local and national levels. Both have been shaped by dialogue with classroom music and instrumental teachers and are sufficiently flexible to respond to the needs of different areas of the UK. ‘That’s why we created Inspire,’ notes Thorne. ‘My role today is about partnership building: when we go into a school we’re there because the school and the local music service wants us there. Inspire has responded to the shortage of music funding in schools by empowering young musicians and making them more excited about music. After they come on an Inspire course, we provide their teachers with feedback and technical advice. It’s about making sure that we’re all working together as part of the learning experience.’
Sarah Alexander is adamant that NYO course costs should never be an obstacle to membership. Patchy access to instruments in early years education, fees attached to instrumental lessons and the collapse of peripatetic music teaching in many parts of the country, however, are among the barriers that deter many who might otherwise make the NYO grade. ‘Inspire is free for its members and I would love to get rid of course fees for the main orchestra,’ she says. ‘But I’m not sure how much difference it would make. We provide financial support for any musician who needs it. If 99 per cent of the musicians needed financial support, we would find it. The problems, though, lie much further down in the system: it’s about getting your hands on an instrument, access to ensemble experience early on, good progression routes and teachers who are well paid, well motivated and feel they’re part of something important.’
The National Youth Orchestra, despite meagre public funding, takes its public role seriously. Inspire and Open, says Alexander, have already broadened the NYO’S membership and audiences. ‘We’ll see the effect this has on the music profession in 20 years’ time, as people come through Inspire and the NYO, and take on leadership roles.’ It’s one way, hopes Alexander, that they can work with others to solve the problems in music education.
The NYO has raised the representation of state school pupils in its ranks to 51 per cent