BROOKE SIMPSON

Brooke, 15, is one of Britain’s leading young double bass players. She lives in Bromley with her parents and younger sisters. In lockdown, her lessons and practices disappeared.

FROM THE MOMENT I picked up a double bass, five years ago, I couldn’t stop. I just love it. Pre-covid, I had weekly lessons through the Bromley Youth Music Trust, band practices, Saturday-morning symphony orchestra and Friday-night chamber orchestra. I played in festivals and school bands, rehearsing at lunch and after school. Every day I’d be out, seeing people, doing what I love.

All that stopped, abruptly, in the first lockdown. Everything was stripped back to playing alone at home. It was like losing a huge part of myself.

No one was prepared, so there weren’t any online lessons at first. When they started, it was completely different. Zoom struggles to pick up the low registers of the double bass – we disappear. There was a lot of freezing too.

We don’t all have our own computers at home, so we had to plan who needed what, when. I took over the front room, which was sometimes hard, but it freed up the kitchen so people could cook and eat. It wasn’t always easy for everyone to be quiet when others were on Zoom or I was recording. Sometimes I played in the garden.

Learning was a lot slower, but I missed the camaraderie too. The smiles that get passed round when you’re making music together in a room… I’m in the National Youth Orchestra of Great Britain and when the music arrived for the Easter residential course, I was unbelievably excited. I’d marked up all the bowings and fingerings, decided what to pack. Then suddenly, it was cancelled.

Finally, in October, I performed in an NYO concert at the Royal Festival Hall. There was a tiny audience, and we had to social distance on stage so the sound took fractionally longer to get to me. It was a new way of playing. But it felt extraordinary, like music was back. And then we went back down into lockdown.

But having to be more independent matured my musicianship. And things are looking up. In September, I joined the Royal Academy of Music junior department.

The whole experience has made me even keener to become a professional musician, but I worry that it might not be viable, because the last year has devastated the arts. My dream is to go to a conservatoire, then join a world-class orchestra so I can play double bass all day and every day. First, I just have to pass my GCSES this year…!

The Telegraph will be following the children featured here over the coming months. Look out for more stories about them in 2022

‘It felt like music was back. And then we went back down into lockdown’

Brooke worries about the effects of the pandemic on the arts