"Music is for everyone", says Lloyd Webber, and it can change children’s lives
Julian Lloyd Webber writes of his experience leading the In Harmony programme for children from disadvantaged areas in the UK.
On the night of August 19 2007, I was one among thousands of transfixed listeners in a sweltering Royal Albert Hall watching the young Venezuelan conductor Gustavo Dudamel putting the Simón Bolívar Youth Orchestra through its paces. Like everyone else in the audience, I was captivated by the young players' extraordinary passion and musicianship in Shostakovich's epic Tenth Symphony, and suitably caught up in the exuberance they exuded in Bernstein's Mambo. Here was world class playing of the highest professional standard – but what really struck a chord with me was that these children were not from privileged, moneyed backgrounds. Far from it. They were products of Venezuela's extraordinary social programme El Sistema, which – through the power of making music together – has saved many hundreds of thousands of children from lives of poverty and crime. So when I was asked, just a few weeks after the concert, by Schools Minister Andrew Adonis if I wanted to lead a similar programme in England, I didn't miss a beat. For if there is one single thread that has run through my life as a musician, it is my resolute belief that music is for everyone.
On the night of August 19 2007, I was one among thousands of transfixed listeners in a sweltering Royal Albert Hall watching the young Venezuelan conductor Gustavo Dudamel putting the Simón Bolívar Youth Orchestra through its paces. Like everyone else in the audience, I was captivated by the young players' extraordinary passion and musicianship in Shostakovich's epic Tenth Symphony, and suitably caught up in the exuberance they exuded in Bernstein's Mambo. Here was world class playing of the highest professional standard – but what really struck a chord with me was that these children were not from privileged, moneyed backgrounds. Far from it. They were products of Venezuela's extraordinary social programme El Sistema, which – through the power of making music together – has saved many hundreds of thousands of children from lives of poverty and crime. So when I was asked, just a few weeks after the concert, by Schools Minister Andrew Adonis if I wanted to lead a similar programme in England, I didn't miss a beat. For if there is one single thread that has run through my life as a musician, it is my resolute belief that music is for everyone.