Cultured Views

One issue I will always wave the flag for is that of youth music and the opportunity for young musicians to play and experience the international stage. I have known many kids, and adults as well, whose lives have been transformed by having an instrument put in their hands and I would so love to see a national scheme where the youth on the UK’s sink estates could have the opportunity to learn and play an instrument. Kids need a violin or clarinet in their hands – not guns or knives.

Which is why I am so enraged at the news of the wonderful Festival of British Youth Orchestras becoming the first economic casualty of the arts in 2010. Govt’s have their priorities so straight – hit the arts and hit it where the kids benefit most. This festival, which took place every year in August in Edinburgh and Glasgow, gave youth orchestras from around the UK the platform to perform alongside international youth orchestras from nations like South Korea. Experience such as this is invaluable to young musicians and just £50,000 was needed to ensure this valuable event’s future. It was not forthcoming and now we have lost it.

If you love your Berlin Philharmonics, your London Symphony or your Vienna Philharmonic orchestras you need to support and fund youth orchestras – they are the breeding ground for these world famous outfits. Pulling the rug out from beneath the feet of young musicians for a few mere thousand pounds is just crazy – youth music matters very much, and when you hear an ensemble like the Youth Orchestra of Venezuela you know what I mean. Incredible.

In a country like the UK with multi-millionaire footballer players and weekly lotto winners surely one of them can cough up a paltry fifty grand…? Save the Festival of British Youth Orchestras!

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