Of course she's brilliant and working with her is the greatest blessing a scruffy music teacher like me could dream of.
But Lucy is what happens when you make instrumental tuition available to disadvantaged children.
Help us to get this message across to those who decide.
Thanks for all the lovely comments about my teaching of Lucy. I'm a reasonably competent music teacher. That's not the point though. The point is that our government is denying most of our children access to instrumental tuition. Lucy is very much the exception.
#musicforthemany
As there's been a bit of interest in my piano teaching of late, I should probably make it clear: I have a daily rate and it's ten thousand pounds sterling.
@JoshFG
It's probably because they know that, until Britain implements proper sanctions and arms embargo against the Israeli state (like the Russian one), these words of David's are probably meaningless.
@KadiatuKM
@ShekuKM
@ClassicFM
Bach does indeed belong to us all. Here's my piano pupil Lucy, who's blind and with additional needs, playing Bach's prelude in B in her piano lesson at school. She LOVES Bach!
@alexsmith1982
@Channel4
Alex, Lucy's ability to play piano so well is the result of years of very hard work and intensive practise. This is possible because she has had access to funded instrumental tuition. Most children in Lucy's position are denied this opportunity.
#musicforthemany
Thank you,
@lang_lang
! You've been very supportive of what we're doing and Lucy always looks forward to working with you.
(I'm not sure I approve of such a flagrant display of hair inequality, though.)
Lucy, the blind, neurodivergent pianist who touched the nation’s hearts on
#ThePiano
, has been announced as an International Ambassador of Lang Lang’s
@LLIMF
.
Lang Lang said Lucy inspires him “through her incredible gift and passion for the piano”. ❤️
Islamophobia.
When I started teaching music in the 1990s, some older teachers told me not to bother trying to engage the Asian children because "they don't do music", "it's against their religion", etc.
1/
@EVHalstead
Every child learns music in a different way. Have a look at what he's doing on the keyboard and copy it for him. After a while he will probably start to copy you as well. Call-and response, turn-taking. Music is communication.
If you're expressing public outrage at my being barred from Windsor Castle in the TV programme, thank you, but also note that everything worked out fine in the end.
Please direct your outrage to what's being done to the people of Palestine at the moment.
@DeborahMeaden
Thanks Deborah. Lucy is a blessing to work with. There are lots of children who never reach their musical potential because of barriers such as disability and poverty. I'd love to tell you about my charity
@musicforthemany
where we remove barriers to instrumental tuition.
Lucy is a great student, but she is just the tip of the iceberg. There are thousands and thousands of children in Britain who need to be given the opportunity of instrumental tuition to meet their needs and unlock their musicianship.
#musicforthemany
@ThangamMP
@GillianKeegan
Lucy, the blind, neurodivergent pianist who touched the nation’s hearts on
#ThePiano
, has been announced as an International Ambassador of Lang Lang’s
@LLIMF
.
Lang Lang said Lucy inspires him “through her incredible gift and passion for the piano”. ❤️
For those of us trying to do our little bits in our own little ways to get rid of racism and inequity in British society, this is a great blow. The work must continue...
@Steven_Berryman
In state schools in England, during school hours, pupils of wealthier families can access music tuition from which pupils of poorer families in the same schools are excluded. Thinking about the immorality of this tipped me over the edge into founding
@musicforthemany
The public pressure brought upon the BBC in opposition to funding cuts to, and job losses in, its Choir and Orchestras appears to have been successful. Hooray! a win for all of us! Can we bring the same pressure to bear on
@educationgovuk
and
@ace_national
on
@BBCSteveR
Thank you, Steve. You're right. We get such a lot from your musical dispatches. It reminds me of this beautiful gift from the family of a non-verbal autistic child whom I used to teach on the piano.
It was a great sadness to hear this week that the Conservative government, pandering to the Islamophobic press, withdrew funding for the Inter-Faith Network, leading to its closure.
9/
@SocialistHB
@GoodLawProject
@HackedOffHugh
This is horrible, Holly, but if The Daily Mail is so fixated on denigrating you, then it usually means you're doing the right thing, which of course you are.
In this school I built a music curriculum based on South Asian and Islamic music traditions. All the children learnt the basics of tabla and sang film songs, Qawwali and Urdu nasheeds. The parents and grandparents loved it, sang along and laughed at my terrible Punjabi.
3/
In the 80's when sports got interrupted by streakers it was all good fun, but now when it's a clothed activist with a jigsaw puzzle demanding a liveable future for their granchildren, they're the enemy of the state.
1/ The fine article by
@michaelhogan
in
@guardian
the other day about Lucy and me talks a bit about my climate activism. Due to a misunderstanding between Michael and me, it says that I have never been arrested on a demo.
I was arrested once, but soon released without charge....
The school choir won competitions, sang Urdu songs at the Music for Youth Schools Prom, and got to the final of the BBC Songs of Praise School Choirs competition - the first to sing Islamic music on that programme, despite a nervous BBC's attempts to de-Islamicise our act.
4/
I'll be on BBC Radio Leeds at about 8.15 this evening with Sally Egan talking briefly about Fanny Waterman, Lucy and equal opportunities in music education.
It soon became a central part of my work to prove these people wrong. I learnt to speak some Urdu and Punjabi (albeit badly) and studied the tabla and Indian classical singing and eventually got a music job in a primary school which was 99% of Pakistani Muslim heritage.
2/
@GillianKeegan
@ChiswickSchool
@TeachingAwards
Gillian, you fund instrumental tuition to the tune of about £80,000,000 per year, which amounts to about £8.50 per child in school in England. £8.50 buys about 15 minutes' instrumental tuition per year. This is why most children in England can't learn to play an instrument.
@Paul_McCreesh
Only when you start trying to remove the barriers which keep children from accessing decent music education, do you realise how many, varied and difficult those barriers are.
The choir sang for Islamic festivals in the community, for Christmas carol concerts and was invited to sing in Halifax Minster, where we sang a hamd (Islamic hymn of praise) in Urdu at the Sunday Eucharist service.
5/
@bexbeach
You're definitely right there, Becky. We have a charity in Calderdale which provides free instrumental tuition to children in our schools, most of whom wouldn't access it otherwise. Have a look here: . You can donate:
@PaulEmbery
Did there use to be lots of Easter lights on display in central London when you were growing up, Paul, which have now been replaced with Ramadan lights?
As a music teacher, I wonder if anyone's ever said,
"The children in that school do lots of maths. They're lucky because they've got that teacher there who can do sums and runs an afterschool club where some of the children can do maths."
It was a great joy that in 2021 the parish priest of Halifax, The Revd. Canon Hilary Barber, who had invited our choir to sing a hamd in the Eucharist, and who became a good friend and supporter of our work, was appointed as co-chair of the government's Inter-Faith Network.
8/
When we founded Music for the Many, we made South Asian and Islamic music an integral part of our work and collaborated with our mosque to found an annual Festival of Nasheeds and to run nasheed lessons in our town's mosque.
6/
As well as learning nasheeds, many of our pupils of Islamic heritage learn orchestral instruments and play in our orchestras and perform in concerts, and their families make up a lot of the audience.
7/
If you vote for the clip with Lucy and me in it, I might get to go to a posh do in London. (Perhaps, as a resident of Hebden Bridge, I ought to be encouraging you to vote for Happy Valley.
@JoshFG
, what should we do?)
Beech Hill Orchestra performed their first concert. They played, Theme from 'New World Symphony' by Dvorak, Autumn by Vivaldi, Theme from Symphony No. 9 by Beethoven, Habanera by Bizet and the Nasheed Tala al Badru Alayna. Well done to all of the players!
It shouldn't have to be down to Just Stop Oil activists to deliver this message. This message should be an integral part of any public event with such a large audience during these times of climate crisis, especially one celebrating the freedom of artistic expression.
💬 One of those disrupting the
#BBCProms
, Kate Logan, a 38-year-old mum of two from London, said:
“Many years ago, I sang with a youth choir at the Albert Hall, never imagining I would one day disrupt a performance here to draw attention to the planetary crisis we find ourselves
@Miss_Snuffy
No one in their right mind thinks that "Merry Christmas!" and "Happy holidays!" and "Joyful festive season!" are offensive. They are the opposite.
Asking where one is from has never been offensive.
Racism and exclusion have always been offensive.
Stop making stuff up.
The documentary about Lucy and me is going to be on Channel 4 on 5th May at 10.05pm.
However, those of you who live in the Calderdale area are only allowed to watch it if you've first been to my gig at the Trades Club in aid of Music for the Many!
Here's what the ever eloquent Mrs. Bath wrote about the 2-child tax credit. Obviously, I always agree with what she says, but in this case I actually really do agree with her.
the far less glitzy matter of instrumental tuition for our children?
At present, the state gives £79 million per year, via Arts Council England, to Music Education Hubs in England provide our children with instrumental tuition.
That's less than a tenner per year per school-age
@Miss_Snuffy
There is something in this which is exemplary early-years music teaching. The sort of thing, in fact, which, if supported throughout primary, would give high schools an intake of children interested, equipped and confident to study music to higher levels.
In one of our school orchestras, there's a girl of Palestinian heritage and her family suggested that we play Mawtini, the unofficial anthem of Palestine. So I arranged it for the school orchestra. Here it is. We started learning it today.
Here's one of my piano lessons, with Anaya singing (and playing in her own arrangement) the beautiful Urdu nasheed Hara Gunbad ("the green dome"). This is why it's annoying when people try to put education into boxes, make spending cuts and deny these opportunities.
child in England. Anyone who has paid for their child to have instrumental tuition, as perhaps (who knows?) some Conservative government ministers have done, knows that £10 won't get you very far.
Here's Lucy playing the first 3 movements of Kinderszenen at the University of Leeds. In her best pink shoe(man)s. Thanks to the redoubtable
@besbrodepianos
!
@ianpacemain
A lot at university, as I specialised in ethnomusicology an wrote my dissertation about Kurdish popular music. Also, when teaching in multicultural settings, I try to use songs, popular and otherwise, in the community's various languages.
This is the incredible moment Lucy, a 13-year-old who is blind and neurodiverse, played a highly-complex Chopin piece, leaving
@MikaSounds
and
@Lang_Lang
speechless.
The Piano, presented by
@ClaudiaWinkle
, starts tonight at 9pm on Channel 4.
Stream Free on All 4.
#ThePiano
The story about Jenrick ordering the obliteration of children's murals in an asylum centre is typical of the Conservatives' fear of art as a way in which excluded people can become included. Perhaps this is also why they deny so many the opportunity to learn music.
@GillianKeegan
Does anyone know a school where they allow children to go on their phones in lessons (other than for specific learning puposes)? Gillian, can you name a few of them, please? because at the moment not many of us believe your statistics.
@Miss_Snuffy
In spite of what you appear to tell yourself (and those of us who are regaled with your proclamations on the internet), most people have no idea who you or Miss Snuffy are.
Here is the list of organisations so far who have declared their support for this very important event. Come and join in if you can. There's lots of help available with transport, accommodation and access.
@qqv0310
This depends on a false presumption that instrumental tuition is not of (or is of lesser) academic, pedagogical and educational value. This false presumption is prevalent in schools across England, which is why a concerted campaign is necessary.
@Miss_Snuffy
No. You are not right. There is nothing in what Tommy writes here to suggest that he thinks that anyone would be offended by his uttering "merry Christmas".
Has anyone read this article? It's behind a paywall and I really don't want to subscribe to the Telegraph. (I'm intrigued by their use of the word "claims" in the headline.
4/ Brandenburg 5 is still one of my favourite pieces ever, but everytime I hear it I think not of 18th century Prussia, but of a South London police cell. There. So now you know.
The concert was sensational, of course, and the cadenzas dazzling, and I was quite tired....
@GillianKeegan
@Miss_Snuffy
Gillian, the complaint is nothing to do with top, or, for that matter, bottom, performing. It's about religious freedom. Stop being silly.
One of the most important tasks involved in running a music education charity is making chelsea buns for the lovely audience at our monthly fundraising gigs.
@PaulEmbery
Don't worry, Paul. The celebration of difference isn't mandatory. Neither is that of Christmas. It's just that some people find it nice. You don't have to though, if you don't want to. We're all different, after all.
@Miss_Snuffy
Do you mean that you are worried there might be a growing trend in people considering others before themselves and thinking before they speak? Lord have mercy!
Children at the school where I was then teaching did a play about the building of the wall around the West Bank. They studied the situation from the perspectives of different communities. It included this setting I composed of a Rumi poem, which they sang on Songs of Praise.
@Jacob_Rees_Mogg
The difference is, Jacob, that at the Extinction Rebellion meeting we would let you speak with an equal voice and for an equal time to the rest of us. And you would be respectfully listened to. And you wouldn't be violently removed. That's what democracy looks like.