NMPAT 50th anniversary

Saturday was joyous. I’m not sure I’m able to even begin to describe the magic of the day. It all started with breakfast in the Northampton Premier Inn with my parents and Sam Becker. A memorable day, in my experience, very often starts with a full veggie breakfast in a Premier Inn!

After breakfast, my father and I went for a very lovely walk around Northampton town centre, both of us becoming increasingly concerned about what has happened to the place. It really does seem to have gone into decline. For me, as a young person, it was one of the most glamorous and bustling places imaginable. It’s where the theatre was. It’s where the bowling alley was. There was a massive market. Tonnes of exciting shops. A night club which must have been amazing because it was called Cinderella Rockafella... And, of course the music school.

The area around the theatre, which is being marketed as the Cultural Quarter, is pleasant enough, but the moment you enter the shopping streets, it all starts to look a bit grubby, with shops boarded over, the big department stores running for the hills and very few people milling about. It was a Saturday morning. I’m pretty sure the place ought to have been rammed with shoppers.

Northamptonshire County Council have, of course, officially gone bust. They’re apparently leaving pot holes in the street and making the sorts of neglectful decisions which generate even more decline. And, of course, since the brutal austerity cuts, all of those enthusiastic and energetic council workers have had every last bit of giving a shit kicked out of them.

I went to the music school in the late morning to see the alumni orchestra rehearsing and was utterly blown away by the experience. Fiona had already texted to say she’d got about ten bars into playing Mars from the Planet Suite and burst into tears, generated by a sense of nostalgia, and huge gratitude to the music school for the career in music which it gave to her.

I sat and watched from the back of the second violins with the lovely Anna Murby, former BBC Radio Northampton presenter, who was also a student at NMPAT. Her twin, Vanessa, was playing viola in the orchestra. She’s interviewed me many times on the radio, but, of course, had no idea what I actually looked like. She was presenting the evening concert, and I was brilliantly amused when she tapped one of her mates on the back in the second violins and politely told them that the bowing looked a bit messy in one of the sections. There are few presenters who would turn up to rehearsals and fewer still who would recognise scruffy bowing, but that’s the power of the music school.

It was particularly thrilling to hang out with Helen Turton, whom I’ve really not seen as much as I should have over the years. We were incredibly close friends back in the day, and she reminded me quite how much time we’d spent together in those formative years. We’re exactly the same age and were always placed in the same orchestras and chamber groups, more often than not, sharing a desk.

I rushed away from lunch to do an interview with documentary makers who were creating a film about the reunion. I talked fairly passionately about arts cuts and the importance of rounded curriculums in schools.

In the early afternoon, it became my time to do some work, as founder members of the Northamptonshire Youth Choir had been invited to join its present members to sing two songs - frighteningly from memory. The choir started in 1990 with a residential course just outside Rushden. Brother Edward and I walked there from Higham Ferrers with Heather Norwood, who’s sadly no longer with us, and Tammy Palmer, who’s now a Lib Dem politician!

I think there were about twenty former choir members and we were guest conducted by our old vocal guru, David Bray. Brother Edward, Debbie Holmes and Becky Cox were amongst the performers. The latter are very dear friends with whom I’ve managed to stay in touch. They were both in the Watford Gap Musical, and Becky appeared in my first 100 Faces film, after moving to Cumbria. She now has a daughter who’s at university. How on earth can that be?

The rehearsal was a lot of fun. Hysterically, we all immediately reverted to our seventeen year-old selves. Debbie and Becky would often be sent out of rehearsals for uncontrollably giggling, and I always made myself deeply unpopular by making sardonic and surreal comments from the back row! The same happened again. Brother Edward, as always, was most ashamed! It was a little terrifying to sing from memory. It’s not something I’m used to these days. In fact, I’m not sure I’ve ever really done it, although David Bray tells me the choir always sang without music.

After the rehearsal there was a quick sound check on the Derngate stage before tea in an Italian restaurant with fellow choir members.




The concert was an early one. Peter Smalley, who runs NMPAT, was determined to start at 6pm so that we could all hang around at the Derngate afterwards sharing memories and drinking far too much orange juice.




The choir performed in the first half, so I didn’t see much of the concert band and the brass band who performed either side of us.




We had tickets in the fourth row of the stalls for the second half, which started with a set performed by the alumni Big Band. The Northamptonshire Big Band was always the place where the cool kids hung out. I remember going to see them in a concert at the Bede Hall in Higham in the early 90s and being blown away by their conductor, John Greaves, starting a number off and then standing at the side, nonchalantly clicking his fingers. The alumni version, of course, was full of industry pros, and they absolutely nailed it with some virtuoso ensemble playing and a series of electrifying solos. The urban myth of the evening- which might well be true- was that one of the band had turned down a gig playing with a top rock band in order to play at Derngate. Rachel Coles, their present conductor, led the band with panache, and a series of understated hand, arm and hip wiggles which periodically threatened to become dancing but always remained painfully cool. It was a side to her which I’d never seen before... And I liked it!




It felt very much as though the band were laying down the gauntlet to the alumni orchestra, who responded with brutal force.




They performed Mars, Jupiter and the 1812 Overture (complete with pyrotechnic and brilliantly-timed canons) with a fire I’ve seldom seen in an orchestra. The fact that the they’d only had a morning to rehearse probably added to the unrestrained, electrifying quality of the performance. It was almost as though the players had turned to each other beforehand and simply said, “let’s do this” before throwing caution to the wind. Sometimes the only difference between a terrible scratch performance and something profound and exciting is the players deciding to be brilliant.




I wept through the “Thaxted” section of Jupiter. It was like a double home-coming for a lad whose parents moved from Northamptonshire to Thaxted. I felt like a kid again, remembering watching the Youth Orchestra in a performance at the Derngate when I was still in the Training Orchestra, and feeling so inspired.




On Saturday night, inspiration turned to absolute pride as I watched a field of pro, semi-pro and top-quality amateur musicians who’d all passed through the same system. Each and everyone one of us had their own story about the importance of the music school and the crucial role it had played in our development, not just as musicians, but as human beings. The story we were all telling wasn’t only about those of us who’d become professional musicians, or music teachers, it was about the people who’d found their tribe whilst at the music school, the people who’d suddenly realised they weren’t weird or freaky, the people whose confidence had grown every time they walked into that hallowed building on the Kettering Road. And it was that confidence which saw them through their first job interview in whichever field they entered. And personally, I was there to thank the music school for showing me the horizon and unlocking a door which led to the rest of the world...




And to those bastards who view music as a “soft subject”, who have taken music out of the curriculum in their schools. To the councils who blithely cut their youth music services. To the governments who slash arts funding and then spend what we saved in austerity cuts on Brexit and lowering taxes, I ask one question: How would you RATHER the young people of this country spend their Saturday nights? Playing orchestral concerts, singing in choirs and acting in shows or getting pissed down the local pub? Let me tell you something: for a lad from East Northamptonshire, where the nearest cinema was five miles away and where joyriding, glue-sniffing and cow-tipping were the most popular past-times, it was a straight up choice between those two options. Thank God for NMPAT.