I recently attended my son's last performance in the UK with the local County Youth Orchestra and it triggered a lot of emotion and a lot of memories.
It was a little before 3 pm on a cold, miserable Sunday afternoon at the end of June when my wife, my daughter and I took our seats in the small theatre at a local school. Having arrived about ten minutes prior, we’d been watching two young harpists perform in the foyer before entering the main auditorium.
The six-hundred-seat arena was probably about two-thirds full when the orchestra took to the stage to a polite round of applause. When most of the young performers were seated, the orchestra’s leader strode to the centre of the stage, bowed to us and then took her seat. She was followed by the first of the orchestra’s two conductors—or “Directors” as the County Music and Performing Arts Trust prefers to call them.
The audience fell silent. The lights dimmed on us, but the stage remained brightly lit, and for almost two hours we were treated to a varied programme that began with Saint-Saens’ Danse Macabre, ended with Shostakovich and served up Elgar’s Nimrod as an encore.
A wonderful final UK concert of my son’s time with the trust.
I couldn’t tell you how many of these concerts I’ve been to in the last eight years—that’s how long he’s has been a part of the Trust, one of the highest-regarded youth music services in the whole country. Over the years I’ve seen him countless times in this same tiny theatre. I’ve seen him more than a dozen times at the town’s main Theatre too. And I’ve also been privileged to see him perform at Birmingham Symphony Hall and even The Royal Albert Hall.
It’s been quite a journey.
The Trust runs a great many music groups across three age/ability tiers—Juniors, Training and Youth. Juniors features the youngest musicians, typically aged from about ten to twelve or thirteen. Training is the middle group, with most of the members between about twelve to about sixteen, and Youth features the oldest and most experienced young people, typically from as young as fifteen if they are good enough up to eighteen.
Most of the people in the Youth groups have achieved the top three “grades” in their instrument—grades six, seven and eight. To put that in context, grades seven and eight carry “UCAS” points that can aid university entry. It’s an extremely high standard.
My Son spent one year in the County Junior Strings group—he plays the cello. Junior Strings is a much-celebrated group, instantly identifiable by their colourful polo shirts, and is regularly invited to perform at the National Music for Youth festival in Birmingham each July—although that didn’t happen in the year my son performed with them.
After CJS, he was promoted to the County Junior Orchestra. The Orchestra is the flagship group of each of the three tiers that The Trust runs. He spent two years with CYO followed by two COVID-affected years with CTO (County Training Orchestra), with online rehearsals and limited opportunities to perform in front of an audience, before his elevation to the Youth Orchestra in his GCSE year at the age of fifteen, meaning he’s been with CYO for three years now.
I have so many memories from each of those years. So many photographs and videos to stir those memories. We invited both sets of grandparents to join us for performances over the years. Every concert was special in its own way. And in those early years, every performance better than the last.
It’s hard to apply that last sentence to Jeremy’s time in CYO since 2021 simply because the standard of that group of amazing young musicians is so high that it’s difficult for any given performance to get any better. To say they have maintained their high standard through the last three years is praise enough.
Over the last eight years, I’ve watched my son grow from a young boy trying his best with an unwieldy instrument, into a fine young man who projects calm, quiet confidence on stage and performs consistently well at every concert.
And it’s entirely possible that I won’t get to see him perform again and that makes me sad, but also makes my heart swell with pride to think back on what I have experienced.
I’ll never forget seeing him on stage at the Royal Albert Hall anchoring one of the strangest concerts I’ve ever been to. Or seeing him knock it out of the park at Birmingham Symphony Hall.
I will never forget the rapturous round of applause given to a young girl from Ukraine who gave a speech of thanks to us all for supporting her country following the Russian invasion at the Orchestra Spectacular in March of 2022. Or the way the Youth Orchestra still managed to turn in a wonderful programme that night despite the (absolutely correct) decision not to perform the 1812 Overture they had been working on all term.
And their performance of Tchaikovsky’s Swan Lake at 2023’s Christmas concert, and the deserved standing ovation they received at the end of it, will be something I’m still looking back on fondly in twenty years’ time.
I never had the opportunity, talent, or indeed inclination to learn a musical instrument—any instrument—as a schoolboy. I think that thirty-five to forty year later that’s one of the few regrets I have when I look back on my life. As a fifty-year-old, I wish I could have experienced what he and his sister have been able to experience. I’ve seen over the past couple of years in particular, as he has gone through first GCSEs and the A Levels, how he’s been able to immerse himself in his playing to calm his mind and enrich his soul and wish I was able to do that too.
I am so immensely proud of my son and his time with The Trust. And I’ll forever be grateful to the Trust’s wonderful staff. I couldn’t possibly name them all, and it would be wrong to name but a few, but if any of them read this, I want them to know just how grateful I am. I won’t ever be able to thank you enough, but from the bottom my heart, I will try—thank you.
My son and his orchestra have now returned from Spain on their bi-annual tour. He went on the tour to Germany two years ago and thoroughly enjoyed it and he enjoyed this one even more. There were tears throughout the last concert on the tour and during his phone call home after it.
Eight years. Eight years of transporting him to and from weekly rehearsal and to concert venues. Countless hours of practice, of hearing the same part of the same piece over and over and over again, only to hear it one more time as part of the whole ensemble and for it all to make sense.
And I wouldn’t have changed any of it. And I’d happily do it all again.
It’s been an incredible eight years. And I’ll say this one more time—I couldn’t be more proud of my son. That was the overwhelming emotion I was filled with as the last notes of Nimrod died away on Sunday afternoon.
Pride.
