#SeasonalSonnets: 12th Dec.

Tonight's post is again slightly different in that it has a video rather than a 'light drawing' to go along with it. This is because it was inspired by the fact that at about this time exactly ten years ago, I was taking part in an event that is still one of the most memorable in my life. On the Tuesday 12th December 2006, aged fifteen, I and several schoolfriends were given the opportunity to sing in the chorus of Handel's Messiah at St. John's Smith Square, alongside professional singers and musicians, and under the baton of Conductor John Lubbock. The concert was organised by the (then fairly-newly established) Music of Life foundation, founded in 2003 and working on the idea that young people with disabilities deserve to have the same access to training and performance opportunities as any other aspiring classical singers or musicians. 

This might seem a simple premise (and it is!) but, especially in 2003, just eight years after the passing of the 1995 Disability Discrimination Act, it was really rather radical - not least because of the long term links between disability and music therapy. Even today it's the only charity in the UK working to this sort of remit, and how many contemporary classical musicians with disabilities can you name?

Not many, if any.

That said, this post isn't about being political (that's what my thesis is for!) but about being grateful to MofL for the chance that they gave me and my fellow participants. We were allowed to feel that the concert hall was our space, too, and we worked hard to do it justice - because we were inspired by being valued. We also found some much-needed role models in the form of the soprano Denise Leigh and the percussionist Evelyn Glennie - and, of course, a peer group of fellow students like us who were passionate about music. 

It might seem a bit banal to say, but that night changed my life. It wasn't that it made everything easy - far from it, because even on the day there were barriers, as my Mama recalls me being carried up the steps of the venue. What it did, though, was sow the seed in me that I could do this, too. If not for MofL, I definitely wouldn't have thought I could join Opera Warwick or Chorus whilst at uni, and those are the societies that have given me some of my closest friends.

So, in honour of our concert a decade ago, you can find below my sonnet and some rather cringey video footage of my teenage self.

Hope you like.

12^th December

Today I’ll sing the praises of dear Handel

and the joy of his great opus, The Messiah,

as thanks to MofL who believed that I could handle

the pressure (and the priv’lege) of a choir.

It’s not that they ‘saw past’ our disabilities,

because our needs were very much considered,

but in them they sought to find the possibility

by which music might be helped rather than hindered.

They began with the belief that we were ‘good’,

as important as our ‘non-disabled’ peers,

and instilled in us the feeling that we could –

something that’s lasted with me all these years.

All I have done in the fast-flung decade since

was profoundly shaped by that experience.