The two boys in grey sweaters are too modest to blow their own trumpets, but have clearly made progress on the cornet and baritone horn.
‘I really enjoy it,” says Gareth Williams (19). ‘It gives me something to do, something to achieve. It’s something I wouldn’t normally have chosen to do.”
‘I’ve only been playing two weeks and I couldn’t get a note out of the cornet at first,” adds Mark O’Kelly. ‘But now things are getting easier. It gives me something extra to say I’ve done.”
Their tutor is Ewan Easton, tuba player with the Halle orchestra based in Manchester, United Kingdom. You could say he has a captive audience: both Gareth and Mark are inmates of Thorn Cross, a young offenders’ institution on the outskirts of Warrington, not far from Manchester.
Easton is more than pleased with the progress of his duo as they practise in Thorn Cross’s conference room. ‘It doesn’t get much better than that,” he says as he leads them to a cadence with his pencil. ‘That was spot on.”
Then Easton moves on to a tricky bit and explains that they are about to do a little ‘chunking”. ‘It’s like climbing Everest. Anyone who tries to get up it in one go will end up in a polythene bag. So they break the journey into stages and set up camps. That’s what we are doing here — breaking the piece into chunks and then moving on.”
He introduces Gareth to D, a new note, which ‘feels a bit funny on the fingers”, and urges both students to think about what they are doing when they are alone in their rooms. This prompts a diversion about Liszt, who used to prepare a flash encore for every concert by practising it on a dummy keyboard on the train. Then comes another diversion about systems that help to train the memory. Easton’s sessions are rarely just about the principles of brass playing.
He has had a long interest in prisons and suggested to the Halle’s education director, Steve Pickett, that he should do some work at Thorn Cross, a move that coincided with Pickett’s wish to work with young offenders.
The first stage in a pilot scheme supported by the youth justice board was a concert in 2004 by a Halle brass group. About 40 inmates turned up and at the end were invited to sign up for lessons. Twenty came forward, which was happily embarrassing for Pickett as he had hired only 10 instruments: six cornets and four baritones.
By September 2004, the Thorn Cross project had become part of the Halle’s own ‘sound beginnings” youth music scheme. It is now also a formal part of the orchestra’s education programme, with the Halle brass launching each 12-week session. ‘We are here for the long term,” says Pickett. ‘We are here to stay.”
During the scheme, Thorn Cross inmates have travelled to Manchester’s Bridgewater Hall to sit in on a Halle rehearsal and meet brass players, and last February one group played at a Bridgewater concert organised by the Greater Manchester music action zone.
‘They had no idea what to expect,” remembers John Platt, Thorn Cross’s education manager. ‘But their mums were up in the hall screaming their support and urging them on. Now a group is going to play at a prison governors’ regional conference next month.”
More than 100 inmates have now taken part and Easton claims that only one failed to learn to read music, and that was because he was severely dyslexic. ‘Some of these guys can read music but cannot read words,” he says.
‘The sessions bring in an awful lot of new skills and new ways of learning. When lads here find this is something they can do, it’s a huge thing for them and builds confidence.”
Platt adds: ‘I always tell them it’s not an easy option and can challenge their assumptions. It tells them about ‘stickability’, about not giving up after the first attempt. They take this on and challenge themselves. But with Ewan, we get an extra package — he’s become a role model for them.”
A highlight is when Thorn Cross students join Halle brass players for a concert for inmates, staff and visitors. ‘The last concert showed off the levels of achievement,” says Easton. ‘One lad loved playing but said he could not stand up and play at a concert. When it came to the show, he was literally trembling.
‘He’d committed himself to the rehearsal because there would be no one in the audience. But he didn’t turn up and I spent half an hour chasing him up. I got one of the trumpet players to distract him and eventually he did the concert. At the end, he was almost in tears. He said he never thought he could have pushed himself to do it.”
Gareth, confident and accomplished after a year of learning the baritone, recently played Blue Moon at a concert, a rendition that is said to have brought tears to the eye of Manchester.
‘You get a real buzz when you are playing with other people,” he says. ‘Ewan won’t let you get away once he sees you have a chance to achieve something. I’ve really enjoyed it and want to join a brass band when I leave here.” —