Page 315 - FINAL_Guildhall Media Highlights 2019-2020 Coverage Book

Most have played formative gigs at the Windmill, a pub in Brixton, south London, and have had singles out
on Speedy Wunderground, a 7in-only label run by the producer Dan Carey. All of their releases are recorded
live in a day, so musicians need to be tight enough to do a good take rather than rely on Carey to clean up
their inadequacies afterwards. All of this is coming at a time when, thanks to technology, old-fashioned
musicianship is said to have died a death.

Shabaka Hutchings of the Comet Is ComingGETTY IMAGES/FILMMAGIC

“I’ve seen a massive change,” says Shabaka Hutchings, a pioneering figure in Britain’s new wave of jazz
who plays saxophone in the Mercury-nominated rave/space rock group the Comet Is Coming. “Ten years
ago young people didn’t think jazz or classical would be relevant to their lives,” says Hutchings, who left his
childhood home of Barbados to study a clarinet degree at London’s Guildhall School of Music and Drama
before becoming a musician. “Part of the problem was image: it made them think of old men in suits. Now
people are no longer afraid of acoustic instruments, and a lot of that has to do with the realisation that there
isn’t a great deal of difference between a classical, jazz or rock musician when they’re lost in the zone.”

Also responsible for the present crop of virtuoso bands was the Noughties boom in Suzuki method teaching,
normally for stringed instruments, which helps children to reach a high level quickly through an emphasis
on aural training and an intense relationship between student, parent and teacher. While the progressive rock
bands of the early Seventies such as Pink Floyd and Genesis were a product of excellent music teaching in
private schools, the new wave of technically accomplish bands, at least the ones included here, are a product
of a boom in state music education during the mid-Noughties.

“From 1990 to 2000, free music provision stopped,” says Margaret Omoniyi, a primary school teacher in
south London who runs Margaret’s Music, a community-based music lessons company. “Then in 2005 the
government started a programme called Wider Opportunities, in which every child in Britain had access to
music lessons. Until 2015 there was also free music provision at secondary schools with peripatetic
teaching, which gave lessons to kids who weren’t doing music GCSE. Add to this a few kids in each class
taking Suzuki lessons, which raises the overall standard by impacting on the way others engage with music,
and there really was a golden age.”

One band who took advantage of this is Black Midi. Four recent graduates of the Brit School, the
comprehensive in south London whose former pupils include Amy Winehouse and Adele, they have an