Page 75 - RPS Awards 2024 Coverage Book

James: “This award is specifically for non professional musicians
because the truth is they outnumber the professionals in this

country by a great extent. There are thousands and thousands of
non professional musicians in the UK and they’re such an amazing

part of our heritage. There are some astoundingly good-quality

groups, including some of those nominated this year - and the
excellence in terms of the care that they have for their community,

the role that they have in their community and what they bring - has
to be celebrated.”

The public votes for this category have exceeded 5300 this year

and are a tremendous sign of how much musical groups are valued
in communities. The shortlist includes Derwent Brass, Glasgow

Madrigirls, Sheffield Philharmonic Chorus and Manchester’s

own The Sunday Boys.

“It’s an incredible tapestry. It’s really lovely to have that opportunity

to celebrate those things - and people. Everyone has a moment, so
I have a brilliant digital designer and creative producer and we’ve

drawn assets from every nominee and we’ll thread them into some

rather special projections on the evening, so everyone gets their
moment and you hear a bit about what the panel thought was

fabulous about them. Of course there has to be a winner for each
award, but we want everyone to feel like they really matter.”

James is particularly keen to talk too about the Instrumentalist

category: “We've got the black cellist, Ayanna Witter-Johnson,
who’s also a singer and a composer and a pianist, and songwriter.

She really is melding genres. And then we have the Russian

pianist Pavel Kolesnikov, who is just an absolutely spectacularly
brilliant pianist at the very highest level. He’s interested in curation

and working with dance as well as all of his really pure concerto and
recital performances. We have the Leeds-based sitar

player Jasdeep Singh Degun who isn’t just playing sitar music in a

traditional sense, but has just been collaborating with Opera North