Page 85 - RPS Awards 2024 Coverage Book

Image credit: Robin Clewley.

Many of the nominees and winners at this year’s Awards were Manchester-based,
including Manchester Classical, a festival of classical music held in June last year
with some concert tickets going for as little as £2. LGBTQ+ choir The Sunday Boys
were also nominated for the Inspiration Award for amateur groups, while the
Olympias Music Foundation based in Longsight were nominated in the Impact
category.

Murphy said: “This tiny, tiny operation operating in Longsight, and this tiny group of
individuals, because they believe in the power of music to enrich and improve lives,
are doing so many amazing things for kids living there, and building pathways for
those kids to get into bigger music organisations.”

A major focus of the Awards, Murphy explained, is telling a different story about
classical music. He said: “It’s a very frustrating narrative that people can cast
classical music as something that’s elitist or ornamental, or optional. I grew up in the
north, in Kendal in the Lake District. My parents weren’t musical but there was good
musical provision in schools, back in the 1980s, and classical music found me.

“I wasn’t born into it, I didn’t have any sort of privilege in my upbringing, so I carry
this absolute concerted feeling with me that it can touch and enrich the lives of
everybody if we let it. It’s really important that we as the curators or custodians of
classical music make that case for it, that we don’t forget that special power it has.

“Too often the news headlines are about funding cuts or dwindling provision, and we
just have to react as a sector. it’s not really our story, it’s a story that’s told about us.
The great thing about the RPS Awards, it’s a story that we, the musical community,