Page 86 - RPS Awards 2024 Coverage Book

want to tell: ‘Think you know classical music, look at this, look at these amazing
things.’”

Murphy highlights the Olympias Music Foundation’s work with children in deprived
areas: “Look at things like that, on your doorstep, and how music is making a
difference in society. So that’s what I’d say to anyone who thinks it’s obsolete: look
again, think again. Classical music is being used to save lives. That sounds crazy,
it’s not medicine, but there are activities where classical music is literally
transforming for good, the lives of people who have had little hope, who have been
cast to the margins of society.”

As well as the annual Awards, the RPS works year-round extended grants,
commissioning and mentoring composers, and running a programme to get more
women into conducting, a historically male-dominated profession.

Recent shortlists have made a concerted effort to showcase the depth and breadth
of classical music in the UK. Murphy adds: “The important thing with the Royal
Philharmonic Society is to tell the best story we can about classical music in the UK
as it truly is today. 42% [of nominations in 2024] are people representing the global
majority, which is way over the national average, and they’re really brilliant. There’s
not a single person who represents an underrepresented voice who’s there for that
reason, they’re there because they’re really good. We’ve changed and diversified our
panels so they’re different every single year, so there’s no entrenched bias, and what
they’re doing musically has to be really really good. This shortlist is a really powerful
signal that it’s not just the people you think that are making music.”

Image credit: Robin Clewley.