Page 694 - Liverpool Philharmonic 22-23 Season Coverage Book

Atarah’s first experience with performances for children were the RLPO’s many
contracted schools’ concerts, in which she played as principal flautist from 1962. “The
conductor-presenters droned on meaninglessly,” she recalled. The musicians were
bored and the children talked, fought and flew paper aeroplanes from the gallery. She
was convinced it did not have to be like this.

A turning point came at a small concert set up at a special school for disabled children.
Seeing the faces of 200 children, many using wheelchairs, she departed from the
planned programme of short solos and simple nursery-rhymes and gave the children 45
minutes of engaging, communicative “look, listen, laugh and learn”. When it was over,
“I just started shaking and sweating, and I knew I had to change my life and do
something for children, to get a light in their eyes.”

Atarah left the RLPO in 1975, and, working with her soon-to-be husband, Douglas
Boyd, a BBC TV producer, she formed Atarah’s Band, a small group of talented
freelance players, some of whom were also composer-arrangers.

Their performances included short pieces of baroque, classical, jazz and rock, skilfully
arranged, with the concerts alternating between quiet listening and noisy audience
participation. “As a result, as many as 3,000 children with their instruments were quiet
as mice when necessary, and let off steam rhythmically when we wanted them to.”

Atarah’s Band featured in major music festivals in Britain, and in children’s proms with
the RLPO, the Royal Scottish National Orchestra, the CBSO and the Hallé. Over these
years they reached an audience of some three million through live concerts.

In 1976, Atarah’s Music Box, scripted by Boyd, became a weekly series for children
on Radio 3, running for three years, and her work was profiled on television
programmes including Blue Peter and Omnibus. In 1980 Atarah was appointed MBE in
recognition of her services to children’s music.

In the mid-70s, Atarah bought half a street of derelict houses in Haslingden, in the
Lancashire valley of Rossendale, just opposite the big concert hall. She and Douglas
converted them, doing the work themselves, into a 44-room music centre, with a
recording studio. Any child could come and try out all the families of instruments,
discarding the ones that did not “feel good”.

Observing this process closely, Atarah went on to publish the books The Right
Instrument for Your Child (1985, with four subsequent editions) and You Too Can
Make Music! (1986). She strongly believed that there is a musician in everyone, and had
a restless desire to discover the exact path to find it.

Atarah was born in Abergavenny, South Wales, to Zvi Ben-Tovim, known as Harry, a
Jerusalem-born GP who piped classical music into his waiting-room, and Gladys (nee
Carengold), a teacher. In 1948 the family moved to London, and Atarah went to Notting
Hill and Ealing high school. “I failed at metalwork and pottery, but by divine chance I
made the best recorder in the woodwork class. So impressed was the flute teacher... that
she gave me an ancient wooden flute.” Within weeks Atarah was playing a Telemann
suite, and teaching the instrument to a couple of her school friends. “It was as if I was
born to play it.”