Page 747 - Liverpool Philharmonic 22-23 Season Coverage Book

She would stand in a colourful kaftan and glittering Doc Martens, her arms outstretched like a

spiritual guru and her bright eyes flickering across a sea of expectant young faces, their

instruments held aloft in silvery unison. Her musical disciples might include a scarecrow on the

trombone, a cuddly bear on the trumpet or an alien on the drums, and percussion instruments
included crockery and cutlery.

It was the input of her second husband, Douglas Boyd, a BBC Television producer, that took the
band’s shows to a new level. They recorded in Strawberry Studios in Stockport, where Paul

McCartney once recorded, and in 1976 started a weekly series on Radio 3, which Boyd scripted.

They also appeared on Blue Peter and Omnibus, and started their own TV series, Atarah’s

Music, in which each episode introduced young viewers to a different musical instrument. The

following year the band performed as part of the Schools Proms at the Royal Albert Hall. Boyd
survives Ben-Tovim, along with a daughter, Dahlia, from her first marriage to Uriel Priwes,

whom she divorced in 1974.

Despite the fun, Ben-Tovim was a gifted and experienced musician, having spent 13 years as

principal flute of the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra. She had first picked up the
instrument at the age of 11 and found that a week later she could play a Telemann suite. “It was

as if I was born to play it,” she said. Yet few children were so immediately enraptured with

classical music and it bothered her that during the orchestra’s contracted concerts children grew

so bored they would fly paper aeroplanes across the auditorium. With a group of friends she

staged a concert at a school for disabled children, where they performed simple nursery rhymes
and short solos. “I got an almost religious calling,” she recalled of that first experience.

Returning to Liverpool, she immediately booked out the hall and their first concert drew about
800 children. Eventually they performed over 2,000 concerts in 12 years; many children in the

audiences later attributed picking up an instrument to her.

The second child of three, Atarah Ben-Tovim was born in 1940 in Abergavenny, south Wales,

to Tsvi “Harry” Ben-Tovim, a doctor from Jerusalem, and Gladys (née Carengold), a Welsh

teacher. Their family home was constantly filled with classical music courtesy of her father’s

extensive collection of 78s, but it was at Notting Hill and Ealing High School where Ben-Tovim

discovered the flute.