ABOUT THE SPEAKERS
British Paraorchestra - Contemporary music ensemble
The British Paraorchestra is the first orchestra for world-class musicians of disability

Why you should listen

Charles Hazlewood is a conductor founded the British Parorchestra to give musicians of disability a platform to collaborate and perform.

Credits for the debut British Paraorchestra performance: Dhanoday Srivastava (Baluji), James Risdon, Clarence Adoo, Lyn Levett. Alison Roberts tell a few of their stories in her Evening Standard piece on the Paraorchestra:

Clarence Adoo, for example, who used to play trumpet with Courtney Pine, suffered a devastating car accident in 1995 and is now paralysed from the shoulders down. He plays music on a laptop, using a specially designed blow tube as a computer mouse. Adoo says he'd rather be able to play an instrument again than walk.

Lyn Levett has severe cerebral palsy and can only communicate by pressing an iPad with her nose, yet makes the "most dizzyingly brilliant electronic music", says Hazlewood. Levett herself, through her iPad, tells us that when she's creating music, it feels as though she's in a cockpit, flying a plane. Sitar player and composer Baluji Shrivastav has been blind since the age of eight months, and Lloyd Coleman is both deaf and sight-impaired. All four make their living solely from music.

Read the full story >>

 

 

More profile about the speaker
British Paraorchestra | Speaker | TED.com
Charles Hazlewood - Conductor
Charles Hazlewood dusts off and invigorates classical music, adding a youthful energy and modern twists to centuries-old masterworks. At TEDGlobal, he conducts the Scottish Ensemble.

Why you should listen

Charles Hazlewood's fresh presentations of classical music shake up the traditional settings of the form -- in one performance he’ll engage in a conversation with the audience, while in another he’ll blend film or sculpture into a piece -- but his goal is always the same: exposing the deep, always-modern joy of the classics. He's a familiar face on British TV, notably in the 2009 series The Birth of British Music on BBC2. He conducts the BBC Orchestras and guest-conducts orchestras around the world.

Together with Mark Dornford-May, he founded a lyric-theatre company in South Africa called Dimpho Di Kopane (which means "combined talents") after auditioning in the townships and villages of South Africa. Of the 40 members, only three had professional training. They debuted with Bizet's Carmen, which was later transposed into a movie version called U-Carmen eKhayelitsha, spoken and sung in Xhosa, that was honored at the Berlin Flim Festival. He regularly involves children in his projects and curates his own music festival, Play the Field, on his farm in Somerset. His latest project: the ParaOrchestra.

He says: "I have loads of issues with the way classical music is presented. It has been too reverential, too 'high art' -- if you're not in the club, they're not going to let you join. It's like The Turin Shroud: don't touch it because it might fall apart."

More profile about the speaker
Charles Hazlewood | Speaker | TED.com
TEDxBrussels

Charles Hazlewood + British Paraorchestra: The debut of the British Paraorchestra

Filmed:
105,271 views

There are millions of prodigiously gifted musicians of disability around the world, and Charles Hazlewood is determined to give them a platform. Watch the debut performance of the British Paraorchestra.
- Contemporary music ensemble
The British Paraorchestra is the first orchestra for world-class musicians of disability Full bio - Conductor
Charles Hazlewood dusts off and invigorates classical music, adding a youthful energy and modern twists to centuries-old masterworks. At TEDGlobal, he conducts the Scottish Ensemble. Full bio

Double-click the English transcript below to play the video.

00:07
Music is the most universal
language that we have,
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way more so than any dialect or tongue.
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You can play a melody to a child in China
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and the same melody
to a child in South Africa.
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And despite the huge differences
between those two children,
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they will still draw some of the same
truths from that melody.
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Now, I think the reason why
music has this universality,
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this way of speaking
to each and every one of us,
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is that somehow it's capable
of holding up a mirror to us
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that reveals, in some small or large way,
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a little bit of who or what we are.
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By logical extension of this,
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if music is this universal force,
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then surely groups of musicians --
let's call them orchestras --
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should reflect every aspect
of the community.
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01:02
Logical, but not necessarily true.
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At TEDxBrussels today, we've been looking
forward to the future --
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50 years from now.
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01:10
Well, I'm going to ask you
to go in the other direction for a minute,
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to come back with me
50 years into the past,
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the early 1960s to be precise.
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And if you took a look
at all the great orchestras
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of the world at that time, a snapshot,
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how many women do you think you would find
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playing in those orchestras?
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The answer: virtually none.
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Well, here we are 50 years on, in 2011,
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and pretty much
every orchestra on the planet
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has a fantastic and healthy balance
between the sexes.
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"Of course!" I hear you
say, "Totally logical."
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But how about another aspect
of the community?
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The disabled community.
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Do we find them well-represented
in the great orchestras of our world?
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Well, I can tell you as a conductor,
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I work with orchestras
around the world all the time,
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and I can count on the fingers of one hand
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the number of disabled
musicians I've encountered
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in any orchestra,
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anywhere.
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Why is this?
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You can't tell me that there
aren't millions upon millions
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of prodigiously gifted musicians
of disability around the world.
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Where is their platform?
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Where is the infrastructure
that creates a space for them
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so that they can collaborate
with other great musicians?
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So, ladies and gentlemen,
as you can probably tell,
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I'm on a bit of a mission.
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And this mission has
a personal root to it.
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I have four children, the youngest of whom
was born with cerebral palsy.
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She's now five, and through
her glorious existence,
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I suppose I have now become
a fully paid-up member
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of the amazing, dizzyingly wonderful
disabled community.
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And I find myself looking
at the Paralympics
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and thinking what
an incredible model that is.
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It's taken a good five decades, actually,
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but I can say with hand on heart
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that when the Paralympics
comes to London next year,
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there will not be an intelligent
person anywhere on the planet
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who does not absolutely believe
in the validity of disabled sportspeople.
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What an amazing position to be in!
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So, ladies and gentlemen,
where the hell is music in all this?
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Apologies to any of you
who are sports fans,
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but music is far more
universal than sport.
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Where is the platform?
Where is their voice?
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So, we in the UK are at the very early
stages in forming what will be
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Britain's first-ever
national disabled orchestra.
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We are going to call it
the British Paraorchestra,
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because with the world's eyes
on London next year
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and particularly on the Paralympics,
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we want to throw down the gauntlet
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to every single other country
that is represented there,
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to say to them, "Here's our paraorchestra.
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Where's yours?"
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Every country should have
a multiplicity of paraorchestras
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of all shapes and sizes,
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no question.
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Now, today is a very special day for me,
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because it is the first time
that the first four members
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of my little embryonic paraorchestra
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are going to play in public;
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four extraordinary musicians
of which the number will grow and grow.
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I hope in the end the Paraorchestra
could even be as big as 50 musicians.
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We present to you today
a little sonic adventure,
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a little piece of improvisational
whimsy, if you like,
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a piece on which, of course,
the ink is still wet,
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the clay is still wet.
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After all, improvisation
is never a fixed thing.
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We decided what we wanted
to share with you,
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at the heart of our improvisation,
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was a tune which is beloved
of British people.
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It's one of the only folk melodies
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that we still recognize in our culture.
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And here's an interesting thing:
folk music can tell you an awful lot
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about the cultural DNA of the country
from which it originates.
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You see, we in Britain
are quietly melancholic.
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You know, the rain ... it does rain.
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The food's not so good.
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(Laughter)
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Quietly melancholic.
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Not blackly so, just quietly so.
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And as Shakespeare put it so
brilliantly in "Twelfth Night,"
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he loves music that has "a dying fall."
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So this melody, "Greensleeves,"
is chock-full of "dying fall."
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You may know this tune.
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(Singing) Da, da, da da da da, dying fall.
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(Laughter)
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Da da da, da da da da, dying fall.
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Da dee, da da na na ... dying fall ...
na na nee, na ah ah ah ah.
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Brief burst of sunshine, ladies
and gentlemen, the chorus --
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(Singing) Ya da da da, dying fall ...
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(Laughter)
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(Singing) Da da dee,
da da da da, dying fall ...
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Ya da da da, dying fall ...
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OK?
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It's like we need some melodic Viagra
in our culture, ladies and gentlemen.
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(Laughter)
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(Applause)
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06:00
It goes without saying
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that we are very much
at the starting gates with this project.
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We need your help, we need
the global community
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to help us deliver this dream,
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so that this orchestra
can be full steam ahead
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by summer 2012.
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If you think there's any way
that you can help us,
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please, please, get in touch.
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And so, ladies and gentlemen, it gives
me enormous pride, pleasure and joy
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to introduce to you,
with a short improvisation
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upon that most melancholic
tune, "Greensleeves,"
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the first four members
of the British Paraorchestra.
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(Applause) (Cheers)
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(Music)
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(Applause)
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(Cheers) (Applause)
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Translated by TED Translators Admin
Reviewed by Camille Martínez

▲Back to top

ABOUT THE SPEAKERS
British Paraorchestra - Contemporary music ensemble
The British Paraorchestra is the first orchestra for world-class musicians of disability

Why you should listen

Charles Hazlewood is a conductor founded the British Parorchestra to give musicians of disability a platform to collaborate and perform.

Credits for the debut British Paraorchestra performance: Dhanoday Srivastava (Baluji), James Risdon, Clarence Adoo, Lyn Levett. Alison Roberts tell a few of their stories in her Evening Standard piece on the Paraorchestra:

Clarence Adoo, for example, who used to play trumpet with Courtney Pine, suffered a devastating car accident in 1995 and is now paralysed from the shoulders down. He plays music on a laptop, using a specially designed blow tube as a computer mouse. Adoo says he'd rather be able to play an instrument again than walk.

Lyn Levett has severe cerebral palsy and can only communicate by pressing an iPad with her nose, yet makes the "most dizzyingly brilliant electronic music", says Hazlewood. Levett herself, through her iPad, tells us that when she's creating music, it feels as though she's in a cockpit, flying a plane. Sitar player and composer Baluji Shrivastav has been blind since the age of eight months, and Lloyd Coleman is both deaf and sight-impaired. All four make their living solely from music.

Read the full story >>

 

 

More profile about the speaker
British Paraorchestra | Speaker | TED.com
Charles Hazlewood - Conductor
Charles Hazlewood dusts off and invigorates classical music, adding a youthful energy and modern twists to centuries-old masterworks. At TEDGlobal, he conducts the Scottish Ensemble.

Why you should listen

Charles Hazlewood's fresh presentations of classical music shake up the traditional settings of the form -- in one performance he’ll engage in a conversation with the audience, while in another he’ll blend film or sculpture into a piece -- but his goal is always the same: exposing the deep, always-modern joy of the classics. He's a familiar face on British TV, notably in the 2009 series The Birth of British Music on BBC2. He conducts the BBC Orchestras and guest-conducts orchestras around the world.

Together with Mark Dornford-May, he founded a lyric-theatre company in South Africa called Dimpho Di Kopane (which means "combined talents") after auditioning in the townships and villages of South Africa. Of the 40 members, only three had professional training. They debuted with Bizet's Carmen, which was later transposed into a movie version called U-Carmen eKhayelitsha, spoken and sung in Xhosa, that was honored at the Berlin Flim Festival. He regularly involves children in his projects and curates his own music festival, Play the Field, on his farm in Somerset. His latest project: the ParaOrchestra.

He says: "I have loads of issues with the way classical music is presented. It has been too reverential, too 'high art' -- if you're not in the club, they're not going to let you join. It's like The Turin Shroud: don't touch it because it might fall apart."

More profile about the speaker
Charles Hazlewood | Speaker | TED.com