Transcript for the video embedded on the Summer music festival uncovers untold stories page: Summer 2023: Behind the Scenes with Jayne Leadbeater, on William AN.
[Jayne Leadbeater sits in a primary school music room. On the wall behind her are many colourful ukuleles and Djembe drums, as well as guitars and posters.]
[Off-camera, Dan Merrick asks questions]
[Dan Merrick says:] So hi Jayne, I guess a good place to start is here, where we are today in the wonderful music room here at Castleton Primary School, so talk to us about the school, the children's center and the pupils.
[Jayne Leadbeater says:] Castleton Primary School is a two-form entry school, it's in Armley, which is pretty Central in the middle of Leeds and we have about 360 pupils from reception to year six and I think in the children's center there’s probably about a hundred children there 0-3s. I've been working here now for about 22 years and it's changed a lot in the time that I've been here. When I first came it was one form entry so it was half the size it is now and the intake of children was very different. I would say that it was a very white working class intake of children and that's changed over the last five to ten years. We now have a lot of children who are coming in from Refugee families from all over the world. I'm not sure how many different languages are spoken here – I think it's about 20 – so yes the school's changed a lot in the time that I've been here.
[Dan Merrick says:] So we're in the music room – I imagine there's a lot of great music activity taking place in here and talk about that in your role.
[Jayne Leadbeater says:] I work here two days a week and I teach National curricular music to all the children from reception up to year six. They have half an hour with me every week and I also give them a singing lesson and they usually have the singing lesson on mass. Key stage two have their lesson in the hall every Friday and I've just done a key stage one lesson over in the key stage one Hall. We also have a band in year six, we have a ukulele Club every Thursday, we have a choir club on a Friday lunchtime, we have a Djembe Club at lunchtime as well.
So what else do we do? We have informal music groups as well, they come in before school and improvise, use the piano, use the drum kit. I've got a parapathetic teacher who teaches guitar and drums – he comes in once a week – he's been coming in for about 15 years now, and he's also involved in our summer productions. We do a production every year and he comes and plays in the band with me and other friends. I get people to come in and play with us.
[Dan Merrick says:] Let's talk about William. When did your paths first cross and when did you spot his musical talent? Just describe how that was.
[Jayne Leadbeater says:] Well William came to us in year four and actually his mum really wanted him to come to school from reception because they live in the block of flats just over the way from us here, but we didn't have a space at the time apparently so he came in year four, so I think he was eight, and my colleague Graham who is very funny, he came to me said Mrs Leadbeater, I think there's somebody in the school who plays the piano a little bit better than you.
Anyway, he came in and he sat down and he started to play a bit of Rachmaninoff second piano concerto, and I let him carry on and I have heard children who have learned from YouTube and various other places before but the thing that was amazing about William was his musicality, his sense of phrasing, it was just innate – you could just tell, I knew he was different.
And I asked him, ‘How did you learn?’, and he said, “Well I just picked it up on YouTube.”
And I think at the time I played him something, I think I might have played him a bit of Beethoven and I kind of wondered if he would be able to play this back to me and he did and I thought, yes this is interesting! And I spoke to his mum after school, I think the next day, and asked her about it and she said he's always loved to sing, which to me is a real sign of musicality. I think this idea that he sang, and I tested his pitch and he had perfect pitch. There were lots of things that I thought yes, he's different to other children that I taught over the years.
[Dan Merrick says:] So you've identified this very young person's talent – that must have been very exciting for you but also perhaps a sense of responsibility?
[Jayne Leadbeater says:] I talked to some colleagues about this, other friends. I worked for a company called the Voices Foundation and I talked to a colleague in particular who'd had experience of this herself and she said perhaps he's somebody that could possibly go to Chethams's. It could be something but it would mean it's a long journey. So the first thing we did was I applied for £500 from Art Forms, the Leeds music service, who gave us the money and we got him some lessons with a local piano teacher and I think he did six months of lessons with her, and then he auditioned for the Saturday morning school at Leeds College of Music and got in there and he did some musicianship classes there.
The main thing with William was that he really needed to be taken at weekends, away from where he was. I just felt like he needed to be somewhere where he could play as much as possible and he had no piano in his block of flats. So this was the other thing, he was spending every weekend on the Leeds Piano Trail, so he was playing on the pianos at the station outside John Lewis. He knew all the pianos he knew which one was the best one, the best ones were he knew the C sharp didn't work, and that's what he was doing every weekend. And I thought, well if he can get into the College of Music on a Saturday and then he can do the Yorkshire Young Musicians on a Sunday that will be his weekends just music making.
So he did that for a year and then we started the process of the Chetham's auditions which was quite rigorous. We went for an open day and that was in the October. He was watching the pianists and I could see him, he was desperate to play as well and we were surrounded by all these families and children and I just knew he was so good that if somebody heard him, they'd be interested in having him there. I kind of felt like, it sounds a bit cheesy but I've been here a long time but he was the one person that I was sort of waiting for.
[Dan Merrick says:] When William secured a place at Chetham's, it must have been quite a moment for you personally. How did it feel?
[Jayne Leadbeater says:] When he got the email to say that he'd been offered a full scholarship, it was amazing. I went with him to the final audition and that was brilliant because actually, the person who auditioned him said I really want the head of keyboards to hear you but he's in London at the moment, will you wait around? It was quite late, we waited in the little waiting room and Murray McLaughlin came and swept in and said will you come upstairs and play for me? He was playing some bar talk and Murray took the music away from him and William carried on playing and I could see Murray looking at him and then looking at me and then looking back at him and I knew then that he was okay. I kind of felt like I wanted him to be in safe hands with somebody else because it wasn't enough me being his teacher – he had to have somebody else. Another part of his journey needed to start.
[Dan Merrick says:] What messages are there hidden in William's story?
[Jayne Leadbeater says:] Our motto at school is unlocking potential and you go into so many schools nowadays where music is really down the list of priorities and I feel very fortunate here that I am given a free rein so to speak, as I can buy the instruments I need to buy and I've had that for such a long time. And William isn't the only child that we've had go through this school who have gone on to do things with music, but also not just with music but music has helped them and given them confidence and given them the feeling that they can succeed in something. If they can play a ukulele, if they can bang a drum, or they can sing, that gives them the confidence to go on and do something else and their expectations are widened by it.
I suppose the message is that there are so many other children out there who are like William who are not getting that opportunity. I mean, I was so impressed when we went and William went through the audition process with the attitude of all the staff there that we met, and also because some of it was over COVID we had online meetings with the head and pastoral team and I was really impressed with the sense that they got the whole child. It wasn't just the musician and there wasn't a sense that they were a bit of a Sausage Factory, they were really interested in the whole child and how the other subjects are really very well catered for.
And when I spoke to William – he’s told me one of his favorite subjects is science – we went upstairs and had a look at the science block while we were there and it looked amazing and so it wasn't just the musicians and it seems to me that children that come from Cheatham’s, they've had a whole, completely rounded education so I'm really excited to see William performing on the 1st of July. I haven't heard him play actually for quite a while now and I'm so excited he's going to be playing at the Clothworkers Centenary Concert Hall and he's going to be playing on a Steinway grand so I know that's going to be an amazing experience for him and for all of us. I think lots of staff are going to come and see him and support him.