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It was, Simon Rattle<\/strong><\/a> said, \u2018not just an exciting idea but a profoundly necessary one\u2019. The kind of idea, he went on, \u2018which could deepen and enrich classical music in the UK for generations\u2019. As it turned out, he was spot on. Yet back in September 2015, when the idea for Chineke! first surfaced, it was regarded not just as radical but, in some quarters, unwelcome. <\/p> For decades Chi-chi Nwanoku had been one of the most outstanding orchestral players in London \u2013 and not just because, as the British-born daughter of a Nigerian father and Irish mother, she was usually the only black face on the stage. A founder-member of the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment, she invested her playing with such virtuosic energy that you sometimes felt as if the whole ensemble was being propelled from the bass line. It\u2019s no surprise to learn that in her schooldays she was a 100m sprinter who competed at national level.<\/p> By 2015, Nwanoku had a new ambition: to found Europe\u2019s first professional orchestra of black and minority ethnic (BME) players. Its name would be Chineke! \u2013 not a pun on her own moniker, but an exclamation meaning \u2018wonderful\u2019 or \u2018divine\u2019 in the language of Nigeria’s Igbo people. She arranged a meeting with the very few other BME musicians then established in the orchestral world.<\/p> One was Paul Philbert, now timpanist of the Royal Scottish National Orchestra, but then just back in London after 14 years in the Malaysian Philharmonic. He was astonished by what happened at the meeting. <\/p> \u2018People starting talking about Samuel Coleridge-Taylor<\/strong><\/a> and Joseph Bologne, Chevalier de Saint-Georges<\/a><\/strong>,\u2019 he recalls. \u2018I\u2019d had 15 years of intensive music education, at the Purcell School and then Trinity College of Music, yet I had never heard of these composers! I realised that the contribution of black classical musicians had been written out of the history books<\/a><\/strong>. I was so inspired by Chi-chi that at the end I went up to her and said \u201cWhatever you want me to do for this project, I will do\u201d.\u2019<\/p> That was the reaction of most, but not all, of the BME musicians that Nwanoku approached. \u2018Three or four black players who were enjoying very good careers decided they wouldn\u2019t join that first concert,\u2019 she says. \u2018Maybe they didn\u2019t want to be seen making any sort of statement. Maybe they felt they personally didn\u2019t need a BME orchestra.\u2019<\/p> The American viola player Lena Fankhauser, another founder member who is based in Vienna and plays regularly with top Austrian and German orchestras, understands that sentiment but doesn\u2019t agree with it. \u2018The question of \u201cneeding\u201d is relative,\u2019 she says. <\/p>Usually the only black face on the stage<\/h2>
‘Black classical musicians had been written out of the history books’<\/h2>