Three hammer blows

And there was the devastating revelation that all 350 full-time and part-time staff in Glasgow’s three concert halls were effectively being served with redundancy notices.

What an end to the year. The threat of education cuts, of course, has immense ramifications for generations of young people, and provoked immediate reactions.

We have been warning for months about the impending mindless, and I do mean mindless, brutality being inflicted on the staff of the concert halls by the cultural nihilists on Glasgow City Council and its profoundly non-creative department of Glasgow Culture and Sport. (You doubt me? Check out their track record of creative investment in performance at The Tramway. Answer, in the inimitable expression of The Herald’s Mary Brennan: “Diddley-squat.”) Go on, GC&S: deny it.

Such warnings, however, did not lessen the pulverising shock on the faithful concert hall staff, as I perceived it last weekend when I spent lengthy periods of time in the Royal Concert Hall, observing them at work.

These two massive hits on musical society did, however, tend to eclipse the story of Children’s Classic Concerts and the loss of their sponsorship. But in its own way, that loss and the possible impact on the future of the organisation are just as seismic as the reverberations of the other dramatic developments on Glasgow’s music scene.

It’s important to underline that because, on the one hand, the Children’s Classic Concerts series is rather taken for granted; while on the other hand, what it is, what it does, and what makes it unique in Scotland are not that well-known, other than to the cognoscenti, which includes the generations of children and their parents who have passed through its rather extraordinary portals in the past 15 years.

When it was devised, created and launched by Louise Naftalin and a group of like-minded individuals, working under the influence of, and perhaps to the model of, Atarah Ben-Tovim, it had a mixed reception.

The concept of staging easy-access concerts of classical music to introduce young children to the practice of concert-going was generally welcomed, except by one particular sceptic: this writer, I’m embarrassed to say.

I was asked a thousand times what my objection was; and I reiterated that the concept was soft-edged and flew in the face of music education developments as being pioneered and refined by groups including the London Sinfonietta and the Scottish Chamber Orchestra.

The proposed CCC series was more about ephemeral entertainment than genuine education; or so it seemed to me.

Anyway, off they went, and in less than a year I was eating, all at once, my words, humble pie, and my hat as multiple thousands of families, parents, in-laws, children, grandchildren, neighbours and God only knows who from God only knew where, stormed the Royal Concert Hall, dancing in the aisles, bopping in their seats and exuding such a communal aura of excitement, involvement and vitality that it was almost tangible.

It was instantly a social phenomenon, and a completely overwhelming experience.

The organisation rapidly became a fixture on the Scottish music scene, and dipped its toe into commissioning, drawing new works for children from composers Sally Beamish and Savourna Stevenson.

There was an almighty blip on the seismograph in an uncomfortable period when the RSNO attempted a takeover of CCC, which basically reflected the fact that the big orchestra, at that time, had no significant or structured education programme of its own (the RSNO, one or two individual enterprises apart, was late into the education stream).

Partly in response to that, Christopher Bell took on the artistic directorship of CCC, re-affirmed its significance, and, by his own practice, emphasised precisely what was unique about Children’s Classics: the various orchestras’ educational programmes were staged almost exclusively behind closed doors: no grown-ups, no general public. Children’s Classics operated entirely in the public domain.

But Bell’s own career was expanding on all fronts. He was still running the RSNO Junior Chorus; his National Youth Choir of Scotland was reaching almost all areas of Scotland and growing annually in expertise and significance; he acquired a summer job in the States as a festival chorus director in Grant Park; and, climactically, he was asked to take over the refurbishment and directorship of the Edinburgh Festival Chorus.

Something had to give, and it was Children’s Classics.

With the appointment as his successor of two of Britain’s brightest young percussionists Owen Gunnell and Oliver Cox – “Owen and Olly” – who are still bedding in and developing their presentational style and skills, Children’s Classics took on a slightly different hue, with new initiatives in programming and a few new directions.

There is no apparent connection between the latest developments and the cessation of the sponsorship deal with Standard Life.

“We’ve known for a long time that it was coming,” says Jane Gordon, Children’s Classics manager.

“In fact they’ve helped and advised us in preparing for the closure of the deal.”

It does mean a significant hole in CCC finances, however. The company operates on a shoestring. Its turnover in a season is around £200,000. The Standard Life sponsorship was worth £35,000 per annum, though that had been at standstill for some years.

Additional funding from Glasgow City Council amounts to £20,000, also at a standstill. The other main tranche of funding to CCC comes from trusts and foundations, and amounts to £50,000 per year

Which still leaves a significant shortfall and a consequent box office imperative. “We have to do extremely well at the box office, every time,” admits Gordon.

“We’ve had some success with project funding,” she says, “but the fact that we have not and cannot get core funding either from the Scottish Arts Council or the Scottish government constantly stymies us.”

It’s a big operation, as every full concert requires the hiring of a concert hall, the employment of an orchestra, engaging a conductor, hiring of music, programming and copyright issues, design strategies, branding, marketing, advertising, ticketing, sales, merchandising and all the other trappings of show business.

And get this: Children’s Classic Concerts do the lot themselves, with no full-time staff. Including Jane Gordon, there are four of them doing it all, all of them part-time, and amounting to less than two full-time equivalent jobs.

“Everybody multi-tasks,” says Gordon, “and we do deals with absolutely everybody: Glasgow Royal Concert Hall give us their best charitable rate; they have been great supporters.”

As for the funding predicament they now face, Gordon and her wee team seem philosophical: “We’ll just try to muddle along.”

But “muddling along” will include new initiatives, expanding their pre-concert visits to schools and developing their new chamber music projects with other musicians, including top guitarist Allan Neave and the Fejes String Quartet, drawn from the ranks of the RSNO.

As pragmatic and stoical as they are, the Children’s Classic Concerts team could clearly use some financial assistance.

Even in these harsh times, it’s worth raising the question: is there anyone out there who can help?