In this first installment of a new series on Classical Music and it’s place within the wider music scene, Juliana Farha, Managing Director of Dilettante and one of the “Top 50 Women To Watch” in UK culture, looks into the so-called ‘rock schools’ of popular music, and how they compare with the ‘conservatoire’ system for nurturing and launching classical music talent.

Every genre of music has its clichés about the people who make it and those who listen to it. For example, the classical-music-world loves nothing more than a freakish prodigy, born with a skill it takes many years to accomplish. As for listeners, much the same, we all know classical music is for old people…, right? In fact, I’d go as far as to say there’s definite pressure to start listening to classical music once you hit a certain age.

These clichés, reinforced, are everywhere. In two popular films about classical music, The Soloist and Shine, both of the protagonists suffer from acute psychological conditions, which are implicitly tied to their genius. Immortal Beloved and Amadeus, based on the lives of (possibly syphilitic) Beethoven and (resolutely boorish) Mozart, pitch in, upholding the ‘tortured genius’ stereotype.

As for pop, we all know it’s a young person’s game, and I refuse to believe I’m the only person who cringes at news of an Eagles reunion tour. Cinema does its part to uphold pop clichés too, from School of Rock wherein Jack Black frees kids from their parents, as well as a head teacher from her inhibitions, to Cameron Crowe’s Almost Famous, about the travails of a middling rock band. And let’s not forget Scorsese’s real-life The Last Waltz along with the iconic mock-doc This is Spinal Tap, both rock-fan-favourites for how they affirm and expose the rock-and-roll mythology.

For those of you now nodding your heads, chuckling nostalgically, it might be worth looking at how young people become musicians in the first place, and how this range of handy clichés might support or thwart their aspirations. If rock-and-roll is all about rebellion, surely you don’t go to school for it? And surely the hothouse environment of the classical conservatoire produces introverted dweebs, out of touch with their peers and, arguably, reality?

As dull as it sounds, the truth probably lies somewhere in-between these easy clichés. For every few hundred Nowhere Boys who grew up in the streets of Liverpool, I’d wager there’s a Jonny Greenwood, bass-player for Radiohead and conservatoire-trained violist whose score for There Will be Blood earned a raft of awards.

A couple of weeks ago, I had coffee with my musician brother in-law Pete Wilkinson to test out my thesis. Pete, who’s 40 and oozes musicality, really did grow up in Liverpool’s backstreets and was dead certain he wanted to be a musician when he was only 14. ‘I had a one-track mind about it,’ says Pete. ‘For me, it was about the excitement of listening to music, and everything that went with it.’

A self-taught bass-player, Pete learned by listening to singles by bands like The Stranglers and Siouxsie and the Banshees at 33rpm rather than 45, and it wasn’t long before he got turned on by jazz. That discovery led to a college diploma in jazz, and Pete quickly became embedded in a vibrant scene that encompassed Manchester, Liverpool and northern Wales. ‘There was a whole clique of people who would support each other,’ he recalls.

Eventually, Pete concluded that the music would never go beyond the bars where it was being played, so he gravitated towards pop where there was scope for bigger gigs and greater ambition. He co-founded the Britpop band Cast, played with Echo and the Bunnymen, and was bass-player for the ‘psychedelic folk group’ Shack, whose 2006 album ‘The Corner of Miles and Gil’ tipped its hat to two jazz legends and earned ‘CD of the Week’ honours in virtually every UK newspaper when released.

I ask Pete about the plethora of credible pop music colleges that now operate in the UK, from The Brit School, which opened in 1991, to the Brighton Institute of Modern Music (BIMM), founded in 2002; and let’s not forget Boston’s Berklee College of Music, which has focussed on contemporary music since it opened in 1945. Does the pop world need its own ‘conservatoires’, or are these schools of rock a contradiction in terms?

Pete doesn’t think so. When he was a teenager, says Pete, he relied on a viable, albeit informal, support networks. ‘You’d depend on people you grew up with who were involved in the music with you,’ he says. ‘It was all about your friends helping out, and a lot of it was word-of-mouth.’ These days the motivation is different, so that support structure has dissolved. ‘Now, it’s more about being famous than actually having an ability,’ he states.

Still, says Pete, there’s always been room for more structure. ‘If I were 16 or 17 and just starting out, who would I speak to? Who could arrange a gig for me?’

That’s where BIMM (Brighton & Bristol Institute of Modern Music) comes in. ‘The [Pop Idol] idea of going from 30,000 entrants vying for just one slot is the opposite of what we’re about,’ founder Damian Keyes told The Guardian. ‘You get guys at 18 who are great players, but they have no idea about how the business works. We teach them what they need to know, in order to earn a living in the music industry.’ The underlying assumption, of course, is that topping the charts isn’t the only measure of success. In short, being a jobbing musician can offer a decent life.

And, obviously, a decent life, as a performer, is more readily available to classical musicians, thanks to the size and number of orchestras and the primacy of the ‘live experience’. But attendance at a conservatoire is usually a requisite for such sort of career. A couple of years back, James Rhodes arrived on this staid and structured scene. With a debut disc titled ‘Razor Blades, Little Pills and Big Pianos’, telling the story of his life, James described his repertoire as ‘hardcore classical’, with a current partiality to Bs (Bach, Beethoven, Busoni) and the occasional foray into Cs (Chopin, to be precise).

James is no hothouse flower: he attended a conservatoire in his youth but never graduated. In fact, it was only a few years ago that the 34-year-old left behind a high flying career in the City to become a concert pianist. Being a late bloomer hasn’t stopped him, though: James played a sold-out gig at the Roundhouse in London last May, and was signed by Warner Bros last month. Some critics have taken issue with his technique, but reviews are nonetheless solid.

I ask James whether he thinks he’s been hindered by missing out on the structure and support music colleges offer. On the contrary, he says, ‘Not going to music college has reaped untold rewards.’

‘The non-stop criticism, cut-throat atmosphere and sterile musicianship that I hear about so often from [conservatoire] graduates and students was not a part of my musical life during such formative years,’ says James. ‘Not going to music college was the best thing that never happened to me.’

Ouch. Strong words that seem to confirm a stereotype. But it’s also true that with many orchestras under financial threat and the classical market changing, traditional conservatoires have started changing what they teach, placing greater emphasis on business and entrepreneurship, not to mention what they offer in terms of rigour and discipline. Meanwhile, attendance at schools of rock increases every year. All that has left me wondering if pop and classical have more to teach each other than you might think, and whether these models for building a music career might well find each other somewhere in the middle….

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