Music, Maestros, please!

Annabel Williams • Published 29 Jan 2009 07:00 0 Comments

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THE Reading borough is alive with the sound of music - and it is free.

In a pilot scheme, more than 400 children from 10 Reading Borough primary schools are getting free music lessons for a year thanks to Berkshire Maestros, which teaches music to youngsters of all ages.

If successful, Reading Borough Council may roll the programme out to all its primary schools. Families only pay the subsidised cost of loaning an instrument, and youngsters can choose between the guitar, violin, viola, cello, flute, oboe, clarinet, trumpet, tenor horn, French horn and trombone.

One of the schools in the Government-backed scheme is Churchend Primary School in Tilehurst, where pupils have been learning the cello, clarinet or trombone.

Berkshire Maestros woodwind teacher Catherine Millar said: "A lot of the clarinets players hadn't picked up a musical instrument before but they were playing Jingle Bells by Christmas. Playing an instrument really empowers them.

"The school teachers learn with the pupils, which gives the pupils a confidence boost because they might be better than their teacher at something for the first time."

Mary German, aged eight and from Tilehurst, says her father, Doug, liked the sound of the clarinet so much that he has started learning too and the pair now play duets.

See www.berkshiremaestros.org.uk

This article appeared in Reading Chronicle 29 Jan 09

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