Chi-chi Nwanoku
In Association With Katie Strick
There can be few people in Britain who haven’t heard the name Sheku Kanneh-Mason.
An estimated 18 million people were tuned in for Prince Harry and Meghan Markle’s wedding and
they saw the 19-year-old’s 10-minute cello performance of Ave Maria.
More than 28,000 tweets per minute were sent during his recital alone.
The teenager made headlines around the world: reports called him a
“rarity” and a “one-in-a-million talent”. But for the woman who gave him
his first professional solo, Chi-chi Nwanoku,
watching Kanneh-Mason take to the world stage was wholly unremarkable —
because great black classical musicians have existed in Britain for
decades. Everyone else just didn’t know them.
Nwanoku is a British double-bassist and the founder of Chineke!, Europe’s first majority black and minority ethnic (BAME) orchestra.
A former sprinter and about the size of her double bass, the
61-year-old launched the ensemble in 2015 and Kanneh-Mason was there
right from the beginning: it was Chineke!’s professional orchestra that
gave him his first BBC Prom solo
and Nwanoku herself who arranged for him to use the rare 17th-century
Amati cello he played on to scoop the BBC Young Musician title in 2016.
Later, she introduced him to an anonymous donor who bought the famous
instrument for him to use on a lifetime loan.
It was the same cello that mesmerised the world in St
George’s Chapel in May. Now, at her home near Richmond, Nwanoku is
unfazed. Was seeing her protégé in front of the world’s cameras an
amazing moment?
“No, it wasn’t really,” she says. In fact, she says: “He’s
better than that” — and he’s not the only black player producing great
music. “What about all those other kids?”
Today, Chineke!’s professional orchestra has up to 500
musicians on its roster, ranging in age from 18 to 60, with a further
150 in its junior ensemble.
Nwanoku insists BME musical talent is “everywhere”: she cites
19-year-old violinist Didier Osindero, who was recently awarded the
Associated Board of the Royal Schools of Music undergraduate scholar
award and has featured on BBC
Radio 3, as well as several “incredible 13-year-olds who are seriously
going to go places”. “Just because you don’t know these people, don’t
assume that they don’t exist.”
Three years ago, Nwanoku didn’t know they existed herself.
Growing up in an Irish-Nigerian family in Kent and Berkshire, white was
her norm. “My mum was white, I always had white friends. I didn’t have
black conversations with anyone.”
The first time she experienced racism was aged seven when she
was punched and called a wog in the school playground but Nwanoku said
she was “too busy” to let it bother her. Aged seven, she discovered the
piano at a neighbour’s house. It was a “natural” love affair: her mother
took an extra job to get her piano lessons and a week later, that
neighbour, Mrs B, “wheeled the piano up the road and gave it to me”.
Thirty years later, Mrs B watched from her wheelchair as Nwanoku got an
MBE for services to music in the Queen’s 2001 birthday honours. (Nwanoku
was awarded an OBE in 2017.)
The “pin-drop” moment came a whole decade later, after a
conversation with then culture minister Ed Vaizey. “He wanted to know
why I was the only person that he saw regularly on the international
concert platform.” She was confused at first. “Then he spelt out what he
meant: the only person of colour,” says Nwanoku.
That comment planted a seed, but it wasn’t until she was at a concert by Kinshasa Symphony Orchestra from the Democratic Republic of Congo
the following year that the “blinding” epiphany came. “The person
sitting next to me was talking about the flute player and how, before
our flute player had sat there with them, they just didn’t know how to
breathe. I said: ‘Come on, they’ve been breathing all their lives and
they’re a self-taught orchestra. How can you take all the credit?’ I was
shocked.”
After the concert Nwanoku was walking back to Waterloo
station on her own. “I looked to my right and I looked to my left and I
thought no, I have to do this. This is the 21st century: it should not
be a novelty or a surprise to see one black face on a stage playing
Beethoven to such a high standard. I was shocked that I hadn’t thought
of it before. I realised that I was being prepared for this all my
life.”
The next morning, Nwanoku was on the phone to heads of every
classical music institution she knew. “They all said, ‘Come in
tomorrow’,” but building an orchestra from scratch was no easy feat: she
didn’t hold auditions so finding players was down to extensive research
and speaking to each one for an hour on the phone. “The more I looked
and searched, the more I found that the well of talent runs deep.”
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