How British Prime Minister Keir Starmer was Shaped by Classical Music

In Saturday’s (9/28) Guardian (U.K.), Esther Addley writes, “When Keir Starmer addressed the Labour party conference this week it was a less familiar aspect of his childhood that he chose to highlight. One of the things that had given him ‘great joy’ as a child, ‘as well as the football, obviously,’ was playing the flute, he told delegates … The instrument had given him ‘so many opportunities,’ Starmer said, including his first ever trip abroad … with the Croydon Youth Philharmonic Orchestra. ‘These early encounters with art and culture, they change us forever … But those opportunities don’t go to every child, do they?’… [He] played not only the flute but the violin, piano and recorder … Starmer’s Sunday mornings were then spent in rehearsals for CYPO, under the charismatic leadership of Arthur Davison, a former director and deputy leader of the London Philharmonic. It was, at the time, one of two youth orchestras in Croydon, reflecting its then well-funded music provision in local schools…. Starmer has said he ‘passionately’ wants to reverse the ‘degrading of creative arts and music’ in state schools; he now has the opportunity to do so.”