BECAUSE IT IS REAL

She took a shine to me, said we were going to dance and hauled me off the bar stool. 1990. A coun­try and west­ern bar in Texas full of Stet­sons, che­quered shirts and denim held up with leather belts with bold buck­les. Re­peat – coun­try and west­ern, up until then a run-a-mile-to-avoid anath­ema.

Then they stopped the piped music and the band let rip; steel gui­tar, slide gui­tar, tap­ping cow­boy boots, the works. The air pulsed with en­ergy and un­bri­dled hap­pi­ness. It was a buzz... be­cause it was real.

2014. The Brighton fes­ti­val on the Eng­lish south coast. Em­my­lou Har­ris was set to pack out the Brighton Dome Con­cert Hall. I wasn’t there. I was in the town’s St Nicholas Church, in tears. Our friend, the bari­tone Nigel Cliffe of the Royal Opera Com­pany, was singing the words of his great uncle Joe. The beauty, range and pathos were over­pow­er­ing, the sen­si­tiv­ity a shiver down the spine. In a pal­pa­bly per­sonal and grace­ful com­mem­o­ra­tion of loss dur­ing the in­san­ity and mass slaugh­ter of the 1914-18 world war, Nigel sang from Pri­vate Joe’s let­ters to his sis­ter, writ­ten in the muddy killing fields of Ypres in Au­gust, 1917, and re­cently set to music by com­poser Rox­anna Panufnik.

I get that shiver when I re­flect... be­cause it was real.

Live music, that is the point. It can be on a street cor­ner. It can be in the au­di­to­ri­ums large or in­ti­mate, it can on be a rocky head­land, it can be in a base­ment bar, it can be one or more play­ers find­ing har­mony for them­selves.

My part­ner Mag­gie is ful­filled ar­tis­ti­cally by her time as as­sis­tant to the di­rec­tor of a lead­ing Eu­ro­pean cham­ber music venue and by the fes­ti­vals she has di­rected.

We have an in­sa­tiable need for live per­for­mance. It en­gen­ders well­be­ing. Many of you will know ex­actly this, even if it is hard for any of us to ad­e­quately de­scribe the sus­te­nance, the feel­ing. You are right, though. It is about being alive. It is worth the ef­fort to come to­gether. And sci­ence is now prov­ing the alchemy of being in that mo­ment, rolling with the wave of pos­i­tive emo­tions evoked by live not streamed music, what­ever your pref­er­ence.

Our lives in Cat­alo­nia have gifted us many price­less mo­ments and we have will­ingly dri­ven the length of this coun­try to ex­pe­ri­ence the buzz. We have also, in some tiny way, sup­ported the arts. All I would ask is that if you have a com­fort zone, you con­sider break­ing out of it. Never been to a clas­si­cal music recital? Go. Jazz? Seek it out. The busker is good? Lighten your pock­ets. Els Pets pop rock band are not for you? Oh don’t be an old fart. For­get the mad­den­ing world and get to a gig. Sup­port the venues and the artists.

Foot­note: Watch The Last Re­pair Shop doc­u­men­tary. Music is med­i­cine for the soul. We were again moved to tears....