- Title: The Music School
- Date: 12th October 1997
- Summary: THE MUSIC SCHOOL: Programme One - Focuses on budding soprano Tetua Koco. She is seventeen years old and comes from Albania. Her father is a conductor, her mother a violinist. Four years ago, her father was invited over from Albania to play in a festival in Yorkshire, and the whole family travelled to England. They never went back. Tetua's father told her grandparents nothing of their plans. Her father gave up a successful career in Albania to live in Leeds, in a tiny flat, virtually without furniture, surviving on charity. Tetua started at Chetham's as a pianist at the age of thirteen, along with her younger brother, Gent. Tetua feels that her father sacrificed his career in Albania for her and her brother and that she has to give him back what he's lost. The pressure put on her by her father is, at times, intense. Since arriving at Chethams, Tetua has changed to singing as her first study. Her teacher believes she could be very special. Tetua is articulate, ambitious yet unsure, beautiful, charismatic and has an extraordinary voice. But she doesn't eat properly, and is so anaemic that she's had to have blood transfusions.
- Description:The Music School is a four part series which follows the highs and lows of life in the pressure cooker of the specialist music school, Chetham's in Manchester. But this series is not just about music - it's about children at a vulnerable, crucial time in their development being able to make it - or not; it's about parental dreams; it's about teachers and teaching; it's about being away from home; it's about talent; it's about the destruction of the music education system in Britain; it's about being good enough, and not being good enough. And it's about hope and disappointment. Directed and produced by Tamasin Day-Lewis, the series shows hugely talented children at work and play. But not everyone can succeed: who will make the grade, and who will be forced to abandon their long-cherished dreams? Chetham's is the only specialised music school of its kind in the world. There the most musically gifted children receive a musical education of the highest calibre balanced by academic studies and sport. Past students include the brilliant organist, Wayne Marshall; wunderkind conductor, Daniel Harding; and many finalists in the BBC's Young Musician of the Year competition. But this programme is being made at a time when music education in the UK is at an all-time low. Where school music was in the seventies 'free to all at the point of delivery' it has once again become the privilege of those who can afford it. The great pool of talent on which Chethams drew has dried up; they have to reject youngsters who can't afford the fees, and a great deal of the administrator's time is spent raising money for kids whose talent demands support but whose parents don't know where to turn. Then there is the business of buying instruments. ...the programme will follow a number of interwoven stories: the newcomer, the struggler, the teacher, the parent, and address the big issues that arise with outstanding talent.
- Broadcaster:Channel 4
- Collection: Channel 4
- Genre:Music
- Producer:DAY LEWIS PROD LTD
- Programme Episode:Episode 1
- Transmission Date:12/10/1997
- Rights:On Request
- Decade: 1990s