Strange and fantastic: lighting up Patagonia with the BBC NOW
Naomi Thomas
Principal Second Violin, BBC National Orchestra of Wales
The full crew
Visiting Patagonia in Argentina has been quite bizarre! I’ve just spent a week and a half with 11 other BBC NOW musicians working with schools, special schools and local orchestras in the Welsh colony of Patagonia. Although I was brought up in England, I was born in Aberystwyth in Wales and we kept the Welsh tradition going very strongly at home. Walking about this South American town (over 7000 miles from home) and suddenly coming across a Welsh flag outside a house is quite incredible. I’m very proud of being Welsh, and being here brings on that feeling of ‘Hiraeth’ that we have in Wales – which is a longing for your homeland – I think they feel it here, even though it’s the other side of the world, they’re extremely proud to be Welsh.
I’m fairly new to the experience of working in special schools and it was amazing to get such immediate reactions from the children. They wanted to play the instruments, interacting with rhythms that we were giving them; they took to all of it, just soaked it all up. In fact, there was a boy who had a riff of his own going: some of our players tried to play along with him and improvise around it and he really wasn’t happy ‒ he wanted to do it on his own! We later saw him going to another child in a wheelchair, put the scroll of the violin on to this boy’s arm and start playing to him, because he’d seen us do that with other children ‒ he got what we were trying to do, that it was something worthwhile, and that was very moving.
During the week we also played with a string group from the small town of Trevelin who travelled to Gaiman, which is an eight-hour drive, in order to play with us. This string group was very impressive, they had some good violins, but generally in Patagonia they don’t have the instruments, or the facilities to develop; so we hope by us being here that it will inspire them to keep finding ways to carry on with classical music.
When we’re in the orchestra we’re quite removed from our audience so we don’t see how much it means to them, but out here we’ve really had an effect on the community; we’ve contributed to the cultural life and they’ve really contributed to our experience as well.
Lots of people from Wales have visited Patagonia this year because of the anniversary – it’s 150 years since the Welsh settlers arrived, but the teacher at one of the Welsh schools said to us she could sense that our visit had meant so much more. We hadn’t just come here for the celebrations – it was about the music and about engaging with the local communities.
We arrived in Buenos Aires yesterday where we have two concerts, which is very exciting because the Teatro Colón is such a famous concert hall. I played there, probably about 18 years ago with the English Chamber Orchestra so it will be interesting to see how it’s changed. I haven’t been to the other concert halls we’ll be playing, but I’ve heard that Santiago and Montevideo are supposed to be remarkable places to visit, and I’m looking forward to seeing a bit more of Argentina as well. With our week in Patagonia it’s only been a small group of us, so it’s going to be strange and fantastic for the full orchestra to be back to together again. It’s going to be just as rewarding, but in a different way.
Hear the BBC National Orchestra of Wales tonight from 7.30pm on Radio 3 from the Teatro Colón, Buenos Aires, and hear more about the residency.
