Orchestral Groupies with Shaved Heads by Emily De Dakis

The lead clarinettist of the Northern Ireland Philharmonic is in for it: She’s shocked everyone by disrupting a concert with a Saint-Saёns Clarinet Sonata in E-Flat Major solidarity solo. She did it for her groupies.

“Orchestral Groupies with Shaved Heads” is an offbeat and moving love story starring Tamsin Greig.

This comic piece is written by Emily De Dakis a Northern Irish writer new to the BBC. It is one of six new short monologues developed and produced by BBC Writersroom for Radio 3 as part of the BBC Music Day 2017 celebrations.

Each drama celebrates this year’s theme The Power of Music with a monologue about the transformative power of music.

Other monologues are performed by actors including Liam Neeson, Julie Hesmondhalgh and Daniel Mays.

The Clarinettist..... Tamsin Greig
Director and Series Producer..... Justine Potter
Assistant Producer..... Usman Mullan
Executive Producer..... Anne Edyvean

Sound Designer & Editor..... John Scott
Music Editor..... Jeremy Evans

Composer..... Camille Saint-Saёns
Music..... Clarinet Sonata in E-Flat Major Opus 167Major Opus 167
Clarinettist..... Rachel Gibbons

A note from the writer Emily DeDakis:

At the Ulster Hall in Belfast, where I live now, the choir seats flank the Mulholland Grand Organ, looking out over the hall just above and behind the orchestra. Sitting up there once for a concert once, in the front row of the stalls, I found myself noticing the players. I’ve played in orchestras – I was a cellist during high school and university in Atlanta and New Orleans, where I grew up. But that tiny collection of details, glimpsed from just above and behind, stuck with me: the players’ tiny mannerisms, whether they smiled at someone across the way, guessing their favourite piece by how they moved, the bald head of one of the clarinettists ... I suddenly envisioned three women with season tickets for the choir stalls, and imagined who they might be watching – and what it means to see and be seen.

It was important for me that ‘Orchestral Groupies with Shaved Heads’ focused purely on the strange wee love story between a musician and her groupies. Not discovering they were long-lost cousins or seeing them as surrogates for an absent mother: just that relationship, forged from afar but in close proximity, and happening entirely through music. I listened over the phone to Tamsin Greig’s recording session. Her performance was a gorgeous shock, like seeing Maura perfectly for the first time. I loved drafting and sharpening the story with the stellar Writersroom team, and playing with the vividness radio allows (as well as knowing what’s too much. Tweet me for a list of rejected wigs!). It’s a gift to have Writersroom active across all five regions of the U.K. now. A friend joked that there are five regions but six Music Day monologues; she said maybe I’m representing the sixth (invisible) region – all the people who come here from elsewhere and stay for a while, or for years, or forever. It’s great being part of BBC Music Day on Radio 3, alongside brilliant fellow writers in my adopted home. Music and its stories are built for travelling.