7 British Suzuki Gala Concert, UK 2023 Helen Brunner N early 2,000 performers from all over Europe and beyond travelled to London to participate in the British Suzuki Music Association’s Gala concert on 9 April 2023 at the Royal Albert Hall (RAH). Teachers and children came from Argentina, Australia, Belgium, Canada, Czech Republic, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, Hong Kong, Iceland, India, Ireland, Italy, Kazakhstan, Latvia, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Netherlands, Norway, Poland, Russia, South Africa, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, Turkey, Ukraine, United Kingdom, United States and Vietnam. Everybody knew that this would be a once in a life-time experience. Planning started more than two years earlier with finding the right date; Easter Sunday was chosen to embrace most of the European school terms. Then we had to book the venue, but the RAH has an 85% full house policy and children’s concerts, surprisingly, do not usually fill the hall, so I had to persuade them that with our young Suzuki performers, typically the whole family comes along too; in fact we quickly sold out. Then the programme manager was alarmed that our children were playing the entire concert from memory. How is that possible? No music, no stands, no chairs, no single conductor and only one day of rehearsal? And behaviour was a huge issue. I had an email saying they thought that in proposing to put on a gala, I ‘had not quite understood the aesthetic of our hall’. We patiently explained the process behind the Suzuki method: how students are trained to memorise everything as they go, and how these thousand children learn about good concert behaviour right from the beginning. (The youngest child was five years old.) Of course, we also depended on the 174 highly-trained Suzuki teacherleaders who created the musical magic of each performance, and the 108 teacher-helpers, who stayed with the children in the hall throughout the concert. Detailed organisation, a pencil and paper effort of ingenuity, was masterminded by Suzuki teachers Juan Drown and Mona Kodama. Registration for a mammoth event like this needs professional help. The process of registering every player was done off-site in the old Baden- Powell House, Queens Gate and took two days. “The programme manager was alarmed that our children were playing the entire concert from memory.” Children were not auditioned to take part in the Gala, (except a few pianists, because of keyboard limitations) but they had to be a minimum of Suzuki Book 2 standard. Rarely have I witnessed such clear evidence of the power of music to break down the barriers of language, race, religion,
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