Children feel magic of music with just three weeks' practice

AS A father of four, unemployed for "years and years and years", Charles MacNab vividly remembers how he found out El Sistema had arrived in Stirling's tough Raploch district. "When my children came home singing," he recalls.

Scotland's experiment in a pioneering youth music scheme, first developed 30 years ago in the barrios of Venezuela, kicked off in earnest yesterday, as local primary school children showed their parents all they had learned in its first three weeks.

Zara MacNab, seven, was playing the violin. Her twin sister Iona was on the double bass. "It was fine," said Zara, though she seemed to have set her heart on her sister's instrument. "There were loads of kids on the violin."

The Sistema Scotland project, three years in the planning, came to fruition yesterday in Raploch, one of the country's most deprived areas, with The Big Noise. The free orchestra scheme was backed by Scottish Arts Council and private funders.

Organisers aim to emulate the massive success of the El Sistema scheme in Venezuela, which has brought music to poverty-stricken children in a network of youth orchestras across the country.

From Monday, Sistema Scotland starts a summer school. Classes will then continue through the school year.

The youngsters were practising for three hours a week in the build-up to their first concert yesterday, working with six professional musicians.

Up to 40 budding young violin, viola and cello players performed with musicians from the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra and the National Youth Orchestras of Scotland. They played along with The Can-Can, and other simple songs, accompanied by 80 singing children.

Dr Richard Holloway, chairman of Sistema Scotland and the Scottish Arts Council, said: "We wanted a celebration after three years' solid planning and building, to launch Sistema Scotland in Stirling, to show it to the community, to show what children can achieve with two or three weeks of music. It was gloriously successful."

The Raploch estate has been notorious for crime and unemployment, though its residents are fighting to change that image.

Mr MacNab has been out of work for more than 12 years. "There's no work here," he said. "There's not a lot for kids in Raploch."

The family usually heads off for the holidays in a caravan, but this week will return early so the sisters can rejoin The Big Noise.

"They've never played any musical instrument before," he said. "They never really thought of it. The only thing I ever played was a recorder at school.

"It was brilliant, excellent. I hope it will bring big things and big prospects. If they sit down and are good, who knows?"

In their first weeks, the children have been learning how to hold an instrument, care for it, and some basic techniques, said the Sistema Scotland director, Nicola Killean.

"The children have been really wonderful, enjoying it so much. They are five to eight years old. That's where we are starting, and the idea is we retain those children as they grow," she said.

Violinist Joella Fenna, a graduate of the Royal Scottish Academy of Music and Drama and now a professional musician, is one of the six teachers.

"Three times a week for an hour, they've done nine hours of learning on their instruments," she said. "They were playing in a concert today, all at the right time, rhythmically accurate and keeping a steady pulse, but the most important thing was they were enjoying it.

"I'm really chuffed and inspired by what's happened."