One year on, Lucy gets support from world’s most famous flautist

One year on, Lucy gets support from world’s most famous flautist

23 October 2013

LAST year Lucy Newman had never played or even held a flute.

Now the young flautist is busy composing her own music and crossing paths with the best in the business.

The 10 year-old scooped a prized backstage pass to meet Sir James Galway at the Waterfront Hall on Friday night after a special request from her impressed teacher.

Mrs. Elaine Bell is a class teacher at Lucy’s school, Glasswater Primary in Crossgar, where she also tutors a small number of pupils on the flute.

Hearing Lucy’s mum had booked her surprise tickets for Friday’s concert with the Ulster Orchestra, Mrs. Bell went one step further and contacted the orchestra to see what could be done about Lucy getting to meet her idol.

“I was so surprised to hear back from them,” said Mrs. Bell. “It was fantastic.”

Explaining that Lucy had “worked so hard” on her new instrument, she said: “Lucy had never held or played a flute before coming to me.

“Within a matter of weeks she had began to compose her own music and play it on her flute. She had no way to record it on manu but instead wrote it by its letter name on ordinary file paper.”

Still smiling from her celebrity meeting, Lucy said her one-to-one with the world’s most famous flautist had left her full of determination to pursue a musical career.

“It was cool,” she said. “He asked me my name and he asked me had I done any grades yet.

“I said ‘no’. He said ‘I never did any myself but don’t tell your teacher’.

“He was quite friendly, he would make you want to do your grades.”

Getting to hear the man with the golden flute up close in a live concert was also a new auditory experience for Lucy.

“We listened to his Bumblebee song last year in school and I have seen him on TV in the morning, I think Daybreak,” she said. “He is just very good. But in the concert it is a bit louder, a bit clearer.”

As well as composing her own tunes, Lucy enjoys transcribing favourite songs such as Bette Midler’s ‘The Rose’ and Celine Dion’s ‘My Heart Will Go On’.

“My grandfather used to be a singer in a band and his brother played the flute,” she said.

“My brother doesn’t really like to hear me play but everyone else likes to hear it.”

Lucy says she is confident she can tackle the Waterfront Hall stage and others when she’s older. And for the meantime, when she’s not listening to Sir James, pop music has precedence.

“Katie Perry is my favourite,” she said.

Dr. Rosa Solinas, chief executive with the Ulster Orchestra, said of Lucy’s visit: “We are delighted to see that classical music is alive and well in the hands of children like Lucy who is already composing at the tender age of ten years old.

“The work of Lucy, her teacher Elaine Bell, and the support of her parents is keeping the future of classical music bright in Northern Ireland.