Lifetime Achievement Awards tend to be given to people who've retired. Renowned flautist, teacher and children's concert presenter Atarah Ben-Tovim, 80, has not.
She squeezed in our Zoom interview before her busy online teaching day; her flute, saxophone, piano and singing pupils span a wide age range and live all over the world.
Eloquent, insightful and funny, Ben-Tovim freely admits she feels pessimistic about the future, then adds: ‘But if we don't fight for the arts, who will?’
Born in Wales, she played in local then regional youth orchestras, then the National Youth Orchestra, before studying at the Royal Academy of Music.
She went on to enjoy a hugely successful career as an orchestral flautist, playing with the Royal Opera House orchestra before becoming, at the Liverpool Philharmonic, the first woman to hold a British principal flute chair.
Then a new phase, which would take over her life, began – concerts for children to inspire and open up the world of music. As well as touring the world and playing to thousands of children, Ben-Tovim made radio and TV programmes and published books on her music education philosophy. Her huge contribution was recognised in 1980 when she was awarded the MBE.
Since the 1980s, she's lived in France where she runs residential flute courses – which she's currently desperately missing – for adults and children.
I ask Ben-Tovim how it all began. She says: ‘It was a very bizarre thing. I was 11, at secondary school. I'm very cack-handed, and in school we had three months of metalwork, three months of pottery, and three months of doing woodwork.
‘Well, I was appalling at the pottery, appalling at the metalwork – but in woodwork we made a recorder. Then we all had to play them.’
She continues: ‘The music teacher said, “My god you're good at the recorder, why don't you try a flute?” Why not, I thought – so she came the next day with a Rudall Carte wooden flute, and I picked it up and I could play.
‘Six weeks later I was playing a Telemann suite – it was as if I was born to play it.’
I ask about her move into children's concerts, and her views more generally on music teaching.
‘After 12 years in the Liverpool Phil, I got what really is a calling. I was doing a concert for disabled children. We hadn't prepared much – most school concerts were appalling then – and didn't know much about the children. There were 200 kids with spina bifida and using wheelchairs. I just started shaking and sweating, and I knew I had to change my life and do something for children, to get a light in their eyes.’
The result was Atarah's Band. ‘It was fabulous. We did it for about 14 years, over 2,000 concerts, everywhere from Aldeburgh to Hong Kong. We played classical music and classical/rock fusion. School concert in the morning, education concert in the afternoon, family concert in the evening.’
Ben-Tovim has been teaching almost as long as she's been playing: ‘I've always been obsessed with teaching. I started teaching the flute when I was 12 – after three months of playing it I got my first two students.
‘Ever since then I've taught all the time. For me, teaching is inspiring – I'm not obsessive about the flute itself. I'm obsessive about giving a basic skill so that the player can then do what they want to. I'm not a guru kind of a teacher, I just teach them to play the flute properly and it's up to them – I've produced a lot of fine players over the years.’
Her experience during the pandemic is one many of us will relate to: missing her examining work and courses acutely, while making the most of teaching online.
‘Normally I'd accompany pupils, so Zoom teaching has been great for really getting into finer detail with adults. But it's not as good for small children – they need the human contact’.
Does she have a message for music educators in these tough times?
‘You have to be flexible. You have to keep on fighting. I believe music is the only thing that educates body, mind and soul. There is nothing else at all that we teach anybody that educates these three sides. It's the most important thing there's ever been in my life.
‘Playing is a pleasure, but teaching enriches the human. I believe that in every fibre of my being.’
The Lifetime Achievement Award is sponsored by the Incorporated Society of Musicians (ISM). ism.org
