I was always at home with my music, says the Doncaster diva

In the latest in a series on Yorkshire singers and musicians, Lesley Garrett tells Chris Bond how growing up in Doncaster helped shape her life.

DONCASTER may not be regarded as a great musical Mecca, but opera singer Lesley Garrett says the area where she grew up is welded together by a strong musical affinity.

“I’ve always thought I’m blessed to have been born and bred in South Yorkshire because it was, and still is, a rich musical place. I think it has something to do with the industry, it’s a hard-working and poorer area generally speaking. Life was quite difficult with the pits, steelworks and railways and I think wherever you get that kind of heavy industry you tend to find a big appreciation of music.

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“I find the same thing whenever I go to south Wales, there’s the same community spirit and love of brass bands and amateur operatic societies. I think it acts as a counter balance to the difficult work the men do and it gives people’s finer feelings some kind of expression.”

Garrett was raised in Thorne, a nearby former mining town, and grew up surrounded by music. “My parents and grandparents were all very musical and our house was always full of music, although I didn’t actually see my first opera until I was about 16. All we had was a piano and a radio we didn’t have a record player so we made our own music,” she says.

Her father had been a railway signalman and her mother worked as a booking clerk in a ticket office before they retrained to become teachers. “By the time I was 13, my dad was headmaster of a school in Sheffield and my mum was head of music at a Doncaster school. My dad would write songs for the kids at his school as well as for us, I remember there was one called the Deepest Jungle in Africa which was about all these different types of animals and that’s what it was like for me, I was totally blessed to have the upbringing I did.”

She puts her own vocal talents down to her genes. “My dad had a fabulous voice that could rival Pavarotti and my mum was a wonderful soprano and she still sings in choral societies in Doncaster and Scunthorpe even though she’s in her 80s.” But her family’s musical roots stretch even further back. “My grandfather had his own band, the Arthur Garrett Blackout Band, which he set up during the war. He was a natural musician who could just sit down and play anything.”

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Her grandfather on her mother’s side was a classically trained pianist. “He wasn’t fit enough to work down the pit so his father taught him to play the piano and he became a prodigious talent winning numerous national competitions. He became a very fine pianist who loved classical music, especially Rachmaninov, Tchaikovsky and Liszt.” He put this love of classical music to good use. “He was employed to put together the music for silent movies that played in the picture houses and he used overtures from operas to go with the films. That’s how it worked back then, you had different music playing in each cinema.”

Garrett says there is a stronger musical tradition in this part of the world than many people perhaps realise. “Years ago, a lot of hotels and pubs had ballrooms which were used for performances and you would get miners coming to listen because there was this great appreciation for music.”

It’s an appreciation that extends to all kinds of music. “There is still a very strong jazz tradition in Doncaster, which my uncle was very much part of, and the working men’s clubs have also played a big part in the appreciation of music in the town. They are owed a huge debt of gratitude for bringing on all kinds of performers and giving them the opportunity to learn their craft.”

There was a do-it-yourself approach to music in the community. “It was an amateur music making experience but at the highest level and it was born out of a real love and passion for music,” explains Garrett.

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“We would go and watch brass bands play but apart from that I didn’t go to concerts. Opera North didn’t exist so there weren’t classical concerts to go to in Doncaster, which is why we made our own music,” she says. “I knew Handel’s Messiah before I knew nursery rhymes. My mum would sit at the piano and play Bach or Chopin before breakfast and dad would sit with we me and sing an aria or some operatic piece. We were like the Von Trapps of South Yorkshire.”

It wasn’t just at home where Garrett was able to practise singing, at Thorne Grammar School she and her fellow pupils were actively encouraged to pursue their musical interests. “It was an extremely musical school. It had a couple of orchestras, a choir and various music competitions. If a child wanted to learn an instrument then the money was found to do that, it was wonderful. If you wanted to learn an instrument and become a musician it was seen as a perfectly natural thing to do, it was as natural as breathing,” she says.

“The miners’ welfare movement played a really big role because it had a strong musical tradition through the brass bands and it provided instruments for children as well as training. Where I grew up in South Yorkshire after mining, music was considered the next most reliable way to earn a living because it was such a big part of the community.”

As a teenager she remembers going to see the Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra playing at Scunthorpe Baths which opened her eyes to a whole new musical world. “I was like ‘wow’ because I’d never seen anything like this before and then my auntie took me to London to watch Madame Butterfly at the English National Opera and it changed my life. I couldn’t believe the drama of it, because it’s the music that serves the drama. I came back from watching Madame Butterfly knowing that I wanted to go and be a singer because it was just the best feeling the world.”

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But she says she wouldn’t have been able to follow her dream of becoming a soprano without the help of her school teachers and the local education authority. “My singing teacher at school was a woman called Vivian Pike and she got me started, she really encouraged me and educated me about training my voice.”

With this help and hours of intensive training she earned a place at the prestigious Royal Academy of Music, which gave her the perfect platform from which to launch her singing career.

“I had to audition to get in and I sang my socks off. I remember the night before I’d won the Cleethorpes Cup, which was my first singing competition, so that’s where it all started for me. The local education paid for the four years I studied at the Royal Academy. They gave me the money to go and study and without that support I probably wouldn’t have become the singer I am today,” she says.

Garrett has gone on to enjoy a glittering international career packing out venues all over the world, but she still has a house in South Yorkshire and returns home as often as her busy work schedule permits. “All my family still live there, my sister has a music shop in Doncaster and my brother-in-law has a pop band which I used to sing in as a kid.”

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It’s a place that she says she will always cherish. “For my 50th birthday I played a week of sold out concerts at the Sydney Opera House and I had my family cheering me on in the front row. It doesn’t really get any better than that, but I would never have been able to do something like that if it hadn’t been for my musical upbringing in Doncaster.”

Lesley Garrett’s latest album, A North Country Lass, is released on April 23.

Lesley Garrett: The life of a soprano star

Lesley Garrett was born in Thorne, near Doncaster.

She went to Thorne Grammar School, before going on to study at the Royal Academy of Music.

Garrett joined English National Opera in 1984, winning plaudits for numerous performances, including her roles in Die Fledermaus and The Cunning Little Vixen.

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She has sung for the Queen and sang the very last Abide With Me at the FA Cup final in 2000, at the old Wembley stadium.

Her BBC TV show Lesley Garrett... Tonight featured guest artists as diverse as Ladysmith Black Mambazo and Elaine Paige.

She reached the semi-finals of Strictly Come Dancing in 2004, with her dance partner Anton Du Beke. She also took part in the BBC TV series Who Do You Think You Are? looking into her Yorkshire roots.

She has been a regular panellist on ITV’s Loose Women and was the subject of a South Bank Show programme.

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In 2002, Garrett was awarded the CBE for her services to music.

She has starred in West End musicals and worked with a variety of music stars, from Bryan Ferry to Katherine Jenkins.

Her latest album, A North Country Lass, follows in the folk-inspired, classical tradition of Vaughan Williams, Gustav Holst and Benjamin Britten. She returns to her northern roots with a collection of British and Irish songs, including a soprano version of Yorkshire’s unofficial anthem On Ilkla Moor Baht ’At.