Game changers
It was, Simon Rattle said, ‘not just an exciting idea but a profoundly necessary one’. The kind of idea, he went on, ‘which could deepen and enrich classical music in the UK for generations’. As it turned out, he was spot on. Yet back in September 2015, when this idea first surfaced, it was regarded not just as radical but, in some quarters, unwelcome.
For decades Chi-chi Nwanoku had been one of the most outstanding orchestral players in London – and not just because, as the British-born daughter of a Nigerian father and Irish mother, she was usually the only black face on the stage. A founder-member of the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment, she invested her playing with such virtuosic energy that you sometimes felt as if the whole ensemble was being propelled from the bass line. It’s no surprise to learn that in her schooldays she was a 100m sprinter who competed at national level.
By 2015, Nwanoku had a new ambition:
