The daughter of a prominent bandmaster who co-founded the Perth Youth Orchestra has said a planned tuition fee hike will undermine her father’s legacy and turn the city into a “musical vacuum”.
Leila Trainor has pleaded with Perth and Kinross Council to rethink its savings strategy, which will see the price of instrument lessons for youngsters increase by 60% in the next three years.
The first 20% rise comes into effect in August.
Mrs Trainor, whose father Louis Barnett helped set up the prestigious youth group in 1962, said if the planned increases go ahead “it will plunge the music scene in Perth, for its budding young musicians, back into the limbo of the late-1940s, when opportunities for young people to learn an instrument were very limited.”
The move, which was agreed at council budget talks in February, has angered parents who fear it will lead to pupils abandoning their lessons.
More than 1,000 people have signed a petition urging the local authority to scrap the proposal.
Mrs Trainor said: “Music plays an integral part in all our lives and if the chance to learn to play instruments and create music are denied to those of limited funds, it will create the very musical vacuum that my father fought so hard to fill back in the early 1960s.”
She said: “My father campaigned tirelessly to make access to instrumental tuition available to all young people who wished to learn, regardless of their financial background.
“Indeed, wherever he went, he succeeded in breaking down the barriers of musical elitism and at the time of his early death in 1966, he left behind a thriving young orchestra full of young people, myself included, many of whom went on to follow successful careers in music.”
Mrs Trainor, who stays in Northern Ireland, added: “To push ahead with these proposed extortionate increases will result in undermining my father’s legacy and contributing to what will become another musical vacuum in Perth in a few years’ time.
“That would be a very sad day. I hope and pray that the council will rethink this decision.
“To deny any young person the right to learn an instrument simply due to financial circumstance would result in the musical elitism that my father had largely managed to do away with.”
The Perth Youth Orchestra is one of a trio of groups which have publicly criticised the cutbacks.
A statement issued with the Young Musicians Parents Association and the Perth and the Perth and Kinross Music Foundation said: “Such an unexpected increase in a utility bill at short notice would be deemed completely unacceptable, yet the council has seen fit to force this increase on unsuspecting families.”
A council spokeswoman said: “We have no plans to reduce any aspect of the instrumental music service within the local area.
“Additional funding to support this service was provided in the local authority’s budget on a non-recurring basis. This money will be used to help extend the reach of the service further than at present.”
She said: “Any savings or changes to charges for services are considered by elected members as part of the statutory budget setting process.
“The decision to increase the fees for the instrumental music service, after a five-year period where there were no increases, was taken at Perth and Kinross Council’s full council meeting in February 2018.
“The local authority has recently met with parent representatives to discuss this matter.”
