A new orchestra created by the conductor Charles Hazlewood and composed of 17 performers with disabilities – including a one-handed pianist and an electronic musician with such severe cerebral palsy that she requires 24-hour care – is preparing to play at the closing ceremony of the Paralympics.
Its performance alongside Coldplay has been kept secret, but last Thursday the musicians were gathered at a church in north London for rehearsals.
Hazlewood campaigned vigorously earlier this year for his "paraorchestra" to be included in the Paralympic ceremonies. He wanted to raise the issue of the lack of representation of disabled musicians in orchestras, and saw this as a unique opportunity. "Where are the platforms for brilliant musicians?" he asks.
It is understood that the invitation, which includes playing the closing Paralympian anthem as the flag is lowered next Saturday, came after Hazlewood lobbied David Cameron and Jeremy Hunt, the culture secretary. A signal of intention duly arrived in March.
Auditions for the orchestra started a year ago and the musicians performed live for the first time before a paying audience on 1 July at a festival that Hazlewood organises in Glastonbury Abbey's grounds. They have since played at other venues.
Hazlewood has also fought to have a documentary made about the creation of the orchestra: "It took five months. The BBC said, 'Oh no, we haven't got space,' and I was banging away at Channel 4's top executives. Then I was at a meeting with the BBC's leading executives and I thought, 'Right, you bastards'. I gave them both barrels about it. Alan Yentob [BBC creative director] leapt to his feet like a scalded cat and offered to step in."
That spurred C4 to commit and the resulting hour-long documentary will be screened next Sunday. "It seemed so odd: this is not a niche arts programme, and in this year of all years it was an absolute no-brainer," said Hazlewood.
The inspiration for the paraorchestra is a deeply personal one. Hazlewood's daughter Eliza, six, has cerebral palsy and shows outstanding singing ability, he believes.
"For 20 years I have been conducting orchestras around the world, and having a child with a disability started me thinking," he said.
"This community was invisible to me before, but in all that time I realised I have seen only three disabled musicians playing in them. It seems baffling, illogical, wrong. Fifty years ago, how many women were there in orchestras? None. It would be laughable, absurd, now. It should surely represent all parts of the community, just like a healthy mix of gender. The Paralympics has achieved miracles in sport. Music is universal.
"This is not about the therapeutic value of music. I have no interest in a paraorchestra as a warm fuzzy feeling that is a good end in itself. I am not interested in some disabled ghetto. It is the means to a bigger end. By creating a platform that gains attention because of the virtuosity of the musicians, I want to see if we might approach integration. In the theatre and dance, trailblazing projects have been going on for years. For music to be so poorly served is infuriating."
He added that technical and scientific advances were also creating the means for trained musicians with physical impairments to make music, provided funds were available.
The C4 documentary makes clear that he is looking for musicians "at the top of their game, technically, and with a spirit behind the virtuosity". One of the orchestra members who meets that test, Clarence Adoo, was a trumpet player with the Northern Sinfonia in Gateshead until paralysed below the shoulders in a car accident. He plays electronic music now by blowing into a tube. Several others use specially adapted tablet computers, though most play conventional instruments ranging from the violin, sitar and wind instruments to drums.
The TV programme charts the careful selection of musicians, but also discloses an inclusive approach to making music. The pieces chosen for the Glastonbury performance, the traditional English tune Greensleeves and Ravel's Bolero, involved a degree of improvisation. "The core principle is that the music is born out of improvisation. We whittle down the musical narrative in rehearsal and the point at which it hits the stage is when we own it collectively," Hazlewood said.
With hundreds of millions of people around the world expected to watch the closing ceremony of the Paralympics, Hazlewood hopes to harness the publicity to rouse the musical community. There is talk of a European tour and possible studio recordings. The orchestra is booked to perform at the Unlimited festival at London's South Bank, and there is a queue of disabled musicians waiting to be assessed for inclusion in the paraorchestra.
C4's chief executive, David Abraham, said the delay in commissioning the programme came at a time of year when the channel was busy organising the Paralympics, and that the paraorchestra had also been asked to provide a theme tune for another programme.
