"Be the first!"
Radio 3 presenter Linton Stephens on how his mother inspired him to pick up the bassoon
BBC
- Simon O'Hagan
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Linton Stephens was 16 and about to embark on his music A-level at a sixth-form college on the Wirral when he discovered Radio 3. His music teacher put him on to it. “She said if I wanted to learn about classical music then Radio 3 was the station to listen to,” Stephens recalls. “I’ll always be grateful to her.” Nearly a quarter of a century on, Stephens is a rising star of Radio 3’s presenting team, bringing not just freshness to its output but, as an orchestral musician himself, depths of insight and understanding.
“I feel incredibly lucky,” says Stephens, now 39, which is typical of someone for whom “practising hard and staying humble” are watchwords. And yet, luck appears to have played a very small part in a career that has involved overcoming barriers from the moment that, as an eight-year-old boy growing up as a member of a large, working-class black family, Stephens was captivated watching the Proms on TV and thought to himself, “I want to do that.”
No one in the orchestra looked like me
“There’s a story I often tell about that moment,” Stephens says. “About turning to my mother and saying, ‘But there’s no one in the orchestra who looks like me,’ and my mother saying, ‘Well, you’d better be the first!’”
The initial step Stephens took to realising that ambition was to learn the bassoon – an unlikely instrument, perhaps, but one to which he was drawn “just because it was so different”. The talent he displayed led to a place at the Royal Northern College of Music in Manchester, and set him on his way to playing professionally.
Linton Stephens playing the bassoon. Joseph Branston
Now he’s a busy freelancer, based in south-east London, who’s a regular member of the BBC Concert Orchestra, the Aurora Orchestra and the Chineke! Orchestra – which was founded to give opportunities to black and ethnic minority musicians, for whom gaining a foothold in the profession was, and remains, a challenge.
That cause is close to Stephens’s heart, his campaigning work at the Musicians’ Union born of his experience of prejudice. “It was always something I was aware of – stage crews making racist jokes, or the time a member of a choir that my orchestra was working with said, ‘We don’t often get people like you in here.’”
The realisation that through the Equalities Committee of the Musicians’ Union he could do something about the situation was “a light bulb moment”. It led to speaking at conferences, which in turn brought him to the attention of Radio 3. The long-established producer Les Pratt heard Stephens and put to him the idea of Listen coming in to do a voice test.
Stephens is now a fixture on the recently introduced lunchtime strand Classical Live (for which he is hosting a week of programmes for Black History Month, as well as a Radio 3 in Concert next week). He’s a natural, a voice that feels representative of a changing Radio 3. “Tradition is a great thing but it needs to have relevance to the modern world, and I think that’s how Radio 3 is evolving. Twenty years ago it could dictate what it played and how it played it. Now, when we can all listen to anything we want whenever we want, there’s a new challenge for us presenters – to provide not just company but to add value to the music, to tell the stories behind it.”
Linton Stephens playing bassoon in Chineke! Chuko Cribb
Stephens says he’s had offers to go and work at other stations, but, “I love Radio 3 and no one can broadcast live music like Radio 3 can.” The fact that Radio 3 broadcasts so much live music is a big driver for him. “Maybe that’s because I’m a musician myself, but there’s nothing like live performance, and I think the way Radio 3 supports it is vitally important.”
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Stephens’s talents don’t stop with music. He’s also a gifted illustrator currently working on a project for Black History Month – producing a daily illustration of a great figure drawn from the ranks of black and ethnic minority composers (left is Haitian piano virtuoso Ludovic Lamothe). “It’s a way to bring to light these forgotten or lesser-known musicians.” But music always comes first and now Radio 3, the station Stephens only discovered when he was 16, is very much the beneficiary.
Authors
Simon O'Hagan
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