ISSUU - Foote Prints Winter/Spring 2012 by The Foote School
Foote Prints Winter/Spring 2012
Foote Prints Winter/Spring 2012
The Winter/Spring 2012 issue of Foote Prints, the alumni magazine.From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
James Rhodes (born 6 March 1975 in ) is a
Born into a middle-class
family in , , he was sent to a local
where he experienced abuse by his gym teacher. Rhodes suffered mentally as well as physically, and later had a back operation.
Age 7, he borrowed the CD of 's
from his father's collection.[] He was taught piano, but did not progress formally beyond Grade 3 piano tuition.[] After moving to a local boarding school, he then, from age 13 onwards, was educated at , where he worked with piano teacher Colin Stone. It was during this period that he entered the
competition, but failed to make it past the second round.
In 1993, he was offered a scholarship to the . But in part due to
issues and his father's insistence, Rhodes took a
degree at .
On graduation, Rhodes took a job in the
and married an
writer, Kathleen Tessaro who is ten years his senior. The couple have a son but divorced in 2007.
In 2014, Rhodes married Hattie Chamberlin. They live in London.
A fan of the
pianist , Rhodes wrote to Sokolov's agent Franco Panozzo in Italy, with the idea that Rhodes would become a music agent himself. Panozzo responded, and after Rhodes sent him a bottle of , the pair arranged to meet in Italy. After hearing Rhodes play, Panozzo arranged for Rhodes to have a brief tutorage under the renowned piano teacher Edoardo Strabbioli in Verona, Italy. However after a period Rhodes was , spending eight months in various hospitals in the United Kingdom and the , after which his marriage broke down.
Returning to London, he met Canadian entrepreneur Denis Blais while practising at the ,
in 2008. Encouraged to record his first CD, and uncomfortable with the austere and traditional 'white tie and tails' recital, Rhodes and Blais decided it was time for the performer to communicate directly with the audience. Rhodes introduced his own programme notes to share with the audience about what it takes to perform these works of art, using anecdotes about the composers and his own life experience.
saw his profile go from complete unknown to rising star, attracting celebrity followers such as , , and Sir .[] Having performed in non-traditional classical venues, Rhodes built on this performance approach.
In March 2010, Rhodes became the first core classical pianist to be signed with the world's largest rock label .
In 2011, Rhodes became a regular culture blogger for
and had popular articles in
Music Blog, 2013.
Returning to his original label Signum Classics, Rhodes released his 4th album "JIMMY: James Rhodes recorded live at The Old Market Brighton" in May 2012.
Canongate acquired James Rhodes's memoir in 2013 and his book Instrumental will be released in March 2015.
Rhodes' first public recital was at
in London, on 7 November 2008. His second recital was at the Hinde Street Methodist Centre, London, on 4 December 2008. He performed his first full scale concert at the , , in London on 6 February 2009.
In May 2009, Rhodes performed a solo concert at
in Camden, the first classical musician to give a solo recital since the reopening. Rhodes has also played Proud Galleries in C
and the nominations launch for the
2009 WITH NS&I.
In March 2010, Rhodes performed at the Holders Season 2010 in . 2010 also saw him play at the ,
and the , .
In February 2011, Rhodes performed a sold-out show at the Elgar Room in the
and then at the Jazz Cafe in Camden as a part of the
Next Big Thing Festival. In March 2011, Rhodes performed two concerts in London's West End at The . James then returned to the
and performed at
in July 2011.
Rhodes appeared at the
in "A Classical Affair" with , Tim Lihoreau and Sir
in September 2011. Then in October 2011 James performed an 11 date tour of Australia which was launched at the .
In September 2012 Rhodes had his debut performance in the US at the International Beethoven Festival in Chicago.
Rhodes performed in Hong Kong, at the , the
in Birmingham, the Royal Albert Hall's Elgar Room, Cheltenham Music Festival, the Waterfront stage at
and a series of concerts at the
in London in 2013. Rhodes was invited back to the Soho Theatre in March 2014 and has engagements with Hay Festival and Harrogate International Festivals for the Summer.
Rhodes completed filming a
music documentary celebrating ’s 200th anniversary in December 2009. He is the star presenter and performer in the 90 minute programme, which is a discovery of Chopin’s life and his relationship with the opera singer . This documentary was broadcast in October 2010.
James Rhodes filmed a seven episode series called James Rhodes: Piano Man
which aired on
2 in December 2010 and again in March 2011. In Piano Man, James plays the music of his favourite composers, including , Beethoven and Chopin, many of whom, like James, had troubled lives. In this highly personal collection, James explains how they’ve given him solace in his darkest moments, and why we should all be listening.
In July 2013, he presented Notes from the Inside with James Rhodes on
as part of their Mad4Music season of programmes, in which each episode featured musicians from across the musical spectrum giving an alternative take on music and what it means to them an for example the second episode featured
being interviewed by Sir . During his programme, he both gave some spoken insights into his personal life over the previous few years and also played piano to four individual
patients, all dealing with their own mental health issues, inside their
by selecting a piece for each of them to match their personalities and individual circumstances, including "" (), "" (), "Melody from Orfeo ed Euridice" () and "Widmung" ().
Rhodes filmed a two-part campaigning series called Don't Stop the Music (working title The Great Instrument Amnesty)
that was aired on
in September 2014, with the aim of improving music education across the UK. The multiplatform project included an instrument amnesty which collected over 6,000 instruments to redistribute to 150 UK primary schools.
Razor Blades, Little Pills and Big Pianos (Feb 2009), Signum Records
Now Would All Freudians Please Stand Aside (Mar 2010), Signum Records
Bullets and Lullabies (Dec 2010),
Cover art by Dave Brown, Bollo from
JIMMY: James Rhodes Live in Brighton (May 2012), Signum Records
5 (release date Jun 2014), Instrumental Records
James Rhodes (November 2010). . The Spectator.
James Rhodes (November 2010). . The Spectator.
Rhodes, James. "". , 22 May 2009.
Smith, Charlotte. "". , 25 March 2010.
James Rhodes. . The Telegraph.
James Rhodes (April 2013). . The Guardian.
Gill, Andy "" . 19 May 2012.
. The Bookseller. 27 September 2013.
Church, Michael. "". , 9 February 2009.
Brown, Geoff. "". , 15 May 2009.
"". classicfm.co.uk, 20 April 2009.
"". , 21 March 2010.
Maddocks, Fiona. "". , 13 February 2011.
Nugent, John. "". , 18 March 2011.
"". Lichfield Festival, 13 July 2011.
"". Barbican, 26 September 2011.
Lesnie, Melissa. "". Limelight Magazine, 12 July 2011.
"". , 14 August 2012.
Victoria Sadler (July 2013). . Huffington Post.
Victoria Sadler (March 2014). . Huffington Post.
"". skyarts.co.uk
. 24 July 2013. Channel 4. .
"". , 1 April 2014.
Hewett, Ivan "". . 18 February 2009.
Jones, Rick ' ". . 20 February 2009.
Midgette, Annette "" . 9 September 2009.
Distler, Jed " . 11 September 2009
Woolf, Peter Grahame "" musicalpointers.co.uk. 15 March 2010.
Silverman, Laura "" . 26 March 2010.
Thompson, Damian "" . 8 March 2010.
Gardner, Charlotte "" . 8 December 2010.
Maddocks, Fiona "" . 26 December 2010.
Gill, Andy "" . 7 January 2011.
James Rhodes (November 2010). . The Spectator.
Brian Reinhart (October 2012). . Musicweb International.
Alice Buxton (May 2012). . Hive Magazine.
– official site
– official site
- official Telegraph Blog
, music education initiative with Channel 4
- "" article
: Hidden categories:Accessibility links
James Rhodes photographed at a mental institution&Photo: Richard Ansett
When James Rhodes plays the piano, his head lolls forward from his thin shoulders and his eyes strain to focus on nicotine-stained fingers that trip and whirl across the keys. His hair is fashionably tousled. His cardigan sleeves hang loose over stick-thin arms. On the left wrist is a tattoo of a date in the style of “the Auschwitz prisoner numbers” that he claims to have had done while on the run from a mental hospital. On the right is a thick, dark Cyrillic tattoo that reads “Sergei Rachmaninov”. Like the great Russian, this is no ordinary classical musician.
Through his six-album deal with Warner Brothers to his own prime-time music show on Sky, Piano Man, Rhodes has quickly established a reputation as one of Britain’s most exciting musicians. His first album, Razor Blades, Little Pills and Big Pianos, reached No 1 in the iTunes classical chart in May 2009.
‘‘Rock star on a Steinway’’ is just the latest label to be attached to the 38-year-old concert pianist, who is close friends with Stephen Fry and last month performed a recital at the Royal Albert Hall. Previous sobriquets include abuse victim, schizophrenic and suicidal manic-depressive.
As he says himself, “the road to happiness is rarely even”. Now, five years after he was sectioned and spent nine months on suicide watch in various secure mental institutions, Rhodes has decided to retrace his footsteps for a television documentary.
The Channel 4 programme, to be shown later this month, shows Rhodes returning to a psychiatric unit for the first time since his release to explore the therapeutic effects of classical music. He wheels his piano into a psychiatric hospital, home to around 600 patients. The programme focuses on four, with whom Rhodes smokes, swaps stories and discusses life on the outside.
His plan is to perform a specially selected piece of music to each patient in the hope it will resonate with them and aid their recovery. But as he spends longer in the 1830-built asylum, it is clear the exercise is as much an act of therapy for Rhodes as anyone else.
“Memory is a really difficult thing for me,” he says at one point in the documentary. “I’m sure there are memories, I just don’t have many that are rosy and peachy and wholesome.”
Rhodes started learning the piano at the age of seven, but stopped when he was 18, and did not play again for 10 years. He turned down a scholarship to the Guildhall School of Music & Drama, and instead studied psychology at University College London. After graduating, he took up a job in the City in the “belief that making hideous amounts of money would make up for the loss of my abandoned career as a pianist”. He married an American writer and the couple had a son.
In 2004, he quit his job after rediscovering his passion for music. But soon after his first major classical recital in 2006, he experienced a catastrophic breakdown.
Rhodes suffered horrific sexual abuse at school. “It was regular and relentless and caused all kinds of damage,” he says. “When my son reached the age I was when it started, suddenly everything seemed to fall apart. Having a child changes everything, and emotionally I couldn’t quite deal with that. I wasn’t ready and things spiralled pretty rapidly out of control, with self-harm and depression and general madness and craziness until I ended up in a locked ward.”
Rhodes was eventually sectioned after he phoned his wife from a grotty Paddington hotel, where he planned to slash his wrists and lie in the bath. She persuaded him to meet her at the station “to say goodbye”. There, he was ambushed and taken to a psychiatric unit. “Maybe I should have seen it coming,” he says.
He is still consumed with “astronomical levels of guilt” for his son, who now lives in America. “I see a photo of him and I’m on the floor in tears because there is nothing that will make up for that.”
Rhodes is one in a long line of classical musicians to have struggled with mental health issues, from Robert Schumann, who died in an asylum in the 1850s after attempting suicide, to his own hero Rachmaninov, who spent years battling depression. But he seems to possess a real belief in the power of his experiment. He says he was put on the path to recovery when a friend smuggled an iPod into his psychiatric unit, containing a piece by Bach.
However, he stresses: “I’m not naive enough to think when you’re in hospital and off-your-face on meds that you’ll listen to a piece of Bach and it will fix everything. Because, of course, it won’t.”
Still, the concept is not a new idea. Even in the chaos of Britain’s Victorian asylums, many operated their own orchestras with brass, wind and wood sections. During the now discredited experiments with hallucinogenic drugs on psychiatric patients in the 1960s and 1970s, music was used as a trigger for different moods. In 2007, the neurologist Oliver Sacks published his book Musicophilia, focusing on the powerful effect of music on the brain. Only last month the Royal College of Psychiatrists launched its Minds in Music project to promote discussion of the healing powers of the arts.
“We would certainly advise that if you want to help people, exercise and music are essential to that,” says Dr Peter Byrne, consultant psychiatrist at Newham University Hospital. “They are not the icing on the cake. They are the cake.”
At the end of the documentary, we are told that two of the patients have now left the hospital, and another hopes to be discharged soon. Rhodes leaves as he arrives, swathed in a smart black coat and tight trousers, unshaven, smiling and willing to talk with brutal candour about the issues he has battled on his way to becoming a classical music star.
He walks out of the psychiatric unit a free man. But his shadows continue to follow close behind.
‘James Rhodes: Notes from the Inside’ is on Channel 4 on July 24, 10pm
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