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She finished the symphony in five months.<\/p>\n
ARMATRADING WAS BORN <\/strong>on the Caribbean island of St. Kitts in 1950, and moved to Birmingham, England, at age 7. There, her mother got a piano as a piece of living room furniture, and she was given free rein to start experimenting with writing songs. \u201cI was just to my own devices,\u201d she said, adding with a laugh: \u201cI never involved anybody. I didn\u2019t really ask anybody\u2019s opinion, which is how I am still.\u201d<\/p>\n Some of Armatrading\u2019s earliest experiences with classical music came through movies. \u201cAs soon as the strings come in, the emotion really kicks in,\u201d she said. \u201cIt seems to be like a punctuation mark that says, \u2018This is what you\u2019re supposed to do.\u2019\u201d She enjoyed \u201cBrief Encounter,\u201d with its use of Rachmaninoff\u2019s Second Piano Concerto, and \u201cWest Side Story,\u201d and developed an early appreciation for depth and weight. \u201cIf you have 18 strings or something, and they\u2019re doing that thing, you\u2019re gonna cry,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n It\u2019s no surprise, then, that some of her favorite composers are those known for tugging hardest on the heartstrings: Rachmaninoff and Purcell, as well as Tchaikovsky, whose Fifth Symphony is being paired with her First on the Chineke! program.<\/p>\n Armatrading is adamant that, in her Symphony, she just wanted to sound \u201clike Joan,\u201d but she\u2019s also happy for listeners to bring their own associations. When I listened to the work, which will be recorded for Decca, I heard flashes of the verdant textures of Vaughan Williams, a bit of Elgarian pomp and some of Copland\u2019s brightness.<\/p>\n This symphony is by no means the first case of a pop artist to engage in classical composition. But unlike other instances \u2014 such as Paul McCartney\u2019s \u201cLiverpool Oratorio\u201d or Deep Purple\u2019s \u201cConcerto for Group and Orchestra\u201d \u2014 Armatrading\u2019s debut is a two-footed leap into a different musical world rather than an attempt to straddle styles.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n