Despite training as a classical pianist, Pete Letanka always knew he was a jazz musician. In this episode, he talks about that early tension and his struggles with what he describes as “musical dyslexia.” He reflects on what years of leading music workshops with schoolchildren have taught him, and his ongoing work uncovering the composers left out of the history books.

This is the final episode in our mini-series with Classically Black, a festival taking place on October 10, 2026 at King’s Place in London. Learn more about Pete’s workshop here: https://www.kingsplace.co.uk/whats-on/classical/classically-black-full-day-pass/

Catch up on the other episodes:

Rebeca Omordia: https://pod.fo/e/6115c2

Victoria Oruwari: https://pod.fo/e/64e57b

Berginald Rash: https://pod.fo/e/67c1f6

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About Pete Letanka

Pete Letanka is a critically acclaimed jazz pianist, educator, composer and presenter. After graduating from Leeds Conservatoire, he formed the Pete Letanka Trio and was signed to the award-winning label Zephyr Records, who released his debut album, "Afrostocracy", to critical acclaim. He has performed at Ronnie Scott's Jazz Club, the Barbican Centre and the Queen Elizabeth Hall, and works extensively in music education, leading creative music projects across the UK and in South Africa, India, Lebanon, Spain and Portugal.

Learn more: https://www.peteletanka.com/

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About Classically Black

Now in its third year, Classically Black is a festival redefining what classical music looks and sounds like today.

The programme celebrates and elevates Black and global majority musicians and composers in classical music, past and present. Curated by Black Lives in Music, Classically Black 2026 returns to Kings Place, London on Saturday 10 October 2026.

Learn more about Black Lives in Music: https://blim.org.uk/

Follow Black Lives in Music on Instagram: https://instagram.com/BlackLivesinMusic

Purchase tickets for Classically Black: https://www.kingsplace.co.uk/whats-on/black-lives-in-music-presents-classically-black/

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Connect with Made for Us

• Show notes and transcripts: https://made-for-us.captivate.fm/
• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/madeforuspodcast
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/madeforuspodcast/

I said to my parents, why did you put up with the fights every night about practice? And what they said is that you couldn't walk past the piano without wanting to play it. You were clearly as a kid obsessed with it.

This is Made for Us, I'm Tosin Sulaiman. It's the final episode in our mini-series with Classically Black on the artists redefining what classical music looks and sounds like today. This week I'll be speaking with Pete Letanka, a jazz pianist, educator, composer, and presenter. Pete has performed at Ronnie Scott's Jazz Club, the Barbican Center, and the Queen Elizabeth Hall, and he works extensively in music education, leading projects across the UK and around the world.

In this episode, Pete tells me about his struggles to learn classical music as a child, when he knew he was a jazz musician at heart. We discuss his work in music education and what surprised him the most about leading workshops with school children. Pete's also been thinking a lot about music history and the composers who've been edited out of the history books, and you'll hear him talk about his work championing these hidden figures. Here's our conversation.

So I'm Pete Letanka and I'm a jazz musician and composer and presenter and educator. And I've spent the last thirty years sort of yeah, having a career that is moving between all of those four worlds.

Understand you started learning the piano when you were around five years old.

Yes, so my dad, who is South African, was very keen for all of his three children to have music. So the kind of rule in our house is I think you have to get up to grade five before you could give up. So it was so I started having a classical training from the age of five and and I struggled massively with classical music. And so it was it's so weird that it's my career because my childhood was basically battling my parents about piano practice.

What was the struggle?

The struggle was I think two things, or several things. I wasn't moved by the music. I wasn't moved by the European classical music I had to do. I loved twentieth century harmony. I loved the kind of the maths of non-European rhythms, of syncopation. I love the sort of tightrope walk of improvisation. So I think in my heart I was a jazz musician from the word go, but back in those days, you couldn't, to learn the piano, you had to sort of go through the classical system. And so I was always struggling with it and had this tangle of feelings of it, because it moved me, but yeah, it was just a constant struggle. It didn't feel like home to me.

So you were trained classically, but you love jazz. How did you discover jazz in the first place?

It was always playing at home. I think my mum would help me get up for school in the mornings by putting on Fat Swallow records, Scott Joplin, and these old scratchy jazz records. So I sort of got that. But also, you know, my dad was from South Africa. He was exiled from South Africa. He couldn't go back. My father was a black South African, he married a white English woman. So they were considered non-desirables by the South African government. So we couldn't go as a family there. And the kind of way of keeping his South African heritage alive was just bringing this kind of South African community who had also escaped South Africa in exile to our house. And he was at school with extraordinary musicians, Hugh Masakela, the incredible jazz trumpeter. Well, they were at school together. So they would, I would go to bed as a kid listening to Hugh play the cornet.

And dad playing the piano and this would kind of come up. That's why that was my lullaby. So I'd go to sleep to it. So it was seeped into me from a very early age.

Oh wow. And which other musicians apart from Hugh Masakela?

Miriam Makeba was there. I mean, that wasn't a musical school that he was at, but also the national instrument of South Africa is the choir, right? So again, because they couldn't go home, this sort of South African community that found itself in England in the sort of late 60s and 70s, their way of accessing home and their language and their culture was to sing. That extraordinary thing that so many South Africans do, where they suddenly break into the most complex harmony and they just know how to do it.

So I think, you know, it always had a slight jazzy flavour to it, but I think it was all around me. I couldn't, I couldn't resist it.

And so when you had your dad's friends visiting your home, like did you realize how important and and legendary these people were?

No, I mean it was really weird. I think, you know, my dad was a doctor, so we had to be this kind of respectable family. But Hugh Mussakello would come and just smoke weed the whole time. So the whole house would stink of cannabis. And as a result, I wasn't able to have my friends over to play for a a week until that until the air had cleared. So it was awesome having him. As I say, I love going to sleep with the music. But it also meant I wasn't able to have my friends over to play for a week until our house became respectful again.

Did your dad ever go back to South Africa? And did you go back with him after the end of apartheid?

Yes. So the first time, you know, it was illegal for us to travel there until sort of nineteen ninety one or so. And that was the first time I went. I was about sixteen then. So it was the first time meeting my uncle and aunt. Sadly, my grandparents died before I could meet them. But that was a strange thing. And when my father's parents died, he went home to sort of bury them. But it was because he was by the South African government of the time considered a non-desirable, you know, he was being basically followed by the secret police. And I mean his story of trying to get back to the airport, trying to get out of Johannesburg. And like he was he said he was one house in front of the police. He was kind of racing around trying to say goodbye to family and friends, and the police were one house behind him, and he managed to get to the airport and out. It was a really shocking time.

So going back to learning the piano, you said that you struggled with kind of connecting with classical music, but were you able to learn jazz or did you have to like get to grade five in classical music and then you could pursue the jazz? Like how did that all happen?

Well, do you know what? First of all, just to clear up what I've said, or to contradict myself, is that that was my father's side, I think, that sort of jazz thing. I mean, he was also, he was obsessed with Bach. So he wasn't pushing the jazz in any way. He was a complete bach head. But it was my my mother, my maternal grandmother, was a woman called Fidelity Cranbrook, and she started up the opera festival with Benjamin Britten. So as much as I kind of say like I was just pulled to jazz. I also grew up listening to all these Britten operas. And I was obsessed with them. I was as obsessed with them as I was by listening to, you know, Count Baie, Miles Davis, and Duke Ellington, was listening to Benjamin Britten . So it was like a real mix. I think my whole life has been this kind of mixture of music. But also just to go answer your question about the graded system.

When I said to my parents, why did you put up with the fights every night about practice? And what they said is that you couldn't walk past the piano without wanting to play it. You were clearly, as a kid, obsessed with it. But there were no other ways in. And my piano teacher always used to say to You can't have your cake and eat it. You've got to know when to tuck your thumb under. You've got to understand the harmony. You've got to understand this. You can't just become a jazz musician. And I really got it, but it was just a struggle. And so, you know, I write for ABRSM and different exam boards. And what I love is giving kids like me the chance to be able to master the instrument, but not just through European classical music, but through different styles. And that's been a real joy for me.

So you compose music that kids play in the exams?

Yes. So I think this year I'm on the ABRSM grade two syllabus and I've done sort of collaborations with jazz pianist Nikki Isles as well

Also, I wanted to ask about reading music. What was your relationship like with actually reading music?

Impossible. I mean, I just it's…I can't really. And that I think again was part of that struggle of trying to learn classical music. Was I just it was a constant battle. I was faking it, I was blagging it, I was learning it by ear. And because I couldn't read music, I saw you know, and I was improvising a lot. I was always developing my own music just by ear. And reading music has been a constant struggle for me.

I don't know whether I'm musically dyslexic. It does seem to be a thing. My son is dyslexic with text. I'm not dyslexic with text. But when he describes what it's like, that the letters spin off the page, like this kind of being overwhelmed, feeling overwhelmed by too much data, too much information. Something resonates in me when he talks about that. Because I just think that's exactly what I feel like when I've got music placed in front of me. I'm trying to work it out note by note in the way that he's trying work out words letter by letter. And I can't see the shape of it and he can't see the shape of words. So I don't know whether there is a form of musical dyslexia and or whether I was just so stubborn because I was playing by ear from a very early age that I couldn't be bothered to learn any other way.

Right. You sort of trained your brain to to learn in a particular way.

Yeah. And I think again, that that thing of dyslexia where you're just trying to find workarounds. And it's exhausting because it's easiest and quickest and more efficient to go in a straight line. Right. But I feel like I didn't have access, I didn't have a straight line with reading music. So I've had to find ways around through ear training, through improvisation, through composing. And yes, it's not a straight line, but I've so loved this curly journey that I've been on.

I love that you're now composing music for music exams when you had the struggle as a kid. Do you sometimes look back and kinda think, Oh, that's you know, this is so ironic?

It's mad. I mean, I remember my one exam. Again, I was thirteen or something, twelve, thirteen, geeky teenager, and murdering this piece that they'd given me to sight read. My piano teacher had just said, listen, buddy, you've just got to get to the end. They give you a point if you just get to the end. So just don't stop. Just keep playing. So I literally, you know, they give you a couple of minutes to prepare. And that a minute took me to kind of get halfway through the first bar, which I nailed. And then I was and then I was on my own.

And I just remember just murdering this piece and going on and on and on. And then the examiner behind me, some old guy, and he just snorted, he laughed. And I took my hands to the keys and I sort of looked round like, wow, dude. And he looked back as if to say, I'm so sorry. But then we both started laughing because it was so clear that I was just like, I was a disaster. So to be writing, to be on the other side of the desk is bizarre to me. Yeah.

So you did actually end up studying music. Tell us about that journey.

Yeah, so when I was probably sixteen, I finally I I said goodbye to my piano teacher. She was brilliant. And I found a jazz piano teacher and everything fell into place. And I remember driving home from a lesson and sort of like y calling out, shouting, yelping, rejoicing, because I'd cracked it, because I finally found a way that I could learn, which was through chord symbols. And the chord symbols gave me the freedom I loved with ear training and an understanding of sort of functional harmony, but also it reduced the amount of information I had to learn. So suddenly I'm I'm having less information, but a ton more creativity, and then able to work that in a musically satisfying way. It was a game changer.

And so I understand you studied at Leeds College of Music and then you won a scholarship to study in the US.

That's right. Leeds Conservatoire, as it's now called. And it was amazing. Yeah, I mean, to go to America, I worked under an extraordinary jazz pianist called Mark Polishuk, who sort of he informed every part of me, not just as a musician, but as a kind of as a guide to life, really. And I quote him and think about his words every day of my sort of professional life. Yeah, it was extraordinary to spend a year under his incredible guidance.

What are some of your favourite quotes from him?

Well, I remember just sort of every week we'd we'd do performances in the sort of hall there at the music college in in Maine. And I remember messing up in one of the pieces, the first couple of bars. And afterwards him sitting me down and saying, you know, what happened? And I was like, Oh, you know, I didn't do as well. And he said, Do you know what I saw? He said, I saw you spend a whole forty minute of your concert.

Just thinking about the mistake you made in the first piece. And that to me was the least interesting thing you had to do that day. Your mistake was the least interesting thing you did. And he said you spent your whole time thinking about it. And that idea of was so freeing to me. That it's not that you dismiss your mistakes and you don't give yourself the opportunity to learn from it. But if you're just polishing the mistake, you're missing so many other extraordinary more interesting, engaging things that you could be polishing.

Such a a great way to reframe it and I think a lot of musicians just struggle with that, especially classical musicians.

Yeah, and I think as a jazz musician, there's so much more forgiveness there. Because I mean, you know, Duke Ellington said there are no wrong notes in jazz, right? And that that gives you so much permission. It doesn't mean that you're gonna make it because I think there are notes that you didn't intend to play, which is a nicer way of thinking it than wrong notes. But when I'm playing with my trio and there is a note that I hit that I wasn't intending to play, I then polish that up.

The challenge for me musically is to see if I can be the alchemist that spins that lead into gold in front of a live audience while it's happening. I mean, that I find so exciting. So weirdly I find myself welcoming the notes I didn't intend to play, because it gives me material. But of course, as a classical musician, when you're trying to recreate the words that have been agonized over by these, you know, great composers, you need to honor what their intention was. So it's, it's different.

Yeah. You used the word tightrope earlier and I guess it's a different kind of tightrope. It's like there's a tightrope in jazz and there's the tightrope in classical music of not getting it wrong.

Yeah. And do you know that tightrope, there are so many of them. And I think switching from a classical training to a jazz training. So you know, ten year classical training where my piano teacher used to, you know, make my scales so even. She used to balance ten pence or tuppence, whatever, on the back of my hand. And if it fell off 'cause my technique was getting jerky, she'd whack me with a ruler, right? I mean, really. That was how they thought it was uh a good way to learn in the late seventies.

And then it was so weird to go to then jazz, you know, to go to Leeds Conservatoire and them saying, It's so boring the way you're playing. This jazz music is folk music. You're trying to recreate American folk music and the way you're playing it with every note even, it sounds like you're it doesn't work. It's like you're speaking French with a German accent. You've got to match the two. So it was really interesting having spent ten years learning how to play my scales evenly and then another ten years learning how to play them unevenly. Yeah.

And so when you came back to the UK from the States, what changed? How did your career take off from there?

Well, I think the way that jazz, it was interesting because I was in America at the same time as friends of mine who were classical musicians. And we both and they'd been studying classical music in England and they found the American approach so different. And I found the American approach also so different. I'm not explaining it very well, but the classical musicians said that they went, their training in England with classical music had been very much an emphasis on feeling and the technique was there, of course, but it was really about trying to get the feeling of it and being playful with it. And they said in America it was all just about getting your technique right. This is no nonsense. You've got to and there was a different sort of approach to it. It was a much more cerebral approach rather than a soulful approach. And I found the opposite with jazz that in England, it was very much numbers.

It was like number crunching. Get your, learn your core scale relationships. Learn this vocabulary in every key. Learn all these pieces. And you know, it was just number crunching. And then again, this pianist, this g my teacher, I'd say to him, What scales can I play over this set of chord changes? And he's like, Why are you talking like that? He said, This is dance music. If nobody's tapping their foot, you're dead in the water. He said, this is not data. This is not number crunching. This is about feeling. And so we had the so it was quite interesting the way that yeah jazz was taught in America. And I think both styles were so useful to have because, you know, you can't just say to a painter, use your inspiration and you'll work out how to do shade or hands or perspective and proportion or whatever the challenges of fine art is. But I needed that discipline. I the leads taught me the equivalent of how to draw hands. They taught me how to blend colors. And but America taught me to access my gut, my soul, and my heart.

And was it when you came back to the UK that you formed your trio?

And then I came back and I formed my trio. And it was interesting hearing so many people. And I and I and and and you know, and all my really dear friends who are extraordinary musicians, but I was so aware of hearing the difference in us. And I don't know, there was a I don't know, it sounds like I'm being mean about my friends. It's not that. It's I think for me it was just all about getting this music to swing. That was the most important thing. And I would hit wrong notes. My technique wasn't so good.

But I really needed to get that music to swing and that served me so well. And I ended up getting signed with Zephyr Records and recorded, you know, albums with Zephyr Records. So that American time was extraordinary. And then I yeah, I became a professional musician when I was twenty-one or twenty-two.

I mean, that's really young. And, you know, recording your first album at such an early stage in your career, is that something that you had imagined would happen?

No, and I think I was dreading it. And I sat on it. Zephyr contacted me. I'd done another album as a side man on another Zephyr album. And the head of Zephyr Records, man called John Bune, had contacted me and said we'd like to record you. And I kept saying I'm not ready. And then I left it for a year, just feeling I wasn't ready. And then, you know, I think after a year someone could say, You you know, that feeling is you're never gonna feel ready. You just gotta do it. And and I suddenly thought, okay.

And I think again, you know, I think it is i i I don't know whether this works. I don't know whether it works with classical musicians. I feel very much like, you know, I'm still I'm still learning. I'm still not ready. I think recording music and releasing music, half of the skill is learning to live with what you recorded and released.

I mean, do you go back and listen to your albums and like how do you feel when when you go back and listen to something that you recorded decades ago?

Yeah, toe curling. Just toe curling. I mean I can't, it makes me so tense I can't listen to it. And I keep thinking, ah, you know, I'll get it, that's what a twenty six year old sounds like. That was me at twenty six and I still I just I find it I find it so hard to listen to. And maybe it takes a bit longer. May I dunno. I still find it completely toe curling. But, you know, it's what makes me want to get up every day and sit at the piano and just get better.

And I'm curious how as an educator that has helped you get better as a musician. You know, I know that education is is a big passion of yours and you've worked with young people all over the UK and also in India, South Africa. What appealed to you about music education?

The first part it was, this was 1997, I think, and I started getting into music education. And at the beginning it was just such a better way of making money. Because I was doing sort of 40 pound gigs in the back rooms of dodgy pubs. And and then suddenly someone was paying me five times that amount to spend a day going into school. So at first it was completely financial, but what was interesting was realizing how completely musically satisfying it was.

And that thing of playing with, you know, non-professional musicians. There's still you find common ground. And I was, I was never willing to sort of lower where I got to. I I didn't want to meet like that. So I went in absolutely with everything that I'd learned from my training and wanted them to meet me. I wanted them to come up. I wanted them to come up. I didn't want to go down. And I was amazed that they could.

That they did and that they could. And still I find that fascinating. That I work across the world with a mixture of professionals and non-professionals. Sometimes I'm working in prisons, sometimes I'm working in primary school, sometimes I'm working with opera houses or orchestras. And it's for me, I find such common ground, which I just found completely inspiring and surprising.

Is there a particular example that comes to mind? Maybe something that you've done recently where you felt like you had a a connection with your students?

I mean, it's so weird because it happens the whole time. I think my life is so sort of my my work is so fragmented in the most satisfying way. And I think I was working in a primary school in the morning and then in the evening I was doing a gig at Ronnie Scott's. And what surprised me that the feeling of with, you know, a class of thirty primary school kids and, you know, they're we're working with bongos which are split apart. We're working with xylophones that most of the teeth have fallen out. You know, we're working with whatever I can find in the dusty cupboard. But it felt exactly the same playing with the most inspiring musicians at Ronnie Scott's. It it genuinely was the same feeling. I couldn't distinguish it. And that I find fascinating. I don't know how that works, but it works.

And I think that's what's been one of the biggest surprises and joys of my work in education is how powerful music is, and how you can find common ground between people with a lifetime's worth of experience and people who have just picked up the instrument for the first time. There is something deeply human and there's a strong connection. And I'm quite cynical about things. I don't think I'm some sort of like Ernest Hippie with all this stuff. I'm very I feel very practical about it. And thus it surprises me even more. There's something too deep about it, that you find that connection in music. It's been the biggest surprise of my life.

And for the kids themselves, like what is it that you want the young people to come away with?

Well, do you know what? Some people often say to me, the thousands, tens of thousands of schools that I've worked in, and educational institutions really that I've worked in, are you finding really interesting musicians? And I'm always, again, slightly baffled by it because for me, my job isn't to sort of to stay with one musician and develop them. That's not what I'm in it for. What I'm really interested in is what music does to people's confidence. So what I'm hoping is

To give people confidence so that they can go out into the world and have a better shot of achieving their dreams. Because I think confidence opens so many doors and greases so many wheels. And that thing of just working with people and them them exceeding their expectations as well as mine. It's confidence. And it spills over like water in an ice tray. You get it in music, and then you want to get that confidence in another part of your life. If you're in school, you want to get it in a maths lesson. If you're at work, you want to get it in the boardroom.

Do you know what mean? I think that confidence is addictive. And I'm always hoping that music sparks that confidence.

Hm. And is that what it gave you? Do you feel like that's where you get your confidence?

No. Well, I don't think so because I'm always edgy about it. I'm always on the back foot. I never feel confident going into anything. Like I said, I'm not, I don't feel ready. I'm, it is a life's work for me. So it doesn't tick that confidence box. Yeah, I always say it's like a puzzle that I'm never gonna complete, which is what keeps me coming back to it. But I think what music has given to me is just connection. I think that thing of my parents and the way that they connected in ways that people didn't think

You know, they were forbidden to go from my father's country. It was such a sort of, it was such an interesting marriage because they they broke the law. They broke the South African law. They were front page news when they got married because in 1963 there was this black South African marrying. And what I didn't say, but my mother is this English aristocrat. So she's got a title. So what was interesting for the world press was as people were realizing the horrors of of apartheid system in South Africa.

There was this black South African marrying the English daughter of a peer. And I think my whole life is about finding connections between different places, finding handshakes in unexpected places. That's really what music is for me.

And I know that another thing that you try to teach young people about is, you know, some of the composers that have been forgotten by history, I guess you could say. Yeah.

I'm really interested in the Chevalier de Saint-George, Joseph Bologna. And I did a project where I took, I think, 300 ch young children from different primary schools across South London, came to the Royal Festival Hall, I think, or maybe it was uh Queen Elizabeth Hall, one of those South Bank Centre concert halls. And they'd written, I'd helped them write pieces about the Chevalier. And when I was telling them about him and this extraordinary life and how he was like whatever, he was like Taylor Swift or he was like Messi. He was one of those kind of figures that everybody talked about and knew and people copied and were inspired by, and what a kind of remarkable figure that he was, and that he'd been edited out of history because of the colour of his skin. There was this one seven-year-old kid. And I remember she put her hand up indignantly and just said, Who gave anyone the right to tear out a page out of our history book? And I was like, What what history book?

And she said, The history book that belongs to every single person who's ever walked this earth. And I just thought that was so extraordinary. This kind of this idea that there is this history book that we all share, just a human history book, and somebody along the line because of politics, because of an ideology, because of a story, shapes what happened, shapes the truth, shapes the past. And I just thought there was something so extraordinary about that question. And it's led to so many.

I've just, you I've last weekend the BBC Concert Orchestra were recording my composition Return to History, which is all my kind of answer for this kid, which is I'm gonna help you return this person to history. Start conversations about him, let the world know about him. And yeah, so it's a it's a real it's a really big thing for me.

And so for people who haven't heard of Chevalier Disson George, can you tell us a little bit more about him? Like what area were we talking about?

So he was born in 1745 on the island of Guadeloupe. He was the son of a French plantation owner and an enslaved woman from Senegal. And so rare for that time his the father recognized and gave his son his name. In that dark time of transatlantic slave trade and children that were born in these hideous m ways often would be rejected by the father. But this father named this son and gave him his name and

When there's the Haitian slave revolt in the neighboring island, of course, it just got even it got even more brutal and more violent as a way of kind of trying to dissuade enslaved people from rebelling more. And he went back to France and took with him his wife, and took with him this enslaved woman from Senegal and his son. And he was enrolled in Paris's fanciest school. And everything this kid turned his hand to, he excelled at. And as he grew up, they said he rode like a centaur.

You couldn't work out where the horse ended and the human began. They were so one. He used to skate across the River Seine in Paris. When the river was running and had unfrozen, he'd swim one armed across it because he was building up the muscles because he was a fencer. And he was the best fencer in France, which meant you were the best fencer in the world. And he took up the violin and he was this extraordinary musician, not only as an instrumentalist, but also as a composer. And

Was a contemporary of Mozart's, was 10 years senior to Mozart. Mozart was so intimidated by him that he would run out of the room whenever he was there. And he had, he taught Marie Antoinette the piano. People sometimes speculate whether they had a more than a another kind of relationship, not just a professional one. He ran these orchestras in Paris. He was this extraordinary person. John Adam, I think the second or third president of the United States of America, said he's the most remarkable man in Europe.

King George V invited him to England. He sat in on Parliament and watched William Wilberforce in a debate on slavery. George, the the King of England was so impressed by him, had his portrait painted. He was this superstar, was beautiful, looked like sort of Lenny Kravitz back in the day. And he was an extraordinary person. And musicologists say that, you know, his music was so influential to Mozart amongst everybody else. String quartet writing, changed the way people approach string quartet writing. You know, Mozart, he took, copied, basically, without putting too fine a point on it, huge amounts of his work and claimed it as his own. It's an extraordinary story and one that I feel like we're being cheated of because, as this girl would say, you know, of politics, of stories, of narratives, and not the truth. That feels life's too short to be treated of that.

So what happened? I mean, w as you were telling this story, I was just thinking, why isn't he more known?

I think I came across it simply because people had often I'd heard them talk about the Black Mozart. And I was interested in this. But the more I find out about him, the more I realize, or it feels like, rather than him being called the Black Mozart, Mozart should really be being called the white Chevalier de Saint-Georges. And you know, it's I don't want, I’m being facetious, I'm not pitting greats against greats, but the idea of yeah, the idea of tying our one arm behind our back as listeners, as an audience. It just, it's dangerous. It's really I think it's dangerous, as well as just as I say, you're you're being cheated.

So you're gonna be speaking at Classically Black, which is taking place in October at at King's Place. I don't know if this is gonna be part of what you're talking about, but yeah, I I'm curious, could you sort of give us a little bit of a teaser of like what we can expect?

Well, okay, so last year at Classic Libre, I worked with an amazing string quartet made up of players from the Chinekay Orchestra. And we used Chevalier de Saint George's string quartets as a starting point for composition with a group of twenty or so teenagers from Across the Mist, which is Music and Secondary Schools Trust. And I'd met them for sort of two mornings, I think, in North London at a school, and we spent sort of six hours, I guess, across these two weekends.

writing music inspired by the Chevalier's music. And then we had the string quartet play it. And then it was again, it was this musical handshake. So this year I wanted to do something different. And I think just on the back of last summer and seeing all the flags that were up and down. I lived just outside Luton. I don't know, across the country really, as we know, these flags that come up, which don't feel it's so hard to do it. I feel more and more apolitical. But those flags are loaded. They're loaded.

And I'm I was really thinking about patriotism and what that looks like. And when I see that flag as a half South African man, it makes me cautious, it makes me worried because of racism, but also because of this country that it's my country. Yeah, I've got this South African thing, but I've been brought up in this country. And the idea of the fabric of this country being pulled apart again by politics, by stories, by ideologies. I just think it's really dangerous. So

I'm really interested in exploring that this year. And so we're starting off as our starting point. This year is going to be I vow to be my country. I mean, it's hard to talk to you about it because I don't know what's going to happen because that's the meat of it is going to happen when I meet these young people from the mist from the music and secondary schools trust. But what I'm bringing to the table is I want to start off with da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da. That old hymn, the Jupiter from you know, the good stuff from Holst's Jupiter and

I want to see how we think about patriotism. A lot of the people who I'm going to be having in that room, these young people, are people of colour, different colours. And I want to see what they all think about that. Some of them are first generation, second generation, migrant parents. I mean, we all are really in this island. So like even if they're, you know, I don't know. I'm I'm just curious to see what patriotism means to these young people.

You talked about the piece that you composed recently called Return to History. What's the story that you wanted to tell with that?

I wanted that again to be an exploration. I mean, practically, this is a piece that's going to be published by Trinity. I wrote it for sort of grade four to six level orchestras, but it's been recorded twice by the BBC Symphony Orchestra and then again by the BBC Concert Orchestra. And so it's kinda, you know, it it is for everybody. What I'm hoping it sparks is this idea of the dangers, the risks and rewards of editing history.

Yeah, I can see it's lovely to have a kind of story. I can see that you can celebrate people that you feel like, that that look like you maybe, uh whatever the reasons people want to give into nationalism and all of that stuff. What I went in for this piece to do was to be able to spark new ideas, was to be able to like a rallying call, a call to action for us all to return to history, to see who else has been edited out. Because of course we know

The Chevalier de Saint-Georges is not alone. There are lots of hidden figures. And who else has been sidelined because of their gender, sexuality, colour? All of these ideas. The idea of these kind of voices rising from the sea is really what I wanted to convey in that piece.

And how can people listen to that piece?

Well, funnily enough, it's gonna be broadcast on BBC Radio 3 in October for Black History Month on Friday night is music night. So I think it's gonna be broadcast. This is an amazing concert at the Snake Maltings, with music by extraordinary composers, Julian Joseph, Iana Whitter Johnson. There was some Samuel Coleridge Taylor. There were I mean just extraordinary music by living and and past composers. So it'll be it opens that concert and I think it's gonna be broadcast on Friday, the sixteenth of October, but the BBC haven't released their schedule yet.

Right. Okay. We'll look out for that.. What next for you? I'm curious what other projects you have in the pipeline.

Yeah, so next month I'm returning to Kenya where I've been working with an extraordinary group called the Ghetto Classics, which is an orchestra, a music school that was built on the side of Kenya's largest waste dump. And was started by this incredibly charismatic, amazing, inspirational Kenyan woman who was trying to find a place for the young people in Kenya to be safe. Not a musician herself, but enjoyed singing, so wanted to start up a music school.

So I went there last year to do a sort of trailer for a Netflix documentary. And we sort of did a proof of concept for Netflix. And I'm going in next month to sort of continue that work, which is really exciting. And again, it's a sort of handshake. That's yeah, the handshake between European classical music, what happens when that meets traditional Kenyan music, and then what happens again when it develops into modern Kenyan music, which is slightly hip-hoppy, slightly kind of, you know, but it's got a very American influence but with a real Kenyan style. And I'm curious to see again what happens when you mix those sound whales. So that's coming up in November.

Well, I hope you put something on social media so we can all take a look. I'd love to hear what that sounds like as well. Well, Pete, thank you so much for coming on the show. I really enjoyed this conversation.

Thank you, it's been a real pleasure.

Thank you to Pete Letanka. Pete will be leading a young musician's workshop at Classically Back, and that's on the 10th of October at King's Place in London. I've included links in the episode description if you'd like to learn more. You'll also find links to the other episodes in this miniseries in case you missed them. If someone came to mind while you were listening, send them a text to let them know about this podcast. And be sure to subscribe to the show to get notified of new episodes.

This series was produced and edited by me, Tosin Sulaiman, with audio engineering by Justin Orive. Special thanks to Roger Wilson and to Olivia Davis from Black Lives in Music. Thank you for joining me on Made for Us. See you next time.