Michael Reckord, Gleaner Writer

This is part one of a feature on Barbara Lloyd's. See part two next week.

Under her mother's tutelage, Barbara Lloyd had already been studying music for six years when, at 11, she decided she wanted to be a professional musician.

So, at 14, she looked forward to further studies with the renowned music teacher, Kathleen Hickling, and to taking her music to another level. After the successful audition, she acquiesced when Hickling told her, "Now, you must be like putty in my hands."

Years later, with many music exams and performances behind her and well on the road to being the respected musician she has become, a grateful Lloyd told Hickling, "You gave me my life." In a recent interview, The Sunday Gleaner asked Lloyd, a lecturer in music at Edna Manley College of the Visual and Performing Arts (EMC), what she meant by the statement. Her reply was:

"I was expressing my appreciation of her having enable me, by her teaching expertise, to win the Associated Board of the Royal Schools of Music (ABRSM) Scholarship at age 18. Through them, I attained my professional training and qualifications and have earned my living."

Music lessons

While taking music lessons with Hickling, Lloyd was attending Convent of Mercy Academy, Alpha. She graduated in 1960 after five years, moving from Third to Sixth Form. One of the four subjects (plus the General Paper) she passed in the Cambridge Higher School Certificate Examination was Music. She gained a distinction in that subject, as well as in French.

Under Hickling's tutoring, Lloyd passed Grade 8 Piano with distinction at age 15, placing first in that grade in Jamaica. In 1961, she gained the licentiate of the Royal Schools of Music Diploma in Piano Performing, placing first in Jamaica in that exam as well as in the organ and musicianship exams. The ABRSM Scholarship for higher studies at the Royal College of Music, London, which she won enabled her to study at the college from 1962 to 1965. She took piano as first instrument (with Professor Cyril Smith), and organ as second instrument (with Professor Richard Latham), and graduated with the Associate of the Royal College of Music Diploma in piano teaching (in 1963), and the Graduate obtained the Royal School of Music degree (in 1965).

From England, she went on to post-graduate studies in piano performance, first in Paris, with a scholarship from the French Government, from 1967 to 1968, then at the Vienna Conservatory, Austria, from 1972 to 1973.

Fulfilment

Lloyd, a teacher of music at several preparatory and high schools since 1966, was asked in October 1989 to join the Faculty of the Jamaica School of Music, Cultural Training Centre (now the EMC). She was appointed a senior lecturer there in January 1990. The 20 years she has spent teaching at the institution, Lloyd said, have been "the most fulfilling" of her professional life. Expanding on the statement, she explained:

"Not only have I witnessed many students whom I taught graduate as professional musicians and improved my pedagogical methodology, but also my musical horizons have been widened - about, for instance, Jamaican folk music."

Where did her interest in music begin?

"I was born loving music," declared Lloyd, giving as evidence an anecdote her mother told her about regular visits to their home by an accomplished pianist. Lloyd was two at the time, but she would always appear entranced at the pianist's playing. One day, commenting on Lloyd's interest, the musician said, "This child is going to be a musician." Lloyd said that one of her earliest happy memories of music was falling asleep at night to the sound of her mother playing Chopin's waltzes. "Coincidentally, Chopin has always been my favourite piano composer," she added.

Lloyd has tremendous faith in the power of classical music and is convinced that it can be of benefit to all strata of Jamaican society. She states: "The refining effect of musical studies on the human character is well understood by intellectual persons. In fact, not only do children who take music lessons really perform better in school work than those who do not, but they develop into more disciplined-than-normal adults.

Music and religion

She continued: "If all school-children were exposed to classical music, not only in music appreciation classes, but to the regimented study and playing of an instrument such as the recorder, I dare to state that our murder and general crime rate would fall."

In view of this position, it is not surprising that Lloyd makes a connection between music and religion.

"My life is music, under religion," she declares, and is of the opinion that music and religion are "inextricably bound". Though she acknowledges that many fine musicians are not believers, she thinks that the great composers were, in her phrase, "touched by the hand of God".

"For me," Lloyd says, "music is one of the strongest links in life to God and spirituality. When I listen to very beautiful music, I give the glory to God, who created music."