Cambridgeshire musician's plan to help struggling musicians

Get Musicians Working is a new, UK-wide project that provides work opportunities and financial support to professional musicians affected by the pandemic.

The scheme – whose first official patron is the singer-songwriter tenor, Jamie Lonsdale – was founded by Cambridgeshire-based conductor, pianist and record producer, Robert Emery, to encourage musicians to stay in the arts by creating digital content to inspire young and beginner musicians in exchange for grants.

Robert says: “After the first lockdown, I decided to try and help out my fellow musicians and create a charitable foundation to support them, to help musicians in the music industry and to help them keep the faith – and hopefully help inspire them to realise that their jobs are viable.”

Robert insists that musicians don’t want handouts, they just want to be able to work: “So what we’ve tried to do is give them a grant and, in return, we hope that they will help us out by helping with music education.

“So we’ve started up a website called teds-list.com, an educational website where the musicians hopefully will write content which is geared towards budding young musicians who want some reliable, honest, well-written, world-class advice.”

Robert adds: “Get Musicians Working isn’t going to save lives. It isn’t going to find a treatment for cancer, but during this period of enforced closure for the entertainment industry, it will help keep musicians in the career they’ve trained their whole life for.”

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