Breaking the Wall

Meet Lloyd Coleman.

He's 19 years old and comes from Bridgend.

He's on Facebook and Twitter and likes watching Formula One racing.

But Lloyd's different too.

Well, he's going to be another Mozart, isn't he?

Lloyd's a gifted musician

who's studying at the Royal Academy of Music in London.

He conducts as well. But most of all he wants to be a composer.

It's a big ambition for anyone.

And for Lloyd, it's even greater.

He's partially sighted and has severe hearing loss in both ears.

But he's not the first composer with problems.

Think of poor old Beethoven, who was completely deaf.

His inner ear was perfect.

He's basically a genius.

On top of that, he's disabled but he doesn't use that.

It doesn't hinder the creativity he comes out with.

The music he writes might not be to everybody's taste...

I don't think it's going to end up in the charts.

..but Lloyd's determined to prove he can make it as a top composer.

My life so far has been about my music.

So this is a chance for me to prove myself musically.

Lloyd has been commissioned to write a 30 minute orchestral piece

called Breaking The Wall. He wants it to inspire anybody

who's battled through physical difficulties

to reach their goals.

If he does a good job, it will be played

by the BBC National Orchestra of Wales

in a live concert performance.

But first, he has to write it.

Writing for orchestra is always a challenge

and the blank page is always terrifying.

We've been following Lloyd for the past year

to see how he coped with this massive musical challenge

and find out whether or not he can break through

his own barriers to success.

The Royal Academy of Music in London

is Britain's oldest conservatoire.

Previous students include Sir Simon Rattle,

Annie Lennox and Sir Elton John.

But one first year composition student from Wales

has something most of his classmates would kill for.

Lloyd Coleman has a dream commission.

the chance to write a piece for full orchestra.

And today he's facing a very demanding audience.

He's showing some early sketches of the piece

to his composition tutor, Gary Carpenter.

HE PLAYS PIANO

# Dee, da, da, da, da. #

Yeah, yeah.

To tell you the truth, I think the low B and the low C

-make quite a big difference to the texture of that.

-They do.

Over the next year or so, Lloyd will show every stage

of Breaking The Wall to Gary, who is a composer himself.

-I mean, this is a canon by version, right?

-Yeah.

If he's not convinced by the piece, it's unlikely the musicians

of the BBC National Orchestra of Wales will be either.

Hmm.

'The relationship you form'

with your first steady tutor at the Academy

is the most important one, really.

They are obviously your main guiding light

throughout your time studying composition.

Forget that for a minute. That bar is a repetition of that one.

So it's just the same bar twice.

-Oh, no. It changes there.

-Yeah.

-I wouldn't dare repeat the same bar twice, Gary.

-Perfect.

May 1992 and there's a new baby in Bridgend.

Lloyd was born with a mop of white hair, which was very unusual.

So he was literally taken around the maternity ward

being shown off with this mop of white hair.

It was only when he went for his eight week check.

He wasn't following the finger,

the finger test over their eyes.

He wasn't following them as he should.

He was given his first pair of glasses at five months.

He has never, ever removed his glasses.

From the first time he was given a pair of glasses,

they've remained on his head.

As Lloyd started to grow, life returned to normal.

But Julie knew something wasn't right.

There was something there, a niggle at the back.

I couldn't put my finger on it

and I thought there's more to Lloyd than just his visual impairment.

Sometimes he wouldn't respond if his name was called.

Or if he had his back to us as a baby,

there was very little response. He had all the tests.

He passed them all

and it was only just before starting school

that he was referred

to the audiology department

and diagnosed with severe hearing loss in both ears.

Whatever the cause of his deafness,

Lloyd quickly got used to wearing hearing aids in both ears.

There was also a new and very interesting toy in his life.

-Actually, can you realise any of that on the piano?

-Yeah.

-Can I hear it?

-Yeah.

'You're basically trying to find your own voice,

'where you fit in the world.

'So the composition teaching here is very much geared towards

'the student being able to find their own way of saying things.

'The composition course at the Academy,'

to put it simply , it is a process of self-discovery.

Lloyd began to discover he could be a composer

when he started at school.

Well, when he started in Litchard Infant School at the age of...

What was it? Four and a half.

This white-haired little boy coming to school.

I knew that he had a hearing impairment and sight as well.

But, you know, I don't think that...

That didn't, you know, stop him at all.

Even in school, you know, his work in school.

Well, he was a normal little boy, although he had all these problems.

From a four-year-old in reception class,

he was sat in the middle of the class

with another child. He couldn't see the board,

so without even mentioning it to the class teacher at four,

he asked his little pal could he pick up the other end of the table.

And the two of them picked up the table

and moved it across the room in front of the board.

And the teacher just stood there,

watching these little four-year-olds carrying the table across,

putting it down in front of the blackboard so he could see

what she had written. And that is Lloyd.

All we've got to do is just look at those harmonic things.

Just, you know, check them through.

And having a look at the proportions can be absolutely fine.

-It's going in the right direction though?

-Oh, yeah. No question.

With Breaking The Wall well underway,

Lloyd heads back to Bridgend.

He's returning to the ordinary school

where an extraordinary schoolboy with no background in music

met somebody who changed everything for him.

-Hello!

-Oh, how are you, my little boy?

-Very good, thank you.

-So this is where it all started.

-It is.

On that piano there. Yeah.

He wouldn't show

that he was interested in music.

I didn't realise until he showed me these pieces of compositions then.

One day Lloyd had arrived at school

with some strange drawings he'd made.

These sheets of music,

which were like a piece of art, actually.

But you know, I could see that they were music.

And I thought, "Mm, there's something going on here."

Before long, Mrs Davies was teaching Lloyd to read music.

But very quickly, he wanted to make some of his own.

As soon as he put his hands, you know,

his little fingers on the keyboard, he took it...

Well, like a duck to water as they say. You know, marvellous.

This is Coleman Opus No.1,

the first piece of music Lloyd wrote for Mrs Davis.

He was seven years old.

It's been a while since he played it.

HE STOPS PLAYING I can't remember the rest of it.

HE RESUMES PLAYING It must be an A, just over and over again.

He can read music so quickly to start off with and, you know,

I'd give him a piece of music and it was note perfect

and fluent within a couple of days.

And we were going from one book

to the other. I've never...

You know, no pupil or mine has gone so fast through books.

HE PLAYS JAUNTY TUNE

HE LAUGHS

'He's got the drive. You know, he wants to do it.

'That's how I felt when he was with me as a pupil. He wanted to do it.'

I didn't have to bully him

at all, you know. He wanted to do it.

He was so easy, so easy to teach.

'It was absolutely wonderful actually. It was really,

'really nice to see Mrs Davies.

'It made me feel strangely... Well, I'm only 19

'and it made me feel nostalgic in a way.'

I absolutely loved my time here

and it was really nice to see everyone again.

Back home with his family, Lloyd is thinking about the challenge ahead.

You know, it's going to be a large orchestral piece,

so it's going to be about half an hour of music

for full symphony orchestra.

That's way beyond anything I've ever done before.

But I don't think my hearing impairment makes any difference

at all to my inner ear, because obviously you're not actually...

By using your inner ear to hear sounds,

you're not using any external source.

It's a kind of memory game really.

Because you're trying to store up in your head

a bank of sounds

that you know work and don't work.

Notes that you know work well together

and maybe don't work so well together.

You develop that in your head. I don't have to use my ears anymore.

I can just use my brain and I can internalise it.

But Lloyd is also partially sighted, which brings its own challenges.

That's also part of the reason why I use Sibelius the computer programme

to produce my full scores.

On this computer screen, I have my mouse here

and I can just simply move around the page,

or the pages, of music.

I can scroll right into that.

You know, and I can scroll up and down,

move up and down the page.

I'm really, you know, close into it and if I put my glasses on,

I can see that very clearly now and it's a lot easier to, you know,

do it that way than it is to do it on tiny manuscript paper like that.

It's not the most exciting thing to watch, coming up with all these

wacky ideas, but it's not really a spectator sport, if anything.

Friends, Romans, countrymen. Lend me your years.

2010, that's a very good year.

Lloyd's in Neath, working with a charity called UCAN.

They encourage young people who are partially sighted

to get involved with the arts.

They spotted Lloyd when he was thirteen years old

and have been key to his development ever since.

UCAN commissioned Breaking The Wall

and eventually want to use it as part of their education programme.

But they also supported Lloyd

all the way through his teenage years.

The main thing, first and foremost, is to make friends.

A lot of visually impaired people we found

when we first started out are actually quite isolated.

And so UCAN is a way to bring them together

and to have some fun.

This week we've been in Neath

with a group from UCAN

and we've been working on a bit of my Breaking The Wall piece.

I've basically written

a kind of mock-up of part of the piece

and we've started to create a dance piece based on that.

He's rare because I've only a couple in my life as an artist

and he's one of them.

He's basically a genius.

On top of that, he's disabled which is an incredible handicap

to have for someone like Lloyd.

But he doesn't use that. It doesn't hinder his creativity at all.

In fact, he uses it as a kind of thing

to make him a little bit more focused.

The work we've been doing this week, I really appreciate it personally

because obviously it's the start of my piece coming to life.

It's a long project, you know.

This will build up to next year, summer 2012,

so I really appreciate you putting the work in now,

because you're like a template to what we'll take around Wales.

Very exciting times ahead. Thank you very much everyone.

APPLAUSE

Lloyd's already written a number of pieces of music

that have been performed.

This evening in a church near Bristol, four students

from the Royal Academy of Music rehearse a quartet by Beethoven.

And also something more recent, written by Lloyd.

DRAMATIC STRING MUSIC

It's a string quartet he wrote when he was sixteen...

Which one?

..and he's here to make sure the Vasari quartet get it right.

It's very simple, it's just made of a triplet.

-Well, I think we were off that.

-You weren't, you were perfect up

until two or four.

The piece is flipping hard, you know.

It's really, really difficult.

Some of the stretches that the violin players have to do

towards the end of the piece are very, very wide

and very, very uncomfortable on the hands.

VIOLIN MUSIC

It's incredibly exciting to play.

It's very physical and it's very demanding to play

and it just requires absolute, 100% concentration

because the whole thing can be over in seconds

we're not on it all the time.

-INTERVIEWER:

-Did you make it like that deliberately?

No, I think the mixture of things is like that.

I wrote the piece about two or three years ago now,

so I was a little bit less experienced.

I wasn't quite so aware of how difficult

some of those passages were to the violin.

But having said that, I did want to,

you know, give the chord a work out.

HE LAUGHS

I must have been a very angry boy at the time!

FRANTIC STRING MUSIC

Angry or not,

Lloyd's music is at the cutting edge of contemporary taste.

And even those closest to him

sometimes wonder what it's all about.

I enjoy music with a little bit of a tune, shall we say?

And we've had lots of debates, because Lloyd's music

is quite contemporary, as he keeps on reminding me.

Yeah! No, that was brilliant. That was the best you've ever done it.

Please do it like that tonight!

With rehearsals out of the way,

it's time for Lloyd to meet his audience.

APPLAUSE

Tonight, we're looking at the idea of energy in this piece

and I'm certain, no matter what happens,

you will get that idea loud and clear.

LAUGHTER

ENERGETIC STRING MUSIC

APPLAUSE

The concert's been a welcome distraction

from the business of composing.

The Royal Welsh College of Music and Drama

in Cardiff have offered Lloyd some space and time

to get on with Breaking The Wall.

The piece itself is based on a Greek legend.

It's about an ancient Athenian herald called Pheidippedes.

Pheidippides was sent from the battlefield of Marathon

to Athens to announce that the Persians had been defeated.

He ran the entire distance without stopping,

but died after passing on his message.

His story inspired the modern Olympic marathon event.

So it's a very heroic story.

Very inspiring.

I found it interesting because I think it can serve

as a kind of metaphor of disability.

-INTERVIEWER:

-Do you consider yourself to be disabled?

I don't think of myself as being disabled, no.

I am disabled technically. I do have impairments.

I have a visual impairment and a hearing impairment,

so you could label me disabled,

but I certainly don't seek to be labelled in that way.

PIANO MUSIC

I think on a personal level,

it is obviously about this idea of overcoming adversity.

And overcoming barriers.

For me, it might be the barrier of disability,

but I think it could be anything really, that barrier.

Well, the 28-minute piece,

the most important thing is having a structure in place.

The music can't dip.

You don't want your audience to get bored or be too repetitive,

so he has to have a very clear frame for such a long piece.

Writing for such large forces, obviously,

he needs to be able to control the orchestra over large spans of time

as well as keeping the ear engaged

in more bar-to-bar detail.

So it's kind of a juggling act between detail

and keeping the sweep of the music going.

Oh, that's nice.

I like that. That's OK.

So, in context, it would be...

Oh, no, I've forgotten it! That's annoying.

I did it and now I can't remember the chord.

That's really annoying.

Er...

While Lloyd tries to remember, the world moves on.

He's been setting himself a daily writing target.

Today he's aiming to get two minutes of draft score on to the page.

Wow!

Two minutes, 11.

I was probably playing it a bit slow to make it longer.

HE LAUGHS

No, that's good actually.

Because it's quite a slow section with not very many notes in it,

I've actually managed to get quite a lot done there,

so I'm quite pleased with that.

In search of more ideas,

Lloyd has decided to meet some Paralympian hopefuls in Cardiff.

With Breaking The Wall's Olympic inspiration

and London 2012 around the corner, their insight could be invaluable.

And they know better than most how tough breaking the wall can be.

You're throwing the same distance over and over again

and you're trying to break through that wall to get a further distance.

It's so frustrating it's unbelievable and it gets you down.

You try so hard to break it, it can affect your technique

because you're trying to put so much effort and force into it

that you forget about technique, and it breaks down completely.

I think about breaking that wall, getting through it,

as in making my technique better, making myself more flexible

and getting that power in the right place

and just trying to hit it as hard as I can but in the right way.

Is that a big motivating factor to be able to say

you competed in the Paralympic Games in Britain?

Yeah, exactly.

That's what's making me go a bit more

cos it's not just any Paralympics but the one everyone will remember,

so when I feel tired or at training I'm not doing as well,

because I've got that aim, that makes me motivated.

And seeing everyone, cos we train in a group,

seeing them train, especially this year

everyone's going for it, so that makes me train a bit more.

And when I'm tired and can't be bothered to go training,

I'll go cos it's one step closer hopefully.

They all said in one way or another

that, basically, that is kind of what's keeping them going.

That long-term goal is what helps you when you're struggling

or having a bad day, or when things aren't going well

and, in a sense, that's exactly the way it is with composition as well.

Back in London,

Lloyd has an appointment with one of Britain's greatest living composers.

Students regularly workshop their pieces

with some of the brightest musical minds in the world.

Sir Peter Maxwell Davies is one of them.

Lloyd has brought along the opening section of his piece.

This is the opening sections of it.

Yeah, the opening few minutes.

I'm whizzing through very quickly just to get the overall...

Everyone's eyes are on Breaking The Wall, including Sir Peter's.

And he's not likely to miss anything.

You see, I would have thought that that there, without telling me,

sounds a C and corresponds to that C there which comes out of it,

but it isn't. It's a G.

I would look at that and say, "What does he mean? Why has he done that?

"Is there a distinction in the quality of the sound?"

And I don't think there is.

There isn't.

He's doing an orchestral piece which is very difficult

and you can't put an old head on young shoulders.

I look back at the orchestral pieces I wrote when I was his age

and I think, "You didn't know much, did you?"

And he's doing fine. He's doing very well.

He's got a very good imagination, so that is very exciting

for the other students and for me,

just to watch and listen to how this is coming on.

But it is confusing if you've already done that.

Yeah, so if I can eliminate that?

-If you eliminate that then that one is clear.

-OK.

Another lesson learned.

With Sir Peter's advice fresh in his mind,

Lloyd gets on with writing Breaking The Wall.

But after a while, we hear he's having problems.

He's facing something every composer dreads - a block.

A few weeks later, we catch up with him at the Wales Millennium Centre.

He's performing at the annual UCAN Festival.

And the chance to play his clarinet

rather than confront his block is a welcome one.

It's going to be interesting

because I don't really know where I'm at.

I've spent the last year composing a lot at the Academy

with my composition course. Haven't done so much playing

so today will be an interesting test of,

you know, how much talent have I lost?

UCAN has changed many lives, my own included.

They are completely absorbed

in creating opportunities for other people.

Breaking The Wall is about overcoming adversity

and extraordinary people and in UCAN,

everybody is an extraordinary person.

After the concert, Lloyd does some interviews

and it isn't long before the subject of that block comes up.

I've actually got to write the piece first before they can play it.

-And how's that coming along?

-Thanks for asking.

There is no worse feeling

I think than a block.

And it's just a horrible feeling

because you just cannot see a way past

where you're at,

so you reach a certain point

and suddenly you just don't know what note to put next.

It's not nice at all.

There's no easy way out of it either.

I'm not going to worry about it too much

because it's par for the course and something you have to accept.

These things are going to happen.

You have to break through the wall, if you'll excuse the pun.

Lloyd manages to break through his block

and today he's returned to the Royal Academy of Music in London.

It's a big day.

The final part of Breaking The Wall

is getting a full orchestral workshop

at the Academy's prestigious Duke's Hall.

I'm beginning to feel quite nervous now.

About an hour to go before it's rehearsed for the first time

by the RAM Orchestra.

I've been working on this piece for 18 months now

and it's been in my head and I've heard electronic versions of it,

but this is the first time I'm going to hear live instruments

and musicians play it, so, for me, that is really nerve-wracking.

I don't know whether all composers experience this.

I've spoken to some friends

who don't get nervous before their pieces are played.

I'm just one of those people who are really worried,

not because I'm worried what other people will think,

but I'm just worried about whether I've done myself justice.

Whether the music I've written on the page

is going to work as I wanted it to.

So, wait and see.

Pheidippides then, as well as having run there to fight...

Before the workshop,

Lloyd has a chance to explain Breaking The Wall to the orchestra.

You'll have to excuse me if the music's a little bit bombastic

but please appreciate it is the last six minutes of a very long piece.

And then at last the waiting is over.

ENTIRE ORCHESTRA PLAYING

The workshop's conductor is Christopher Austin.

He's got years of experience

and can offer Lloyd plenty of support and constructive advice.

Lloyd, after figure 11, page 31, here.

Tell me about the relationship between players in an orchestra.

-Yeah.

-Musicians.

-Yeah.

-And composers.

HE LAUGHS

-And then this.

-And then on the chord again, please.

For the first trumpet?

'The problem with the composer is to know when to speak to

'the conductor and say, "X, Y and Z need fixing" or when to leave it

'and know the conductor knows that and doesn't need telling.'

That kind of dynamic of talking to the orchestra through the conductor

is very difficult to get right when you're a composer.

If you keep interrupting you'll annoy the conductor and orchestra.

So, Rob, actually...

'But if you leave it until they've finished rehearsing

'on the day of the concert, and you say, "This, and that is wrong,"

'they'll say, "Why didn't you tell me yesterday when I could fix it?"'

So that is really difficult

and something Lloyd will get through experience.

Tutti at ten. Thank you.

STRINGS PLAY

OK, thank you.

Bar by bar, the orchestra take the closing section

of Breaking The Wall apart

and then put it back together again.

Two things.

With Sir Peter Maxwell-Davies listening to every bar,

the workshop is finally over.

Thank you so much, everyone.

APPLAUSE

It's like going from black and white to colour in a way

and it's very easy to not appreciate in the case of this section,

quite how epic it is.

But he's a super-talented young man

and we're very lucky to have him in our academy.

I'm really happy with it.

All that time it's been in my head it's now finally been played live

and it's really inspired me to really go and complete the piece

and finish it and refine it to the absolute best it can be.

So thank you so much for your work all day,

for your skill, your patience and your musicality.

It's very, very much appreciated. Thank you from all of us.

APPLAUSE

Six weeks later and another city,

another concert hall.

But now the stakes couldn't be higher for Lloyd.

The BBC National Orchestra of Wales get their first look

at Breaking The Wall just 24 hours before its debut performance.

It will be played by more than 80 of the country's best musicians,

in front of a packed house

with a live radio audience listening in for good measure.

No wonder Lloyd's starting to feel the pressure.

Little bit nervous. Well, very nervous.

The moment before they start playing,

I always get really nervous.

I'm probably more nervous now, before the rehearsal,

than I will be before the performance tomorrow

because this moment before the rehearsal things can go wrong.

I might have made a mistake in the score.

I don't think I have but that remains to be seen.

If there is a problem, Radio Three listeners

tuning in live to tomorrow's concert will probably spot it.

But before the rehearsal starts, there's a last chance for Lloyd

to talk to conductor Sian Edwards and then he has to let go.

I can't wait to hear a professional orchestra

as good as the BBC National Orchestra of Wales play my piece.

It is daunting in a sense because it's the first time

I've had my piece played by a full professional symphony orchestra.

These musicians know exactly what they're doing.

They know what to expect.

They know what's good music and not-so-good music,

so it's daunting in the sense that I'm basically putting myself

out there straight away.

ORCHESTRA START PLAYING

It's a big piece. It's well constructed.

The bits that need to be heard can be heard cos it's very well-written.

It's very well orchestrated.

He makes sure that the score is separate where it needs to be.

It's separated out where it needs to be. There's not a confusing muddle.

There are one or two sections that are really tricky

to get fingers and thumbs together, but that makes it a challenge.

It's a very well-written violin part because there's lots to do for us,

and it's quite challenging as well, which is good.

I think it's a great start, actually.

We were all saying how impressed we are with this piece

and, for someone so young to be writing stuff like this

is really quite encouraging.

So I'm quite excited to see what happens next.

The third trombone goes to forte

but everybody else could you go to mezzo forte

and then very quickly diminuendo, so it's quite short?

The rehearsal's gone well.

but the real test will come at tomorrow's performance.

In the meantime, there's a chance for the players to offer

some last-minute thoughts.

-It seems like quite a lot of it is second violin parts.

-Yeah.

'It was a really good experience. I really enjoyed it.

'Obviously I'm just delighted how the orchestra are playing my piece.'

It's the big day at last.

Breaking The Wall gets its public debut. The concert's sold out.

And with Tchaikovsky, Shostakovich and Karl Jenkins on the bill too,

Lloyd's in good company.

Backstage, the players tune up.

And with just a few hours to go,

Lloyd's here early to watch final rehearsals.

But there's not much he can do to change things now.

This afternoon's concert is about to begin

and with the audience taking their seats,

there's one last crisis for Lloyd to deal with.

-TANNOY:

-This afternoon's live broadcast will begin in two minutes.

One of his most important guests still hasn't arrived.

I'll go downstairs and have a look.

Lloyd's first music teacher Mrs Davies

couldn't find a parking space.

Hello. I'm really sorry, I've got to run, but here are your tickets.

-We've literally got to go in now.

-I know, two minutes!

-You all right?

-Yeah.

It's been 18 months in the making,

but now, with his mother sitting next to him,

Lloyd's moment is finally here.

I think Lloyd's music is incredibly strong and powerful

and one thing which really works when we performed it just now

was that the orchestra could really get hold of it.

They could really get into the sound of it

and make something very dramatic and very powerful,

so I think that in itself just shows how much Lloyd is thinking

orchestrally and how much his imagination is already

translating across the page to the players.

He's considered criticism very, very maturely.

He's defended his corner as and when appropriate

and done very good job.

I'm proud of him.

Absolutely fantastic.

He's overcome all those problems which is wonderful

and I'm so glad I was a little part of it.

Very, very proud. Amazing.

And I actually enjoyed the piece, which is even better!

This Breaking The Wall piece

has been completely kind of consuming for me.

It has taken over my life and it has been such a challenge to write it,

that it's been hard to switch off from it and to not think about it.

APPLAUSE

I'm really happy.

There's loads of words I could use to describe how I feel right now.

It's all a bit manic really.

But I'm proud of what I've done

and now I've got to move on from it really and keep going.

APPLAUSE

Subtitles by Red Bee Media Ltd