For me, Brexit unleashed much sadness about the island mentality dominating our relations with Europe, and a determination to do something positive in the face of hardening attitudes to migration. The collateral wreckage caused by ending freedom of movement in Europe included lost opportunities for musicians to perform and tour abroad, damaging the industry, our economy and the wider cultural cross-fertilisation shaping Britain’s cosmopolitan identity.
Britain has long embraced musical migrants, and some of our most cherished national traditions (think Handel’s Messiah at Christmas) have sprung from the welcome it has afforded to continental musicians. When we sing ‘I vow to thee my country’ we are reaping the fruits of Gustav Holst’s Swedish, German and Latvian ancestry. As Brexit became a reality, I conceived a project to celebrate a musical ancestor of my own: my 4xgreat-grandfather Felix Yaniewicz, a Polish-Lithuanian violinist and composer who arrived in Britain as a migrant fleeing revolutionary France, and founded the first Edinburgh music festival in 1815. The resulting exhibition, Music and Migration in Georgian Edinburgh, celebrated his lasting impact on our cultural heritage. Would he now be turned back at the border?
