Tracks of My Life with Lord Colin Low of Dalston CBE

Tracks of My Life is a show on RNIB Connect Radio presented and produced by Toby Davey where he invites a guest to take us on a journey through their life, sharing the tracks that mark important moments which bring back memories to them.

Their chosen tracks of their life might include the first track they can remember hearing, the first track they bought, a number of tracks that mark moments in their life and the final track, a track that they would like to pass on which might give people hope for the future.

In this trimmed down podcast version of Tracks of My Life Toby is joined by Lord Colin Low of Dalston CBE, former Chair and now Vice President of the RNIB.

We will start Colin’s Tracks of My Life journey with an essay on the composer Hugo Wolf which won Colin a scholarship to Queen’s College, Oxford with fond memories for Colin of many good relationships made at the time and an ‘opening of his ears’ as Colin says in Oxford to a wider range of classical music and composers.

We will then focus in on a particular vivid performance for Colin at the regular English Bach Festival in Oxford of Messiaen’s Turangalila symphony that swept Colin up into the music of Messiaen. Colin feels that the Turangalila symphony is a great example of modern classical music which is very accessible and exciting to listen to and get immersed in. 

Then we come to an uplifting performance of Ravel’s Daphnis and Chloe and for Colin as someone who has played the piano it is not just the performance but the understanding of how the music has been put together that really enhances Colin’s enjoyment of music when it is being performed live. 

We return back to the English Bach Festival in Oxford but this time a few years later with an almost three hour long enjoyable Sunday afternoon performance of another Messiaen piece but this time for solo piano which was heavily inspired by bird song and again for Colin, a bit of an insider's view of the music with his background in piano playing.  

Then to fond memories for Colin of a trip to Bayreuth, the home of Wagner which was helped by some of that scholarship money Colin won to support him through his studies in Oxford and the trip really started Colin’s great love of Wagner. The more Colin listened to Wagner the more  he became under the spell of this great composer.

Then time for a bit of Jazz and a track by a well-known blind American Jazz Pianist Art Tatum which Colin was very much swept up by when he was first introduced to Art’s great jazz piano playing.

Before we reach Colin’s final track, time for Colin to reflect on his work in the House of Lords and whether he feels life for blind and partially sighted people has got better over the years or is there still a lot more that needs to be done to improve society for visually impaired people and of course all disabled people too.

You can catch the hour-long version of Tracks of My Life with Toby’s guest’s music tracks in full by tuning in to RNIB Connect Radio every Tuesday at 7pm, repeated on Thursday at 1pm and Sunday at 8pm.


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