Today we caught up with Diamond [oboist from the Nucleo project] to see how he was enjoying this year’s Young Leaders camp and to hear more about his chosen instrument.

“I’ve been playing the oboe for over one year but not for much longer than that so I’m quite happy with the progress I’ve made. At school we used to play ocarinas and recorders - the recorder is sort of similar to the oboe so I think that’s where I got my knowledge and transferred it to the oboe. That’s why I’m quite confident in playing the oboe - some of the fingering is similar.

The oboes sit on the left hand side of the flutes and the right hand side of the clarinets so we’re in the middle. And normally in a professional orchestra the oboe would tune the other instruments at the beginning.

At Nucleo we play all sorts of music like ‘Harry Potter’ and ‘Beauty and the Beast’ and the ‘Pink Panther’ but here we play longer pieces. So we rehearse in sectionals and we’re learning a piece called Juba Dance and the person who wrote it was really determined to make music. We are lucky we can now play it on our instruments, the pieces are actually quite nice. Now that’s she’s not alive anymore, I just think to myself, she worked so hard to make all of this music for us. So we should play with all our power and not just give 50% but 100% when we are playing. Especially in Juba Dance because it’s sad what happened to her.”