By Sarah Groszewski.
This holiday season James B Partridge, the beloved primary school music teacher turned nostalgic sensation, will help audiences relive the magic of their childhood, as he takes The Big Christmas Assembly on tour, which includes a show at The Stage Door in Southampton on the 15th December.
Sarah: As I am interviewing you on behalf of In Common which is a community organisation for the people of Southampton I thought it was only sensible to get the local community involved in these questions, so I asked the school mums of Southampton what they want to know about you…
Can we start by talking about what’s new for this tour?
James: OK yeah, we’ve got basically the Christmas tour. I did the same venue last Christmas as well. Obviously a lot of the songs we sing every Christmas are similar in terms of the traditional carols and things like that. But there are new stories, there are new songs, there are new mashups. I’ve got a deep dive into a Gen Z nativity and what that would look like. I have also gone through the Argos catalogue from the 90s and I’m bringing some relics to the show from that.
Amazing. Does the word skibbidy feature in your Gen Z nativity?
James: It does yeah. I’ve done three shows so far in this tour and it’s been a really funny reaction from people who have heard of these phrases, a lot of whom are maybe the mums with kids that are quite online. So yeah, skibbidy toilet rizz makes an appearance in the Gen Z nativity. A sentence I thought I’d never say in my life!
What about next year’s tour, which is not coming to Southampton. We are very disappointed!
James: “I know. I’m so sorry. In all fairness, by that point, I think I would have done 7 gigs in Southampton, but not one in Portsmouth so you’ve got to share it out a bit. I’m going to be in Totton in February at the Attic as well. Very sadly, we’ve got to move slightly away from Southampton, but only a bit further down the coast, so it’s not too far. I won’t be singing when the Saints go marching in!”
Probably safest not to! What else is new for that tour?
James: “That is going to be quite a big change I think because this tour is one that I organised entirely myself, and it’s kind of an extension of last year’s tour. Rewritten, but similar kind of vibes. I’ve got a slightly better Christmas tree, still not amazing but at least it fits in my car. I think last year I got it from Wilkos before it shut down and this year I got it from Dunelm so I’m moving up the world! We’ve got decorations from Primark as well. It’s going to be fantastic. But next year because the venues are going to be, on the whole, quite big – scarily big, for a lot of these venues the production is going to be quite a bit bigger with a big screen with illustrations and all of that kind of stuff. It is still a year away, so I haven’t fully got all of the plans ready for that, but it will still obviously have all the songs that people know and love. It’s going to be Christmas carols, Christmas number ones as well as a few of the school assembly bangers as well thrown in there.”
I see you’re at Camp Bestival next year as well.
James: I am the first person that they’ve announced for the festival which is amazing! I feel very honoured and especially growing up in Poole.
What would your dream festival be?
James: “Well, I would have said Glastonbury but I did it this year, which is living my dream and is pretty incredible. Aside from that, well, one festival which is not one that I ever thought I would play, but it’s being looked into whether I could play it is actually Download festival, the metal festival. They actually had one or two acts like me I think in the past – they’ve had Bill Bailey and acts that aren’t necessarily heavy metal or rock. So I’m not saying that it’s happening by any means, but it would be a hilarious juxtaposition of like death metal on one stage and then full assembly hymns on another stage.”
Who would be your dream either composer or artist to work with?
James “Someone who I would absolutely love to meet just to chat to would actually be Tom Fletcher from McFly. I kind of grew up with McFly music and in a way see those guys as quite inspirational in terms of the massive success they’ve had, but also their music’s great. And they’ve just connected with so many people and brought joy to lots of people and especially Tom Fletcher with his books for children. And I’m actually writing a children’s book at the moment. It’s for a children’s publishing company, and I’m hoping that it’s going to be able to come out at the end of next year. So I think that’s someone I’d love to talk to.
Sounds like it’s very possible with all these festivals that you’re going to!
James: “I think they actually did Camp Bestival last year, so we’ll see.”
Now I’ve got some very specific music questions for you. Does the saxophone belong in an orchestra?
James “Yes.”
What’s your favourite key signature?
James: “Oh, what’s my favourite key signature? I would say. It is D major just because it works really well for a lot of the songs. So like, give me oil in my lamp, I put it in D major, he’s got the whole world in his hands too. So it’s a really good key to sing in, it sits relatively nicely in everybody’s range whether you’re a male or female. That’s a very, very nerdy musical answer!”
Would you ever write your own school banger, and if so, what would it be called?
James: “Well, I actually did one for my non Christmassy show which was called ‘It’s a great, great day’ and I’ve been singing that around the country, which is great. I’ve got actions to it and people join in. You might remember I actually did one at Christmas shows last year called Little Star too. That was one that I wrote for some of my pupils around Christmas time when we were doing the online teaching. But yeah, I’d love to get into more songwriting for sure. It might be quite nice to just spend a bit of time writing when I’m not doing shows at some point next year.”
What do you do when you’re not working? What are your hobbies?
James “Basically, as well as doing the teaching and the gigging, I do all the admin to organise the gigs and stuff but aside from the boring, boring stuff I like playing piano for fun. I’ve just got a new keyboard which I’m very excited about, so I can actually play piano for fun rather than just lugging my keyboard around. But aside from that, exploring the back streets of London, going to the coffee shops and bakeries and cafes and just kind of exploring London living. I live in London but I grew up in Dorset so I always loved coming to London when I was younger, just to get the train up to Waterloo and wander about. This is something that I’ve been told off about before, because I don’t really have that many hobbies outside of music.”
That’s a fantastic hobby. And I think these children just don’t have enough music lessons in school as there isn’t the funding. So modelling that as a hobby rather than something you just have to learn at school is really important.
James: “Yeah, definitely. And there are so many benefits. You shouldn’t just do a hobby because it’s going to give you a grade to get into the next school or whatever. That’s one side of it but also playing an instrument and practising an instrument for all the other benefits like mental health – because it can take you out of any stresses you have and I always had that growing up. I just played piano for hours and hours and hours because if you are feeling stressed or worried about things you can just dive into playing an instrument and you can forget about everything else.”
I can see some guitars in the background. Will you ever play any other instruments on stage or is it just a keyboard for you?
James: “I was thinking about it actually. I think it would be quite fun. I even considered cracking out a recorder. Or I could bring a recorder and get someone else to play it but. Yeah, I think maybe I’ll do Kumbaya on the guitar. One extra thing to get in the back of the car, I suppose!”
Why did you become a teacher, specifically of music?
James: “I’ve been teaching around London for just over 10 years. I left university and worked for a couple of music companies in slightly more kind of admin type roles. Then I really got sick of doing spreadsheets so I thought teaching was the one thing I really enjoyed, because I always did some lessons or piano playing accompanying lessons when I was younger – it might might have been like playing piano for like a children’s choir or something, or doing kind of small lessons for people or playing piano for people’s singing lessons. And I actually used to work on singing courses when I was a teenager, where I would play piano for singing teachers, so I’d be the accompanist for a lesson and that kind of gave me the spark. This is so inspirational for these people, and you also get to dive into music that you love and pass that on to other people. I’ve always loved working with primary school age children in terms of teaching, singing and playing piano and getting them interested in singing. So it would have been a natural fit for me just to start tutoring and start teaching around London. And yeah, I absolutely loved it. This Christmas is quite full on with gigs, but I am wrapping up my teaching at the end of November this term so that I can obviously do all these gigs and I feel so, so guilty about it. And someone said to me, well, just think about it, you might be dropping a few pupils here and there but your class size is expanding by doing all these slightly different classroom sizes.”
And a different age group as well, mums in their 40s by the dozen!
James: “Yeah, for sure. I think that’s great as well because one of the side effects of doing this show is that it hopefully got people thinking about how great their music was when they’re at school or how much they might want their own children to do music. Where, as you said, there might not be the same resources in schools. That’s one thing I didn’t necessarily think about when I was starting out but it’s great.”
What’s your fondest teaching memory?
James: “I think my favourite memories of teaching are when you have a pupil who has been stuck for a while on something, whether it’s working towards a grade or working towards a particular goal, and then seeing that breakthrough. I think it’s really great and then seeing something click they think ohh that’s how we do it! Or maybe they think ‘ohh I now know how to improve’, and I think seeing breakthroughs of children that think they can’t do it as well is really, really great. I’ve had pupils think I can never play this then eventually they learn it and it’s great.”
I work in a Sixth Form college, and we have just had some incredible funding invested in music and music production facilities. What tips and inspiration could you give to teenagers who want to get into the music industry?
James: “I suppose it depends what part of the industry, but if you want to be a performer, my main thing to recommend is if you’re a teenager, just go out there and try and find as many opportunities as you can and don’t worry if you think you’re not good enough because most other people probably also think they’re not good enough. Don’t let that put you off taking opportunities and going for things. So whether it be doing an open mic night or posting songs that you’ve written online for people to listen to. And if it gets 10 views or 10,000 views that shouldn’t affect how you do things. Take as many opportunities as you can, meet as many people and get advice from people that you respect and it’s fine if you make mistakes. It all builds into yourself as a musician so if there are opportunities to get involved in music, take them.
“And if there aren’t opportunities to get involved in music, then make the opportunities. So like when I was at school, aside from a choir for year eights and nines, there wasn’t really any singing at my school. So I set up a barbershop group with my friends, which was fun, and then I did some arrangements just for fun. It was just to get together and we sang everything from The Beach Boys to the Family Guy theme tune. So take opportunities if they’re there, and if they’re not, try and make them.”
What about advice for the teachers to make it through to Christmas?
James: “The light is there at the end of the tunnel!”
Do you think you will ever record a record and release a single?
James: “There’s been very, very early days talk of doing a Christmas album for next Christmas which would be my dream actually to record something properly. Because I’ve recorded stuff on my laptop and and I’ve put some tracks on Spotify, just me playing the backing tracks. I put that out in 2022 before I even really kick started the actual shows just so people could sing along to them, so it’d be nice to actually record some of these songs properly and do some of the slightly less well known school nativity classics as well. Yeah, watch this space.”
Will you ever do a show where we can bring our children?
James: “I would love to. Actually, I did the Edinburgh Fringe in the summer and the time slot I had was at lunchtime and that was really nice because normally I do an evening show or the odd matinee here and there but mostly an evening show. I would like to eventually make a version of the show which is slightly more geared towards children and have it at child friendly hours. It could even be that I’d do two versions of the same show where in the afternoon I’d do the family friendly, slightly more geared towards children version and then in the evening I do the more adult nostalgia one. When I say family friendly, it’s not like the evening one is X-rated though!!”
Well, we would love that. And I don’t think my children know a lot of the songs that you sing so I would love to get them some proper musical education!
James: “I was talking to one of the other music teachers today and he was talking about people’s innate ability to sing. He was saying that for decades everybody in the UK sang either every week or every day in assembly which is why everybody loves to sing at concerts and there were a lot of opportunities for people to sing growing up. There aren’t as many now, so it would be good to hopefully bring that back in some way.”
Oh, that would be amazing. I’m a terrible singer, so I promise I won’t get involved, but I’ll absolutely bring my children along!
Final question. We are looking for some entertainment for my office Christmas party, do you want to come and sing for us?
James: “Erm…”
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