By the age of 88, most of us imagine our exam days are long over. But for Ray Eveleigh, the challenge of taking grade 8 piano was too much to forgo and he passed with a distinction, 67 years after he taking grade 7.
Eveleigh, a retired reverend who lives in the East Yorkshire village of Kilham, near Bridlington, said he had been blown away by the interest after his story was featured on his local BBC radio station, television and in his local paper.
He said: “I’m surprised that it caught attention with so much publicity, because there is so much news around with weather problems and the wars, of course, and then the political situation in America. And then I thought: ‘This is a bit silly, you know. There’s an old man in Kilham who’s passed grade 8.’”
Eveleigh described the piano as a “personal friend”, one of the passions that helped keep his brain active. “You know, sometimes, obviously at my age, I get very tired. And sometimes I think: ‘This is no good. I don’t want to spend my life dozing in an armchair. Come on, Eveleigh, get up and play the piano.’
“And that gets me out of it, you know, because what a privilege to be able to play music that was written by the great geniuses of a century or more ago. Bach, Beethoven, Brahms, Mozart. That’s amazing, really, to me.”
He said he was not a perfect piano student as a child and was always getting told off for not practising, but it was at Cardiff university when he met his wife, Brenda, a singer, that he decided to take the instrument more seriously.
“She was a soprano at the Royal College of Music and Drama in Cardiff. She wanted an accompanist, so then I had to do some work. I learned to read music without an ulterior motive,” he said, laughing.
It was Brenda and his daughter Jenny Bray, also a musician, who persuaded him to give grade 8, the highest practical graded music exam in the UK, a try. “I rose to the base and I thought: ‘Yeah, I’ll have a go at that’.”
It took him about six months of work, having lessons over Zoom with his teacher, Ann Martin-Davis, to pass the exam almost seven decades after taking the previous one.
And his advice for anyone who is thinking of attempting a similar feat at his age?
“What’s important is to maintain creativity of some kind, not necessarily piano,” he said. “I don’t think I’m going to recommend that everyone of my age tries grade 8 piano. But I do believe that most people, in fact, all people, have got their talents and their creativity, whether that’s in art or writing a novel.”
And for younger people it was important to stick at it, Eveleigh said. “The art of playing music or painting or writing poetry or writing novels is a long-term thing. You don’t get immediate satisfaction. In fact, you can spend hours and hours feeling very frustrated because you’re not making progress. It’s a hard task.
“But I would say that it’s the most worthwhile task in life, to make music and do it well.”
