Inside Princess Kates passion for music – and her flute group Tootie-Flooties
The sight and sound of the royals playing musical instruments is not something we are often privy to, but many of them are skilful musicians who can more than hold a tune.
Unsurprisingly, cream of the crop in the musical stakes is the Princess of Wales, who holds a Grade Three in piano and flute, plus Grade Five in singing and theory.
Kate wowed TV viewers by tinkling the ivories during May’s opening of the Eurovision Song Contest, where she was a surprise guest in a reprise of Ukraine’s winning song from 2022, Stefania, by Kalush Orchestra. Her appearance was pre-recorded in the Crimson Room at Windsor Castle, with her playing on a prized Steinway piano belonging to King Charles.
As a pianist, Kate owes much to music teacher Daniel Nicholls, who taught her from the age of 11 – along with sister Pippa, brother James and their mother Carole.
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“All three children were lovely, enthusiastic and bubbly and consequently were very easy to teach,” Daniel says. “It is worth remembering that individual piano lessons can lead anywhere – to self-fulfilment, to GCSE and A-Level, to a university degree and even to becoming Princess of Wales and then Queen of England!”
In 2011, Daniel composed his own piece of music, A Song For Kate (And William), which was performed by a 73-strong choir on the couple’s wedding day on 29 April.
Kate also demonstrated her proficiency on the piano when she accompanied singer Tom Walker at ITV1’s 2021 Christmas service, Royal Carols: Together At Christmas.
On that occasion, she sat at a grand piano within Westminster Abbey’s candlelit Chapter House while Tom sang For Those Who Can’t Be Here.
He said of their duet, “She absolutely smashed the performance. It’s not easy to jump behind a piano with a bunch of musicians you’ve never played with before and record live takes to camera, but she completely nailed it.
“It was a crazy pinch-yourself kind of day for me, to be in such a beautiful venue playing alongside the duchess with my band and a string quartet. I certainly won’t forget that in a hurry!”
Not only is Kate a piano whizz, but she also played the flute during her time at St Andrew’s School in Pangbourne, Berkshire. As well as being a member of the school’s chamber orchestra, it is claimed she and Pippa were part of a senior flute group called the Tootie-Flooties!
Kate continued to play many instruments into adulthood, and in July 2017 she tried her hand at conducting the renowned Hamburg Philharmonic Orchestra. Showing her usual poise, Kate looked unfazed as she took the baton in front of 250 students at the city’s Elbphilharmonie concert hall.
While husband William is not quite so musical, one famous photo of him as a toddler shows him and Prince Harry sitting at a piano with their mother, Diana, Princess of Wales.
Neither brother is believed to have kept up lessons, and William now seems to have more of a liking for house and dance music. Last May, DJ Simon Mayo revealed how William shared his secret while he presented him with an MBE. “We talked about Radio 1 and how he loved Faithless’s Insomnia and Spiller’s Groovejet,” Simon tweeted. “I suggested that he was clearly a bit of a clubber…”
In a follow-up post, the Greatest Hits Radio host added, “He said maybe a secret clubber. I plugged Drivetime on GHR obviously, suggested he was just the right age to be joining us.”
William has also told how the young Wales children love pop music, and that they argue over what to listen to while getting ready for school.
In Apple’s Time To Walk podcast in December 2021, he said, “Most mornings there’s a massive fight between Princess Charlotte and Prince George as to what song is played.”
To keep the peace, the family use a strict rota, while William also let slip that the children’s favourite at the time was Shakira’s Waka Waka. “There’s a lot of hip movements going along with a lot of dressing up. Charlotte particularly is running around the kitchen, in her dresses and ballet stuff. She goes completely crazy, with Louis following her around trying to do the same thing.”
On the podcast, William confessed to a passion for heavy metal too. “There’s nothing better than, on a Monday morning, when you’re a bit bleary-eyed after the weekend and trying to get yourself back into the grind of the week, listening to AC/DC’s Thunderstruck,” he said. “It absolutely wakes you up, puts your week in the best mood possible, and you feel like you can take on anything and anyone.”
Though William likes contemporary music, his father King Charles is a devout classical fan, no doubt influenced by his mother and the Queen Mother, who would take him to the opera and ballet as a boy.
The late Queen herself was a talented pianist, having been taught as a young girl by Mabel Lander, a graduate of the Viennese School. One photograph from 1940 showed Elizabeth and sister Margaret perched together at a piano at Windsor Castle, and the two princesses also sang with senior choristers at St George’s Chapel.
The King, who holds patronages at the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra and Royal College Of Music, played the trumpet as a child and has credited his “wonderful” first music teacher, Hilda Bor, for her guidance. At 15 he played with the 80-piece orchestra at his school in Gordonstoun, Scotland, but by the time he started at Trinity College, Cambridge, he had switched to the cello.
He once suggested he was not very accomplished, saying, “I loved playing in the orchestra at Trinity – albeit rather badly. I find the whole experience of being with the orchestra or listening to it in a wonderful great hall, I mean it is extraordinary because the sound completely surrounds you and there is nothing to substitute for that, I think. It’s that wonderful sensation of being part of an immense whole.”
Charles laid down his cello in his twenties, recalling, “When I joined the Navy, I found it wasn’t so easy to take a cello in a ship. It got abandoned for a bit, and I never managed to take it up again.”
Still, during a 1988 tour with Diana to Australia, he was persuaded to play a few notes, while the princess also surprised onlookers as she attempted a passage on the piano from Rachmaninoff’s Piano Concerto No.2.
These days, the King and Queen Camilla both seem to prefer listening to performing, although last March, they played bodhran drums with a folk band during a visit to the Irish Cultural Centre in Hammersmith. It left them both with the giggles – although we wonder if that may have been down to the pints of Guinness being liberally poured…
Feature taken from OK! Royal Special – The Passions and Pastimes of the Royal Family, on sale now for £9.99
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