Woking’s Shane Thomas has been hailed as Britain’s own Mozart. Charles Dean meets the teenage composer and performer ahead of his debut album concert
It’s not often that a three year-old child can casually take to the nursery keyboard for the very first time, and play from memory a song that he and his classmates have been singing. Rarer still is one who aged six, announces that he will one day be famous. But when your name is Shane Thomas, one learns to expect the extraordinary.
When he was seven his grandmother bought him a keyboard. “Why did you make me wait so long?” he asked, before immediately beginning on his own compositions. Inevitably, comparisons to the prodigy of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart have abounded.
His musical education since then makes the rest of us who spent our school years steadily progressing through the Royal Schools of Music exams look like halfwits. Five months after learning to read music, Shane sat his grade eight music exam, having skipped grades one to seven. Naturally, he gained a distinction. And at the tender age of 10, he was signed to EMI, becoming the record company’s youngest ever signing.
So it is with great curiosity that I travel to meet Shane now 15, at his home after his day at St George’s College, Weybridge, a private school he attends on a full music scholarship.
We meet at the modest home in Woking that he shares with his father Clayton, a special needs teacher and younger siblings, Ashlee (10) and Chanelle (9).
He is a cherubic looking 15-year-old, refreshingly devoid of ego or brattishness. Polite, gentle and disarmingly modest, his beautiful hazel grey eyes betray no hint of smugness or overbearing confidence one might expect of a precocious talent. The only sign of any sort of unruly behaviour is his hair, which looks like it could do with a good comb!
But even this I discover, isn’t really his doing, but rather a contrivance of a TV production company currently filming a documentary about him. Entitled My Life, it will portray the duality of Shane’s life, as both ordinary schoolboy and composer, performer and conductor extraordinaire. The hair will be unkempt when at home, then smooth and perfectly groomed to show the consummate performer when he’s on stage.
The main focus of the filming is Shane’s recent concert with the Royal Northern Orchestra for BBC Music Day, a UK-wide celebration of music that took place on June 5. In front of an audience of 700 at the Royal College in Manchester he led the 45-piece ensemble in a score he had written himself. He had been commissioned to write the piece just two weeks earlier.
He describes his compositions as ‘a contemporary take on classical music.”
Clayton takes the opportunity to elaborate: “Shane’s music is what we describe as crossover – movie soundtrack with classical at its core.”
The compositions, says Shane, come to him fully-formed, sometimes inspired by events from his life, at times from dreams.
“I hear music extracts in my head and then I play them on my electric piano which records everything exactly as I play it. I score it later.”
One song, Dance of the Bowerbirds, he adds, “was inspired by something I saw in a dream, and the next day I got up, played it and recorded it.”
For the BBC performance in Manchester, Shane was given a full makeover with a tuxedo and even a visit to a designer hair stylist. The performance received a rapturous reception. After the show in the students’ hall, the ovation continued: “Ten, then 20, then 50 students began clapping him into the room,” recalls Clayton. “Soon 300 students were cheering and clapping. It was like a moment in a movie.’
Now, building on his burgeoning popularity, Shane is hosting a special one-off performance at the New Victoria Theatre in Woking on June 27.
“It will be a big performance in a 1200 seat venue. It will be me, a string quintet, dancers and a cellist [13 year- old Katarina Davies],” he tells me, adding quietly, “I’ve done something like this before, but not with this many people backing me.”
It sounds like an enormous occasion to me, but Shane is taking it in his stride. “I haven’t written music especially for it, I’ve just picked a few pieces that should go down well.”
Nerves appear not to trouble him. “The bigger the stage, the happier he is,” Clayton chuckles.
Even the constant scrutiny of the documentary cameras passes him by. Talk of his ‘genius’ and comparisons with Mozart understandably makes him uneasy.
“I don’t like to boast about it,” Shane says, reluctant to be drawn further on the subject. “I really don’t think about it much to be honest.” And I believe him.
However, lately he concedes there has been more interest in him than usual. “I’ve had a lot of photo shoots. For some reason, they never seem to have enough photos of me,” he says incredulously.
“We just take a ‘take us as we are’ attitude,” Clayton contributes. “Make of it as you will. I don’t even tidy the mantelpiece for the documentary cameras...”
I can see that, I laugh. The house is not what you’d call tidy. This seems to be partly due to Clayton not only working full-time, but also having three youngsters running amok.
It is also I suspect, a reflection of the lack of a female touch in the home. Shane’s mother left the family after disagreeing with Clayton on how best to manage their son’s emerging talent. According to Clayton, she resented his focus on the boy’s talents and considered him ‘pushy’. Following a difficult and messy divorce, she has been estranged from her son ever since.
Despite such sadness, Shane is moving onwards and upwards with the great joy of his life – his music – under the guiding protection of his father and support of his siblings.
With such ability and productions already under his belt, he has his whole life ahead of him to produce even more beautiful works. Perhaps the next great world-leading musical genius is alive and well in Woking? Whether or not his talent justifies heady comparisons to the great composers, I can’t wait to see what he is further capable of and where it may take him.
Shane Thomas plays Woking’s New Victoria Theatre on June 27
His album Note my Dream is available now
