Approaching the end of your formal studies, and wondering where to set your flag for the next stage of your career? Here are my top 9 tips for aspiring and emerging conductors. TL;DR: be humble, be useful, be flexible.
I'm currently writing the flagship course on the Scordatura online learning platform - Foundations of Conducting Technique.
It's an incredibly pleasurable and beautiful exercise to download that part of my brain, without reservation or filter, for aspiring conductors. There are so many things one does unconsciously in preparation, rehearsal and concert. It is quite gratifying to inspect one's own working process, and find some semblance of theory and method.
However, there are some things - rants, basically - which are much better expressed over a packet of salt 'n vinegar crisps at the pub.
Such opportunities are set to decrease as I wind up all arm-waving, and associated post-concert beer-swilling, activity. So, here are the least curmudgeonly of said rants, committed to the interweb, in the hope they'll be of use.
Crack open a Peroni, and read on.
I'm committing fraud at the first bullet-point. This thought is not actually mine. It is, however, exceptionally useful, and it burrowed into my skull when I first heard it from my colleague John Andrews (who in turn heard it from the late Colin Davis).
The same dots on the page will require a radically different gesture, rehearsal technique and style of leadership from you, every time you conduct them. Even if you're working with the same musicians.
Two professional orchestras in the exact same hall, playing the same programme on respective nights, will respond differently to the pulse, acoustic and gesture. Some play crisp and close to the beat, others leave a gaping yawn between your downbeat and the onset of sound. it is one of the beautiful mysteries of the artform.
When you add in different acoustics, amateur and youth musicians, players from different countries or orchestras with different string numbers, the variations amplify and multiply. They will all need something different from you.
So before you set your video camera up in front of the full length mirror to practice your moves, spend time with the score in silence and stillness, and refine your interpretation with as few preconceived ideas of what gesture you'll use as possible.
You will never have complete control over the final performance - individual players in the orchestra have a huge influence on the outcome onstage, and even you as a conductor will exhibit considerable variance from night to night. But if you put your energy into building a clear idea in your mind's ear of what you want in the ideal, you'll find it easier to use the rehearsal time to adapt what you are doing to what is actually needed by the musicians in front of you that day, rather than enforcing a preconceived choreographic idea, regardless of your colleagues.
Sorry to break it to you, but you're not. Leave that cliche off your biog.
I think back to my PhD supervisions, in which Dr Sue Court impressed so calmly on me that if something (or, in this case, someone) is interesting or important, it will be self-evident. If you have to point it out, it's probably an immoderate exaggeration.
Nobody is fooled. Every manager, agent and artistic planner knows the phrase well, and their eyeballs are so accustomed to rolling that they have mascara on the back of their eye sockets.
I'm not joking.
If you want - or need - to get paid for standing on the podium, then you ought to learn how your invoice is paid, by whom, and how your fee and artistic decisions impact the organisation's budget.
Even more than that, the depth of insight and experience around that table will blow your mind. As a musician, it's like getting to sit at the grown-ups' table at Christmas. Let your brain be a sponge, and soak up as much of the jargon, strategic thinking and wisdom in the room.
If you are the Music Director, then it is even more crucial that you attend as many as you can - the decisions made in that room form the foundation not only for the organisation's financial and strategic direction, but - consequently - the conditions under which you can do your work. Everything from the repertoire you can programme to the number of rehearsals you can have for a project finds its roots in the board's governance. The more you understand about their processes, and the pressures under which they are operating, the more you can utilise your artistic direction to promote and prolong the ensemble's financial and artistic health.
Once things are up and running in your career, you might even like to offer your own expertise on the board of a small arts organisation. It's a great way to "pay it forward", and many smaller arts charities and limited companies will be grateful for your industry connections and insights.
A continuation of point 2, I suppose. It can be useful to believe your own legend, to some degree, but don't fall in love with it.
The intrinsic confidence that accompanies humility will carry you a lot further, and be of far more use to your colleagues.
On the other hand, once you've opened the Pandora's Box of your self-doubt, that lid is nigh on impossible to shut. So be careful. It can be a thin line to tread.
This came from my conducting teacher at the University of Melbourne, John Hopkins. I loved him like a grandfather. He was a human first, and a conductor second. Sensitive, humble but not without pride, he seemed to subsist entirely on grapes, cheese platters, miso soup and anecdotes.
We were co-teaching an undergraduate conducting paper which required the students to sing at sight from a score. One student - a voice major, ironically - was truculent, arrogant and refusing to participate. He coaxed her gently into talking about the blockage she was feeling, and as the tears started to flow, it emerged she was so fearful of making a mistake, she couldn't bring herself to even try.
The quote above was his response to her, and it has stayed with me ever since. If you're still stuck in anxiety, try to flip it to gratitude. The two simply can't co-exist in your brain.
This is both spiritual and pragmatic.
Go where your specific skills and personality are needed and appreciated. Find the underserved audience, the tired annual season, the kids with no music provision, and bring them something that serves them more than it serves you. It reduces our tendency to envy others, it diverts us from our egotism and insecurity, and - importantly - it keeps us hireable.
This is closely tied to point 5, and entirely pragmatic.
The aim and volume of arts funding is changing in almost every territory on the planet, and the result will likely be fewer large, professional ensembles, and a vast reduction in subsidised artistic activity. The maestro market, therefore, will contract.
If you and your wee white stick still want to earn a crust in the new order, define your niche (see point 5 for a starting point), be conversant in emergent technologies, be open to different performance outcomes, and master the art of funding applications.
The future is likely to be bespoke, self-produced, immersive, and far more reliant on commercial revenue.
Alternatively, embrace amateurism. It is a noble, happy and far less complicated place to make music. Moreover, it has provided the locus for some of the most interesting art on the planet, as it has far fewer overseers.
When starting out, it feels like all you need is some footage of yourself conducting Brahms, cueing the winds without staring at the score, and gesticulating artfully with a full audience in the background.
I mean, you do. It is still really helpful. But the world doesn't need 250 more graduates every year who can conduct Brahms. We have loads of them already, and they're pretty awesome. There are more efficient and interesting ways to lay the foundations of your career.
Find a niche genre or composer, fundraise, pay players proper rates and record music that deserves to be listened to.
Move to a town with no prominent amateur or professional orchestra, start an ensemble with local players, and use the ticket sales to fundraise for local charities - embed the presence of art music for social good in that community.
Meet artists from other genres - directors, lighting designers, dancers, ceramicists... whoever!- and ask them what they need, and how you can be of use to them.
Word will likely spread. And in the meantime, you're doing something even more awesome than showing off your mixed-meter chops.
I'm not sure others will agree with me here, so follow this advice at your peril.
I've always felt that the point of rehearsing is to facilitate the musicians' ability to work together in such a way that by the end of the rehearsal process, they need you less.
Use the time to help the orchestra find solutions to acoustic issues in the hall, to learn which layers in the texture they need to connect with for ensemble and intonation, and how to balance the dynamics so that they can work according to their own internal engine.
It might not be entirely achievable in truly atrocious acoustics, or rooms with difficult sightlines. It's also a much harder thing to achieve with young musicians and amateur ensembles, and you will always have a crucial role to play in coordinating forces when conducting from the pit. But as a foundational principal, it is sound.
That's it. You can get the next round.
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