From timpanists to tutus, soloists to stage managers, here are the top 10 things I'll miss when I call time on my performance career.
No shade to the classical luminaries and A-list orchestras I occasionally shared the stage with, but none of you came close to Alien Weaponry, Jah'Mila, Ben Caplan and OKAN.
These were the projects that taught me the most about rhythm, interpretation, performance energy, my humble little place in the musical cosmos, and breaking the fourth wall. They also gave me the most joy.
The conductor's role in a fusion project constitutes so much more than learning and rehearsing the music. In fact, the music is often sight-readable, and you'll be lucky if you get enough rehearsal to even run each chart, so don't bother with a Schenkerian Analysis.
The challenges lie elsewhere:
As the conduit between two musical and cultural worlds, our job includes translation and negotiation, and (I believe) requires us to model respectful, whole-bodied, open-minded, participation.
On a side note, if anyone from BBC Proms or Edinburgh Festival is reading this, that magnificent orchestral set with Alien Weaponry (brilliantly curated by Jeremy Mayall for the NZSO) needs to be revived. And I WILL come out of retirement for it.
The wee city I grew up in has two beautiful old theatres.
The Regent is grand, plush and gilded, all red velvet and wood panelling, and sits at the heart of the city. I danced on that stage as a child extra for the Royal NZ Ballet, did the cancan and other ambiguous, quasi-sex worker dancing roles in operettas as a teenage girl, and sat onstage until 3 am painting the set with Executive Producer Nicholas McBryde on my first major assistant conductor gig (Madama Butterfly, with Tecwyn Evans waving).
The Mayfair is a button of a theatre on the wrong side of the train tracks. The loading dock is too small to get a touring set through, nearly every floor in the building is raked - even the loos - and there are rusting bobby pins between all the floorboards. It is one of my theatre-homes, in which I danced in ballet competitions and end of year recitals, and in later years, conducted various smaller scale operas and musicals.
The only option for a pre or post-show meal nearby back in those days (well before Deliveroo!) was the Nan King Palace buffet, or the budget supermarket next door. It was all faded 1950s glamour and camp nostalgia, and I had some of my happiest days, weeks and months treading those boards.
But what I remember most about the Regent and the Mayfair are their smells. Aged velvet, wood polish and vanilla ice-cream out the front; greasepaint, hairspray, satin and dust backstage.
Every old theatre I've worked in since has awakened those memories and satisfied that olfactory itch. They always smell like my childhood wonder, waiting in the wings with butterflies and awe.
I'll miss the backstage huggers, who knock on my dressing room door to catch up and have a cuddle.
Well, to be honest, they were all string players. So, actually, I'll miss the string players who come in for a hug.
In fact, now that I think about it, they were all lesbians. So perhaps what I'll really miss is the lesbians.
This is one of my great pleasures, circumnavigating the exterior of the hall to find the artist entrance - often next to the loading dock, or down a side alley - and feeling a shiver of excitement at having the privilege of being granted access to the closed labyrinth of tunnels, hallways and dressing rooms.
It's not about music, per se; it's about identity.
I also recognise a sort of "fantasy of belonging" playing out - I've always been fascinated by hidden passageways and secret tunnels; they make regular appearances in my dreams. And when you push open the stage door and approach the security desk, with your concert gear and scores stashed in your backpack, there's a feeling of being part of a secret society, a private club in the backstage bustle, hidden from the audience but connected to the vast, colourful history of performance spaces.
I confess to some pride at asking for the key to "dressing room no. 1", as the conductor. In truth, that room is usually a very isolated, lonely place, and I'll not miss it one bit.
But the first time I walk past a stage door, and know I'm no longer on the security list, it will smart.
Every now and then, you find a concerto partnership that transcends accompaniment. Paying such intimate attention to breathing, gazing with intensity at each other's wrists, shoulders, eyelids and lips, to catch every suspension and dive of the phrase - the performance is as much dance as music.
You slide barely perceptible smiles of reassurance and relief to each other as you pass the corners to be navigated, crest the climaxes with such tenderness that time expands, and as the final notes become memory, you find yourselves alone, together, under the voyeuristic gaze of orchestra and audience, riding a shared wave of endorphins.
If only you could light a cigarette on stage...
Perhaps due to my past life as a dancer, the repertoire in which I felt most at home - though all too rarely had the chance to conduct, in recent years - was the epic, late Romantic and early modernist scores of the early 20th century. Lutosławski's Concerto for Orchestra, Schmidt's Symphony no. 4 (egads, what a satisfying marathon!), Prokofiev's Cinderella, Korngold's Symphony in F# and - pushing firmly into early modernism - Le Sacre. I'm going to stretch back into the nineteenth century and include Bruckner here, too, whose orchestral works are incredibly satisfying to conduct.
I think my brain enjoys the tectonic nature of the writing, and working out how to manoeuvre such dense, often reluctant, masses of sound into life. I also recall I conducted far less for these works than for lighter, more filigree works which require so much more.... twiddling.
Conducting these works is a privilege, in every sense. They require massive budgets, massive orchestral forces, massive halls, massive audiences and multiple layers of shared responsibility and trust between conductor and musicians, to be viable. They are logistically and financially impossible, for most of the orchestras on the planet.
Shout out to the amateur orchestras, then, who often take them on, weighing down their flimsy foldable music stands with these weighty (and expensive) tomes in poorly-heated community halls and church transepts. They tread a fine line between the possible and impossible, but on that tipping point we can still find awe.
There are many aspects of modern orchestral life that I recognise as hangovers from the past - at best, redundant; at worst, corrosive.
As a conductor, there are two that I find particularly irksome: Plastic water bottles presented to us at every opportunity, always in pairs for some reason. And chauffeured cars.
I'm not sure whether the custom came about because conductors were generally ancient and/or incapable of managing the mundane tasks of being a human, or because they were very often likely to be inebriated. Regardless, I've seen many an orchestral manager sprout an aneurism when I've declined the offer of a driver to pick me up from the hotel two blocks away from the hall.
I think the plastic bottles and cars are distastefully excessive, and just plain daft given the climate emergency and arts funding crisis. But even more than that, the latter must have deprived many touring artists of the pleasure of being courted by a new city, under their own steam.
It has been a source of pleasure, comfort and therapy to find the most efficient route to the stage door in the morning, using alleyways, finding the optimal path through parks and public gardens, and knowing how to avoid the tourists and traffic to keep my walking pace constant (a must, for curbing one's pre-rehearsal anxiety!)
And there is further pleasure still in ambling back to the accommodation at the end of the day along a circuitous route, taking in the language(s), smells and tastes of a new culture. 1.5 hours is the maximum time I'll commit to walking to rehearsal, provided the route is interesting, varied and doesn't require walking along a motorway. 3 hours is barely enough for the walk back to my digs in the evening.
Some of the least satisfying patches of work involved being shuttled from airport to hotel to hall (with two fresh plastic bottles of water at each stage), missing all opportunities to let the city imprint on my DNA. It's often unavoidable in the US, where much of the country seems to be designed specifically to discourage walking.
But I am grateful that I can trace most of my career across city maps with my footprints.
I often think the conductor is just one point in a wonky polygon of musical leadership, with the steering wheel being passed between the timpanist, bassoons and principal double bass. I'll admit I'm probably biased towards the bass instruments, having studied with John Carewe, who has been known to bellow irately at students - minor and major - in the middle of rehearsal to "conduct the bass!"
It works. When you approach conducting in this way, you have a sense that this little team of harmonists is laying out the topography underneath the orchestra's feet. Get it right, and the upper voices will know what you desire of them.
And you get the thrill of feeling like part of a gang.
Ballet conducting gets a bad rap. But I'm a sucker for it.
Having studied to a professional level as a teenager, I feel completely at home in the ballet studio and am a native speaker in the idiosyncratic "five-six-seven-eight" dance jargon.
However, in most traditional ballets, the only section that really flexes the conductor's muscle is the pas de deux. Every principal couple in the company will perform it with shades of variation in tempo, nuance and energy, so you need your wits about you, and a good memory for each dancer's preferences and tendencies.
If it goes well, it can be utterly sublime - and with an experienced couple in full command of their technique, you can work with each other in a fluid, flexible way, as long as you respect the corners in which assuredness is needed.
But there is a different pleasure altogether in "popping-the-cherry" for a younger pair, often lower in the company ranks. They will be nervous, and many of their colleagues will be gathered in the wings to watch their role debuts.
If the orchestra is a friendly bunch, I'll always let them know when it's a new couple leading the cast, and you feel the attention change in the pit. The players avoid slipping into autopilot, those at the front of the pit who can see a bit of the stage sneak a peak when they can, and there's a hearty round of applause at the end in support of their colleagues onstage.
I feel a bit like a sentimental old mother duck, easing them through changes in direction watchfully, and keeping the tempo up on leaps and lifts so that they don't tire. And when they catch my eye at the end of the scene, grinning with pride and relief, I never fail to well up.
The only people in my career from whom I've learnt more about the human condition than brilliant directors, are brilliant stage managers.
We used to joke, when the tories were handing out PPE contracts to their school chums, that they'd be better off giving the work to the freelance backstage crews twiddling their thumbs in lockdown. Who else can create vivid universes of possibility with recycled scrap, gaffer tape, a can of spray-paint and less money than it takes to buy a round of pints in London?
In my new work sphere - which includes quite a few tech-led startup founders and entrepreneurs - I've frequently found myself in conversations about the point at which a founder needs to start hiring other people in order to build and scale their idea, all while the business is still too small to hire one of each skillset needed. The recurring lament is that no one human can be product manager, technician, financial planner, logistician and personnel manager in one, without months of bespoke training and micro-management.
Ahem... Get a cab down to the nearest theatre, and knock on the stage door!
Ok, I'm done.
Tune in next time for a list of the most intense things musicians have every said to me in rehearsal (and performance). Bring a tissue, a sick bowl, and possibly a lawyer.
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