Who or what inspired you to take up conducting and pursue a career in music?
Conducting felt inevitable for me as a teenager: a natural evolution despite my oblivion at the time to everything it would eventually entail! The realisation was unceremonious- not really a dream or desire but a moment of clarity. I was lucky to find my two conducting teachers in the years that followed and both continue to mentor me almost 18 years on.Who or what have been the most important influences on your musical life and career?
I think my tastes and philosophies are largely the result of producing my own work. When you find yourself responsible for every detail you start to reconsider the possibilities. If your self and sanity are malnourished by the freelance world you create your own opportunities to fill the void. We need to constantly find ways to feed our appetites, grow our hearts, explode our minds. The energy, money, years we pour into these projects is lost if we’re not completely wild about the music and causes we champion. When you’re the one writing up the budget it really recalibrates your values.
What have been the greatest challenges of your career so far?
I spend most of my hours managing and financing my projects. I could easily give every day to score study alone and it’s hard not to mourn this time which might otherwise have been spent getting the music into my bloodstream. I’ve grown to understand that the luxury of being able to control the environment my performances inhabit is not to be taken lightly. For me the experiential aspects of music for our audience: physically, aurally, visually, emotionally- are the determining factors for the success of a piece or project. The more powerfully we can impact at a physiological level, the greater potential for our performance to evolve and develop in the mind and memory of the listener in the days, months, years that follow.
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