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In this article, originally commissioned by the Royal Academy of Music, viola professor and Maggini Quartet member Martin Outram offers vital insights into practising, performing, and the importance of the musical score I’m in my 33rd year at the Royal Academy. I went to Cambridge University to study music, and then law, but it was clear early on that music was what I really wanted to pursue and that the world of litigation would be better off without me, so I stuck with music. John White, my viola teacher, lived close to Cambridge, so I was able to carry on studying with him during my university years, and then I came here to continue with him, in 1982. In 1984 I was asked to teach second-study viola players, and I’ve been here ever since. John White was a wonderful teacher. He was always positive and supportive. His teaching was very practical and was founded on a lot of British repertoire. I learnt some of the European greats with him – Brahms and Schubert – but he knew, as I should have known, that I was too young to play that sort of music. So we covered repertoire by Benjamin Dale, Gordon Jacob, Paul Hindemith, Rebecca Clarke. He was a squirrel – he gathered in every piece of the viola repertoire, and he had many contacts abroad who sent him music, which he would use with students. He was also a great protagonist; some of the viola repertoire had been written for him. Awareness of the repertoire and of the viola as a solo instrument has grown hugely. I recently led a workshop where there were four children under the age of ten who played fantastically well. When I was a student there were a few star students, but, without question, the average level is far higher now. One of the first things I look for in a prospective student is how aware they are of sound. Quite often, good violinists come along who have recently switched to viola, and they pick it up thinking, ‘I must press.’ That’s the worst thing you can do. I always emphasise that we should have weight, but choose if and when to use it. I quote William Primrose in his description of trying to keep your upper arm in the same diagonal plane as the stick of the bow. Violinists often keep their right elbow too high. I make them aware of this and plant them in front of a mirror so they can check it at home. I frequently talk about portato, the pulsing of the bow, and the feeling that the fingers of the right hand are active the whole time. I once read that to a mathematician, a straight line is an infinite number of points stuck together, just as a perfectly legato bow is an infinite number of pulsations stuck together. This helps to explain the concept that we’re always drawing sound with the right hand – the fingers are always active. This is so essential with the viola, because it means you’re constantly monitoring the weight and the sound. One of the great attractions of the viola is that it can sound feminine or masculine, and any stage in between. We can change our voice endlessly, according to the register we’re playing, which is enormously exciting. By changing vibrato, weight, speed, position and angle of bow, we can get the best and most vivid colour in any register. I can always tell if someone has practised in a confined space: there’s a certain held-in quality to their playing. If you practise in a large space you’re exposed, and have to be freer, more extrovert. I get students to stand in the middle of the room, away from things, away from the music stand, because that’s what it feels like on stage. One often hears people talking about practising an even bow speed, but it’s actually quite rare that we need an absolutely even bow speed. Most long notes and phrases have some sense of direction. So do practise long, even bows with a metronome, but also practise uneven bow strokes. Deliberately vary your bow speed, using scales or just open strings – keep it simple. We have to keep returning to the basic things. I use a variety of studies, but I like to have simple exercises alongside them. Rode Caprices are fantastic studies – very operatic and dramatic – but they’re quite challenging, and it’s easy to get so caught up learning notes and difficult bowings that we forget to carry on addressing the simple things. I try to stress that students should keep coming back to the real basics – bow distribution, finger shape when shifting, varying vibrato and so on. I’m always trying to get students to play as slowly as possible. It’s easy to add speed when you practise – you can just add rhythms and faster bow strokes. When the heat is on, speed comes quickly. But if you haven’t invested in a reservoir of softness and slowness, things start becoming jerky and angular. The more rounded our gestures are, the more reliable we are, even in terms of intonation. I spend my life stressing the importance of relaxation, softness and gentle shifts. One of my favourite studies is Kreutzer no.11, adding the shifting notes, so that the shifts become light. The means of production must be soft and light, and as gentle as possible. That’s what ensures not only that you get it right tonight, but also that it still feels okay when you wake up tomorrow. There’s a story that William Primrose didn’t consider he had the music under his fingers until he could play a passage 60 times without making a mistake. I don’t encourage mindless repetition, though. If you’ve got 120 minutes to practise, it’s worth spending 5 minutes organising your practice. Don’t just plough straight in. Structure it. Say, ‘I’m going to spend 10 minutes on this and 15 minutes on that.’ Be specific and stick to that schedule. Music has a lot to do with the mind and focusing one’s powers of concentration. Imposing some kind of mental discipline is far more effective than just doing endless hours of repetitious practice. Most students don’t do this. I understand, because I remember myself as a teenager, smashing through music because I loved it. I couldn’t get anywhere near it, but I was having a good time. When I look back on what my practice must have sounded like, it fills me with horror. It took me a while to discover these things, so I try to pass them on and save students time. It’s useful to practise from memory, because you dislocate yourself from the music stand. I encourage students to memorise studies. I ask them for one by memory every week, and another one that they’re learning, so there’s always an overlap. When you’ve memorised music, you’re more aware of what you’re doing. When you read from the music, that’s just what you’re doing. Playing from the music is a fact of life for most of us, though, because there isn’t enough time to learn everything from memory. Some performers even use the music in concertos. If you do that, you have to practise having the music there as a prompt. The worst thing you can do is practise a concerto from memory and then use the music on the day. It can come off the rails. It’s essential to use the score when learning a piece. Playing solo successfully is partially about understanding your part in relation to others, whether that’s an orchestra, piano or other string players. The best soloists play chamber music with the orchestra. I don’t have much time for soloists who don’t know what’s going on around them. The solo line is only the surface of the music. It’s what the public hears first of all, so it’s important, but surfaces have texture, and the texture reflects what’s going on underneath, otherwise the solo line becomes a shallow, disconnected veneer. A great performer is embedded in the texture and understands that relationship. Even in Paganini where you need to be, ‘me, me, me,’ it is still, ‘I’m doing this here because the bass line is doing that there,’ or ‘I’m doing that there because the second violins and violas are moving in thirds and there’s a thickening of the texture.’ It’s all about responding to those subtleties, even in the most virtuoso pieces. I try to help students to be able mentally to access a space where they feel calm. What is it that makes you serene? Lying on a beach listening to the waves come in, or lying in a bubble bath? It could be anything that your brain associates with feeling relaxed, confident and unchallenged. If you can practise fooling your subconscious that you’re in that tranquil place, then when you’re on the platform at Wigmore Hall, you can imagine you’re somewhere you’re not being judged, and feel calm. Playing isn’t just about the physical. Life is not only about what we do, it’s what we think about. I wish I’d done more of this work when I was younger. The viola repertoire of Schubert, Schumann and Brahms is so challenging. I’d never stop any student having access to it, but it can be frustrating. It’s one thing to crash through the notes, but these pieces are subtle and require a sensitive approach. You have to grow into them over a long period of time. Students are usually happy to wait until their mid-20s, though, providing you keep feeding them challenging repertoire. Musically, some things get better with age. Many students play the Bartók Viola Concerto now, because they can get round it, but playing it meaningfully is another thing. You have to have lived a few years and had a few life experiences. It’s the same with the Walton Concerto. I love it to bits, but it’s rare you hear a performance that does much more than superficially answer the questions posed by the music. There’s plenty of repertoire that’s not as demanding musically as the Bartók or Walton. I use the concerto by Edmund Rubbra – written for Primrose – which is a gem, from a great composer. The Martinů Rhapsody–Concerto has a big soul, and is a great stepping-stone to the Bartók, just as the Malcolm Arnold Concerto is a good bridge towards Walton. The Arnold is a jazzy piece, with a dark slow movement. The notes may be few, but the feeling is intense, like an English Shostakovich. One of the things I love about the Academy is that each student has different interests. I have pieces that follow on from each other, and when students ask me what they should play next, I’ll advise them, but I love it when someone comes along and says, ‘I’ve just heard this.’ I’ll say, ‘Let’s go for it.’ Their enthusiasm is so important to carry them through. It’s enormously satisfying when a student falls in love with a piece and makes it their own. It’s important to understand the interconnections between the arts. I encourage students to go to concerts, theatre and art galleries and to get life experiences under their belts. Architecture is important, too. My supervisor at Cambridge, Peter Le Huray, was best known for his work on Restoration music, but he taught me about Bauhaus, and now when I teach Paul Hindemith, who was a great friend of Walter Gropius, I make the connection. When I teach Walton we talk about his relationship with the Sitwell family, and with Bartók you can’t avoid talking about folk music. His concerto was written in 1945 when the world was in a mess and he was dying of leukaemia. Shostakovich’s sonata was the last music he wrote. A composer’s life situation is so critical to understanding their work. Playing contemporary music challenges your inhibitions and gets you out of yourself. I remember painting with my children when they were small. They splashed on the paint with great colours and shapes, while I was careful. It’s good to be reminded to get out of yourself and to chuck away all that inhibiting adult stuff. Students have to play contemporary work at some point in their time here. Some are more interested in that than others. Some would argue that there’s no one more gestural than Bach, so if you’ve learnt a sense of gestural freedom with contemporary music, and you come back to Bach, you’re bound to play it more convincingly. You’re able to become the music, and not get in the way of transmitting the incredible variety of gesture there is in his music. With the Bach Suites, we don’t have the original score, so they are a bit of a conundrum. The first source we have is Anna Magdalena’s copy, and then four or five other sources from slightly later. I encourage students to look at all of these sources in the library or online and to come to their own conclusions, because that’s all any of us can do. The emotion in Bach’s harmony is important and I’ll sit at the piano with students and discuss it. More often than not, his melody comes out of the harmonic logic – in the First, Second and Fourth Suites, particularly. I am fascinated by the idea that starting in a certain way leads you in a specific direction. Point A leads to point B, which leads to point C and then point D, but you might start at Point A in one way on Monday, and if you start it differently on Tuesday, everything else could be different. The music must be so much part of you that you can respond to that line, but you can only get to that stage by first analysing the harmony and what sort of logic that presents – how the different tensions and resolutions relate to each other. I love being at the Academy, because you have interesting conversations with colleagues all the time, which cause a spark, and you go off in a direction that you hadn’t thought of before. It’s also endlessly inspiring and fascinating to learn from watching students play. It’s a great job because you can never stop learning, improving, and going forwards in some way, which is an amazing privilege. This interview was first published on the Royal Academy of Music website in 2016 If you need help creating in-depth articles and interviews for your organisation, please get in touch.

In this interview, originally commissioned by the Royal Academy of Music, Josephine Knight, Alfredo Piatti Chair and Professor of Cello there, recalls some of the inspirational teaching she’s had, and explains her own priorities as a teacher I studied with Aldo Parisot at Yale and then at Juilliard. He was very tough, but always in a positive way, and methodical, clear and concise. He was also generous – he looked after his students. He laid the fundamentals for me to be free musically. There were no grey areas. If you asked, ‘Why can’t I do this?’ he would know exactly what to say, and explain the solution in complete detail. The technical foundations he gave me – along with my own take – are now what I pass on as a teacher. I feel very fortunate to have studied with David Strange. He has worked with some of the greatest conductors that have ever lived and his knowledge and experience were invaluable to me. He made me aware of pulse and sound. Pulse is life’s breath and your sound is ultimately who you are as a musician and how you touch people. He is someone I will always respect and cherish. He also believed in me and was instrumental in introducing me initially to the Academy as a professor. The big challenge as a cellist is how you get from A to B. We cover big distances, and we have to ask ourselves the right questions. Which finger are we shifting on? What bow are we shifting on? What do we want to say musically – do we want to highlight the interval or the note? These sorts of aspects are the tools of expression, as well as of technical assurance. You have to send a clear message from your brain about how to get from A to B. If someone says, ‘You’ve got to get to Stanmore,’ and you don’t even know if Stanmore is north or south, you’ll never get there. But if you have specific directions, you’ll be all right. Music is a double-edged sword. It isn’t just expression or just technique – it has to be both. Of course, you must think musically, but if you don’t know how to make that thought happen, without the facility, you’ll never be able to show it. I give my students very clear stages of practice. For example, if you’re practising scale passages, or fast passagework, stage one is to practise just the shifts in one bow, without vibrato – there’s no time to vibrate. Stage two is to play a dotted rhythm, so you’re making a quick shift, still in one bow. We’re constantly focusing on freedom, engraining an easy approach, and never over-trying as we move from one position to another. I have various practice techniques for gaining speed, but one stage would be to start playing through fast passages with each note having six quick notes to the bow, then 5, 4, 3, 2 and finally 1, but keeping the quick notes the same speed, thus gradually shaving a little of the beat each time. This is a brilliant way of building speed into your practice, which I use myself to get results. It’s all about information, preparation and execution. The information is about how you’re going to play, and then comes the preparation and execution of that information. I give my students a very clear idea of the foundations so they have the right information – and then practice techniques for preparing and executing, so they can find the refinement in their playing. Every student is different. If you’re teaching a first-year undergrad you have the luxury of four years’ space to set the foundations, and to take things a bit slower. They’re younger so they need more time. Postgrads are more mature, so your pace is a little different. I don’t feel you should take a student back to basics just for the sake of it. If something isn’t working technically, you have to address it quickly, bringing in pieces and studies that take them forward through that process. I never paper over the cracks, but make sure to set the foundations of what they need technically and to set up a programme of how they practise. Aldo Parisot never gave me a single study. He believes you should give pieces rather than studies because it’s more useful. He could always find a piece that incorporated what I needed to be able to do. I don’t think it does any harm to do studies – it can only back up what you’re doing technically – but I’m not going to say, ‘Learn all the Popper and Piatti etudes and then you’ll be able to play the cello.’ If I set a study it’ll be for a particular thing, such as sustaining, or shifting, or up-bow staccato. I get my students to draw a family tree of the repertoire they’ve learnt and what they’re going to learn. It’s important that by the time they leave they have a balanced repertoire that includes Beethoven, Brahms, concertos, contemporary music and Bach. If you write it all down, you can see if it looks well balanced. We have an obligation at least to try to take from the score what we can see, and reflect what would have been going on stylistically when that piece was written. We shouldn’t just ignore what Anna Magdalena wrote in her autograph of the Bach Cello Suites, for example. That was my only point of disagreement with Aldo Parisot – I didn’t go to him to learn stylistic Bach. He has always been surrounded by composers – Hindemith was at Yale while he was there – and he believes that you have the right to play anything how you want. He encourages students to think for themselves. Why have you chosen that fingering? Why are you shifting in the new bow, or in the old bow? These are all decisions, and he would challenge those decisions, which was healthy. It was exciting to have this fantastic technical foundation work, but always with a view to what you could do musically: the control and the colours. He brought it out of me, and that’s what I try to do with my students. I believe that you have to be respectful about the difference between Brahms, Beethoven, Schubert, Schumann, so I do discuss stylistic matters, but I also try to bring out students’ individuality and to help them think for themselves. That journey is so exciting, because you see them become confident young performers, who walk out of here thinking, ‘I can do this,’ rather than worrying that there are so many things they don’t know. They walk out of here and are ready to fly as musicians. I don’t give out bowings and fingerings, except to first years. It’s amazing what they come up with. The other day I was giving lesson on the Schumann Cello Concerto to a second year and she came back with some wonderfully expressive fingerings. I asked her about her choices and her reasons were spot on. It was so exciting. I encourage that by asking questions. Why have you chosen that? What else could you do there? What is important to you in that phrase? What colour do you want? Is there something else you could do there? Students might go away and come back with one set of fingerings, and I’ll say, ‘Come back with two more.’ It doesn’t matter if the fingerings are difficult – they’re too young to be making decisions based on that. I always give reasons why fingerings work or don’t work, so they can think for themselves. I am tough on students, but in a positive way. I’ll always say, ‘If you’re practising it this way and it’s already better, just think what it could sound like.’ I don’t ever tell students that they sound bad, or that they should do something in a particular way. Aldo Parisot didn’t say anything nice to me for about six months, but the day he said, ‘Yeah, it’s pretty good,’ I felt fantastic! I didn’t want to hear that something sounded great, when I knew it didn’t. You don’t pay money to hear that you sound good if you don’t. However, I always say when things do sound great. It’s important to make five minutes of practice count. If you are working on a difficult passage, don’t think about how you are going to get the whole thing perfect in an hour. Take four bars, or even two, and if you practise in the right way, you could get those right in just five minutes. If you carry on doing that, in a week they will be perfect. The most frustrating thing is when students don’t practise the right way, even when they’ve been given the information. Sometimes I put on a timer and say, ‘You’ve got three minutes. Practise.’ These things happen in the profession: someone will come to you and ask you to fill in with half an hour’s notice. You have to be able to scan the part, work out where the difficult passages are and be ready in 30 minutes. I talk the student through how to get up to speed in three minutes, and then get them to play the passage. You see the shock in their faces when they play it and it’s good. With the right information, they can do it. It’s important to be able to practise in your head. Rostropovich used to do this. I was lucky enough to play with him when I was in the London Symphony Orchestra and learnt this skill from him. He told me that if he was learning a new piece he wouldn’t even get the cello out the case. He would open the score, scan the part and decide what he wanted to do with it – musically, fingerings, everything. That is the power of the brain. You can get very quick results. Sometimes I get students to do it. Look through the phrase. Where does it go? What do you want to do with it musically? What’s not right at the moment? What about the timing of the shifts, the colour of vibrato, your choice of string? You can practise all these things in your head. We blame everything on our fingers, but the instructions come from the brain first. If you map out what you want to do, you can cut down your practice time massively. I get my students to do a practice diary, so they can see how much time they’ve spent practising technique and pieces. When I’m working for a big concert, and even when I just want to do a good day’s practice, I put a timer on my phone. Then at the end of every day I know exactly how much practice I’ve done, to the minute. Two hours’ practice means you’re as good as you were yesterday – no better. Anything over two hours, you’re making improvement. I tell students to do from four to six hours every day. It’s better to do four hours every day than one hour one day and five hours the next, though – you build more with consistency. It’s not good enough to say you haven’t been able to practise one day because you had orchestra. If you do an hour and a half before and after, that’s three hours, and you can make real progress. You don’t have to be muscly in order to make a big sound, but you do need to use yourself well. In lessons, I talk about being free, breathing, posture and where arm weight comes from. Students at the Academy are offered Alexander Technique for free, and I tell them to sign up for it, because it’s invaluable. You learn how to use your body, to think of the directions your mind sends when you move, and to reset your back, which is useful, particularly if you’re carrying a cello around. I studied with Mischa Maisky at masterclasses in Sienna, after studying with Aldo Parisot. He is such an expressive musician, and it was so interesting to learn about the Russian style, having learnt the American style and taste. The American way is with heavier, deliberate shifting, whereas Russian shifting is less pronounced. Russian playing is very romantic, but not in an obvious, upfront way. This is mainly about the speed of shifts. Also, the extraordinary thing about Mischa Maisky is that when you hear him, you think he’s just made the music up there and then, but he’s actually thought everything through. He’s worked out what he will do musically and where he will take each phrase. When you see the conductors and musicians who walk into the Academy, you understand how lucky the students are. I’m not a teacher to say students should stay in a practice room and not do orchestra. I encourage them to embrace everything they’ve got here. However, it is like a see-saw. Sometimes you put a bit more into one thing – it might be orchestra or chamber music, and you’ll just be chipping away at solo stuff; and then the next week it will tip the other way. We discuss time management a lot, and what they’re going to do if they only have a few hours a day. I tell them to embrace everything that’s thrown at them because it’s such a fantastic programme. They should take every drop they can squeeze out of what’s going on. The most important thing is that every student reaches their potential. That’s all I can help them do as a teacher. I tell them it’s a tough world out there and there are no guarantees. I try to be positive, but in a realistic way. It matters to me that all my students go on to earn a living. They know how they need to work towards auditions, competitions, and to being successful. I work on orchestral excerpts because even if students aren’t going to go into an orchestral position, playing excerpts well takes enormous technical refinement and discipline. For the second year postgrads, I incorporate learning repertoire for auditions. Success in competitions and auditions is simply about practising enough, and having put in place what we’ve worked on in lessons as part of preparation, so that you know that when you walk through the door, you’re going to be your best. You might lose 5 per cent of your capability, but you’re not going to lose 50 per cent, and that’s empowering. Students are often very humble. It’s exciting to see their eyes light up when they become more accomplished and they think, ‘I can do this.’ Most of what I do is to give them the tools and the confidence to know that they can do this, and can go on and be successful. This interview was first published on the Royal Academy of Music website in 2016 If you need help creating in-depth articles and interviews for your organisation, please get in touch.

In this article, originally commissioned by the Royal Academy of Music, the double bass professor and Principal Bass of the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra Dominic Seldis offers essential advice on building a career: play jazz and pop to develop your rhythm; say yes to everything; and don’t smell I went to Chetham’s School of Music from the age of 8, playing the violin. Around the age of 14 my progression on the violin was so slow that the Director of Music said, ‘Either you take up the double bass or you leave.’ I knew I couldn’t go back to civilian life – I was aware I was in a little musical bubble and I loved it. I had one lesson on the bass and I never played the violin again. It was a feeling of coming home – an epiphany. For a lad who was so immature, suddenly everything made sense. Everybody left me alone and I was left to travel on my journey. At the time, in 1989, it was not particularly fashionable to come to the Academy. That’s what attracted me to it most. When I came to do the audition, I walked into the building and again I suddenly felt this feeling of being at home, somewhere I could fit. I was given a place and a scholarship. There was something about Robin McGee, my first professor at the Academy, with which I connected immediately. There were better-known professors at other conservatoires, but he believed in me enough to give me the scholarship, which said an enormous amount to me. I had my first lesson with Robin in the bass room where I now teach. I used to sit on a very high piano stool, almost like a cellist. I thought it was hip and I wanted to be different. I walked in and sat on this high stool, and he said to me, ‘Do you want to be a professional bass player?’ I answered, ‘Yes, please.’ And he replied, ‘Get off that chair, then, and sit on a proper stool.’ I knew from that moment that he was going to teach me everything I needed to know. Robin taught me was to say yes to everything. It expands your musical world. He also told me I needed to learn to do jazz, otherwise I’d never do gigs in the West End. He was principal of the London Sinfonietta and he would turn up with crazy scores and we would work them out. I was like a sponge. Somebody would ask, ‘Can you do the Rossini cello and bass duets and before I knew it I was saying yes; and I was doing the ‘Trout’ Quintet before I had the chance to say, ‘Hi, I’m Dominic.’ I learnt a lot about technique from other people, too. Then, as now, you could book a lesson with anyone, and I took full advantage of that, with Howard Davis, David Strange, Jeff Kline and Zakhar Bron, among others. It was entirely up to me – there was no one holding my hand. The hothouse environment I’d grown up in didn’t exist here. It was up to you to develop yourself and it was all there for the taking. I took full advantage of everything. I was able to play jazz and pop – I was in a band with Aled Jones. I did weddings, bar mitzvahs, and funerals. I played chamber music and started to do recitals. As a result, I came to the Academy as a bass player and left as a musician who plays the bass. This was an enormous difference and that is what essentially the Academy was able to offer me. I encourage my students to do exactly the same thing. In order to get into the Academy students are already very good. There are a few things I can improve technically, but by the time they get here, I don’t believe it’s necessary to break them down to nothing and build them up again. Bass playing has developed enormously and kids come to the Academy fully aware of the standards they need. What’s missing is experience, and I try to get them off YouTube and out playing. I would rather they get the experience themselves than listen to me telling them about the experience. I don’t have a structure to lessons, but I spend a lot of time talking and listening, and hearing students playing. I take each student at face value. Everybody develops in different ways and at different speeds. I was such a late starter and a slow learner, and I was utterly hopeless in my first year. I’m very tough on students. If they don’t work then I’ve got no time for them, because I know that there’s a queue of people who are willing to work. At the bottom of it all, you have to put in the hours – there’s no doubt about that. All I can really do is to teach people to teach themselves. I tell them that on day one. I’m not going to be a guru or to whip them. I’m going to encourage them to discover their own potential, positivity and worldliness within the music business. I want students to be able to go out feeling confident about themselves and their own ability to say yes to everything, and then decide what they’re going to do. I tell them: ‘Take everything in and spit out anything you don’t like. That makes you a musician. It makes you.’ As a result they’re busy. They hit the ground running when they come here and that’s what it is like in the real world as a bass player – I haven’t sat down for 25 years. The connections you make at the Academy carry through throughout your professional life. I met my pianist, James Pearson, who is a jazz player, at the Guildhall, and when he came to the Academy we hung out at the bar, I asked him to play for something I was doing, and we’re still doing recitals together, nearly 30 years later. There’s a big social side to learning: sitting, listening, chatting, building stories and sharing experience. The Academy encourages a kind of maverick attitude, and as a result I’d like to think that bass players leave the Academy as better musicians and not just okay bass players. The world has got plenty of bass players – it hasn’t got many great musicians. Once you’ve played at a high level at the Academy, there’s nothing stopping you from doing anything in the music business, anywhere in the world. I encourage anybody who comes to the Academy as a bass player to play to the other bass teachers. We are all at the very top of our game. It’s the same with the teachers throughout the Academy. Nearly all of them are out there doing it and are willing to spend their time teaching you the ways and techniques of putting bread on the table. That’s what we’re here to do. We want our students to go out and earn a living, and it’s tough. It’s crazy to think ‘I want to be a soloist,’ or ‘I want to be an orchestral player.’ You’ll limit yourself at 18. The great thing about playing the bass is that every bit of music needs a bass line, so why pigeonhole yourself? That’s a very limited view of what’s possible as a bass player. Good rhythm is vital as a bass player, which is why it’s so important to play jazz and pop, as well as classical. As well as being the rhythm in the orchestra, you are the foundation of the harmony. The first building block of any chord comes from the bottom, and it’s important to understand your role within the music. Good intonation is absolutely essential. I spend a lot of time in lessons making sure that intonation is accurate, sitting down at a piano playing through things slowly. It’s important to focus on solo repertoire for orchestral auditions, but you’ll be lucky to perform recitals unless you have a job that gives you the freedom to do what you want because the mortgage is paid. In my orchestra, the Concertgebouw, people are always going off and doing their own thing outside the orchestra because they can relax, as they’ve got a great job. It encourages them to become great musicians. As a bass player, you play at the nose-bleed end of the instrument for fun, and at the bass end for money. Both are essential in making yourself a better musician. All the bass teachers at the Academy come from the ‘London School’ of bass playing. The ‘London School’ is an attitude. If you want to work in London you have to tick all the boxes – to make a big sound and play in time and in tune – otherwise you won’t work. I can always spot London bass players. They have a solid technical basis, they’re musical and they are able to fit into any genre. That’s essential, because living in London, you can’t afford to say no. So much of the work is playing outside classical music. You have to be able to do it. London-based players have all the styles covered. There are very few places in the world where you need to do all of it – New York is another one – because there are few other cities that need so many musicians to do so many things. Bass players become stronger musicians as a result, and that is the point of coming to London, and to the Academy. There are people who can play both classical and jazz brilliantly, but as a general rule it’s not possible. If you speak to any of the jazz players in London their music is about purity and going deep into the music and there’s no way you can do that if you’re studying classical music. At the same time jazz players can’t play Bottesini’s Second Concerto. Smart classical bassists learn how to play jazz well enough to get away with it, but without pretending that they are great jazz bass players. There is a group of players who do both well and wouldn’t consider themselves experts at either, and I’m jealous of them. They’re like chameleons. They can fit into almost any genre and that’s great. But they will never play Mahler no.5 at Carnegie Hall or perform at The Blue Note. Great musicians inspire one. I have got the best job in the world, as principal of one of the world’s great orchestras, and I can share my experience with my students. I’m at the top of the hill, and lucky enough to hang out musicians of an incredibly high level, so I can pass on the things I learn straight from the horses’ mouths. I try to put across to students that I sat right there were they are sitting, and if I can do what I’m doing – and I’m no genius – then so can they. I managed to get here through luck and hard work, and if I can, there’s no reason they can’t. Everyone who comes to the Academy has that potential. We teach students how to behave professionally. None of them steps out of line by the time they leave. If they do, we’ll come down on them like a ton of bricks. There’s a way to behave in this business. We know that because we’ve done it and it works, so we encourage people to be professional at all times. It’s important to get the professional stuff down – to be polite and friendly, and not to smell! It’s a joy to come here and see students’ progression each time, and to see how they clock out at the end. That’s what’s exciting about being here. I have a busy, full class, and it’s super-intense. My hope for students is that they become greater musicians, because music will always win. Being a great musician is difficult. Music should be at the top of the agenda when it comes to performing. When you leave it’s only the beginning of your musical journey. You have to continue listening and learning all the time, to be like a sponge, and to develop your own musical world. That will keep you sane for the rest of your existence. This interview was first published on the Royal Academy of Music website in 2016 If you need help creating in-depth articles and interviews for your organisation, please get in touch.

An open letter to Mary Wakefield, asking for essential support for the cultural sector Dear Ms Wakefield, I’m writing out of desperation. You were able to help Ella Davis in her request to open up support bubbles for single parents and I hope that with your understanding you might be able to come to the aid of my musical and theatrical colleagues. We’ve tried everything: emails and tweets to Oliver Dowden; letters to MPs; petitions; various hashtag campaigns. We’ve reasoned that the cultural sector makes billions; demonstrated that our cultural industries influence the world with their soft power; explained how important the arts are to our identity; and pleaded for the hundreds of thousands who stand to lose their livelihoods, across every area. Yet we hear nothing. So I write to you reaching beyond logic to emotion, using a thought experiment. Imagine driving through London on a sunny morning in 2022. We go past the Royal Albert Hall, which is now the headquarters of a powerful international sect – the iconic building that was once home of the BBC Proms (jewel in the country’s musical crown) and host to legendary pop, jazz and rock concerts. We drive into town, where the Southbank Centre (once visited by the world’s great orchestras and soloists) is a luxury hotel and the National Theatre (founded by Laurence Olivier, the stage on which many modern classics had premieres and a training ground for Britain’s world-leading theatre tradition) is the head office of a foreign bank. The market stalls and restaurants along the Southbank have closed, and the area is as dead and forbidding as it was when I was growing up in the 80s. The losses are even more significant as we go outside London. Across the country, local theatres and concert halls are closed (Nuffield Southampton Theatres has already fallen). Historic venues are derelict and full of squatters, or they’ve been taken over by Wetherspoons. Orchestras, choirs and theatre companies have ceased to exist, their members unemployed or working in different sectors – lifetimes of training and hard work come to nothing. The audiences who need them are sitting isolated in their homes, listening to old recordings. I understand that you are a musician, which gives me hope that you know the fear that musicians feel about not being able to play, and how desperate music lovers are to enjoy the communal experience of live music again. As we watch football players tackling each other and drinkers crowding pubs, maybe you can empathise with the horror we feel as our favourite orchestras, choirs, festivals and music venues are drowning, and not waving any more. In your lovely Spectator article about the power of children’s imaginations you wrote: ‘Even tiny children quite naturally both narrate a story and inhabit the characters they invent; they endow socks, rocks and trees with personality and see things from their point of view.’ Children do indeed have wild imaginations, and theatre and music stimulate and focus them. Where will they go for this inspiration when all these organisations have shut or had to scale back dramatically? What will happen to the amazing educational work these companies do, drawing out young personalities and offering them vital skills to take into adulthood? It’s not just children who need their imaginations encouraged. As we come out of the worst of lockdown, we all need theatre and music to help us process this difficult time. You know as well as I do that the arts aren’t just a pastime for those who can afford them: they make us all better; they make society better. Of course, there will still be music, drama and comedy in some shape or form. Some organisations will adapt and thrive, and maybe positive changes will emerge. But in the arts, the surviving fittest are not necessarily the best. With so many closures, there will be less choice for audiences and fewer opportunities for young talents to hone themselves and their work. The teams and systems behind orchestras and theatres, which have taken generations to refine, will be disbanded and lost. Everything will be grim and a little bit mediocre, while the ghosts of our great traditions haunt the repurposed theatres and concert halls. Is this how you want the country to be in 2022? Do you want your family to exist in a society where people can go to the pub at 6am but our great orchestras, musicians, actors, comedians, choirs, chamber groups, ensembles, bands, the many who support them and the businesses that service them are left to fend for themselves? The immediate need is to be allowed to reopen venues to audiences, even at small scale, with social distancing and sensible precautions, including mask-wearing if necessary. At least that way orchestras and theatres can start making money again, just as cinemas and museums can, and as is happening around the world. These organisations also desperately need a comprehensive support package to avoid the dark future I‘ve outlined. You wrote that Ella Davis’s letter helped you understand the predicament of single mothers. I hope that I have offered at least some insight into what’s at stake here for everyone who works in the cultural sector, and for society as a whole. I don’t know what you did last time to help, but I – and hundreds of thousands of others – beg you to do it again. Yours faithfully, Ariane Todes [Emailed to Mary Wakefield]

If music has helped you through this crisis, there are many ways to show your gratitude What has listening to classical meant to you during lockdown? How has it made you feel? Calmer? Happier? Less miserable, at least? Listening figures for classical music radio stations have shot up, and we can assume that at least some of this effect is because classical music offers something that people need right now: access to worlds beyond words, politics and crisis, dreamy escape, forgotten landscapes – or just a pretty background. And yet music seems to be at the bottom of a long list of priorities for the Department of Culture, Media and Sport, which has allowed the opening of cinemas, amusement arcades, pubs and museums on 4 July, but no live music in concert halls. This inconsistent and illogical policy is devastating to the musicians who have been unable to make a living since lockdown and face existential threat: according to the Musicians’ Union 38 per cent of UK musicians haven’t qualified for government support and many are considering giving up music. There are many musicians and organisations who are trying to make a difference through letters and delegations, but it’s not enough. In what seems to be a popularity contest, we need more support from people who don’t make a living from music but need it in their lives. If musicians have helped you get through the last three months, there are things you can do to show your support, both simple and involved, with and without spending money. 1) Write to the Secretary of State for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport, Oliver Dowden Oliver Dowden has been tweeting about every sector other than music – I don’t know what his own personal tastes are, but music barely seems to be on his radar, so help him understand how important it is. Email him at the DCMS and tell him how vital music is to you: enquiries@culture.gov.uk. (He’s also on Twitter on @oliverdowden.) I emailed him with a specific suggestion to open up live music to small groups at least, to get chamber music concerts going. 2) Write to your local MP It’s important for your own MP to understand how essential music is so they can represent your view in parliamentary debates – that’s the underlying principle of democracy. Find your MP here. Disclaimer: as with writing to the DCMS, I can’t guarantee any response or that anyone will even read anything you write, but it’s still important. This is how democracy works and you should at least get a response from someone in government. Also – it feels good. 3) Pay for streams If you watch any live streams of operas or concerts on YouTube and there’s a donate button at the end, click and give. You have watched a piece of art that would normally cost you a fair bit of money (not to mention car park charges) from the comfort of your own home. Many artists, technical staff and administrators worked hard to produce it. We all know that free content and streaming models have major problems that need to be addressed and I won’t go into the detail of that debate here, but if you sit down to watch a show and the creator is asking for payment, it’s a matter of personal integrity to give something. 4) Donate If you are still working and can afford to, consider making donations to the orchestras and organisations you like. Show them that you value what they do and want them to be there at the end of the crisis. 5) Buy CDs You may be listening to the radio or a subscription service, but it doesn’t necessarily help musicians. Buying CDs is a simple way to show artists that you appreciate them, puts money in their coffers and gives them a vote of confidence with their record companies. 6) Buy tickets We don’t know when concerts will be back to normal – maybe not until next year – but many venues have already revealed their 2020/21 seasons. Have something nice to look forward to when this is all over by committing to a concert in, say, April 2021? 7) Support charities There are specialist musicians’ charities that are doing amazing work. Help Musicians set up a hardship fund that is already depleted and needs replenishing. Some charities have been offering free music online music education, supporting students, but also giving musicians much-needed employment, for example the Nicola Benedetti Foundation and London Music Masters (and if you donate to LMM before 30 June, your donation will be matched through the Big Give). (I wrote about both of these here.) There may be other musical charities local to you, so it’s worth researching them. These are tough times for everyone, but musicians are making it better for all of us. Show them what that means to you by helping them.

New generations of star players are committing to music education at the grass roots level with a focus that might create lasting change for classical music There’s not much good news in the classical music world at the moment – it’s mainly devastation, uncertainty and fear. But one positive trend offers a glimmer of long-term hope. In the last few weeks there’s been plenty of evidence of how the younger generations of soloists are embracing their social responsibilities, committing to music education in thoughtful, creative ways, leading me to feel genuinely optimistic. Leading the charge with conviction and intellect is Nicola Benedetti. She and colleagues from her eponymous foundation recently provided two weeks of free online string workshops for anyone who was interested, whether young, old, professional or amateur. They reached 7,000 people in 66 different countries, and the hour-long final celebration was an emotional testament to the power of music, hard work and connection, even via Zoom. Jess Gillam’s first Virtual Scratch Orchestra brought together 934 musicians from 26 countries aged 6 to 81, to play Where Are We Now?, and their second track is on its way. During a conversation organised by Orchestras Live, she explained that one of her take-outs from the current crisis is a commitment to incorporate educational work in local schools whenever she goes on tour. She already has form, as a trustee of HarrisonParrott’s Foundation and working with organisations such as National Children’s Orchestra. We also saw a host of young soloists, including Sheku and Isata Kanneh-Mason, Ben Beilman, Benjamin Baker and Elena Urioste, play Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star with a group of young students from London Music Masters, which serves children from mixed cultural and social backgrounds across London. Since lockdown the organisation has continued an impressive online offering and has even opened up its teacher training programme for free. London Music Masters pioneered the concept of bringing in such soloists to work with children from its foundation in 2008, developing a complete eco-system with kids, teachers and soloists working together and learning from each other. Children have music in their lives, teachers develop best practice and young soloists learn to communicate and inspire little ones. It’s a win-win-win. ‘What we’re seeing here is a commitment by young players at the grass roots level, to children who may or may not be talented and may or may not become professionals’ Of course, famous soloists have often given masterclasses and held teaching positions. Yehudi Menuhin even started his own school. But this usually happen happens at a certain age, once touring and practice become tedious. It’s often expensive and superficial – a quick visit to a conservatoire to dish out advice to the cream of the students. What we’re seeing here is a commitment by young players at the grass roots level, to children who may or may not be talented and may or may not become professionals. It doesn’t matter – they can all enjoy it and benefit from it. With such enthusiastic mentors they may even realise that classical music is cool and exciting. At a time when music has been stripped from the syllabus and there are all sorts of calumnies about it being elitist, having such champions couldn’t be more important. This cause may have been accelerated by lockdown, in that soloists are sitting at home with time on their hands, unlikely to resume international tours for a while, but it also speaks of a generation that takes its social responsibilities seriously and sees the big picture. It might also be a smart development in a dysfunctional music business where artists earn peanuts for recordings and now that concerts are all but dead until 2021. I don’t begrudge any musician who finds new income streams, as long as it’s done with integrity and thought (education work won’t make anyone rich, anyway). ‘Music students are generally not encouraged to teach and are even put off from spending time learning the craft by their own professors’ It also flies in the face of an odd paradox of classical music whereby music pedagogy is devalued by the very industry which entirely depends on it. Music students are generally not encouraged to teach and are even put off from spending time learning the craft by their own professors. (This attitude may also be changing with younger generations of professors.) Conservatoires pay lip service in offering specialist courses, but there still seem to be silos for those who are likely to become teachers, while ‘soloists’ are left to practise their six hours a day and play in all the conservatoire orchestras. In reality most of them end up teaching, but have to make it up as they go along. I’ve never understood the logic of this. A strength of the old Russian school was that students taught from early on – one of the reasons its traditions are so thorough and successful. Being able to teach others and therefore themselves allows musicians to develop throughout their lives. These young artists are reclaiming teaching as a vital element of being a musician – it empowers them as well as their students. That’s not to say that they should be teaching the nuts and bolts of playing an instrument. It’s not right for star musicians to come in and threaten the livelihoods of teachers. One of the key things about Benedetti’s sessions is that they are supplementary to students’ own lessons. When I watched her in action earlier this year leading a session at the Royal Festival Hall, she obviously knows the pedagogy in depth and explains it as necessary, but her role is largely to inspire and galvanise both students and teachers. One of the aims of her foundation, and of London Music Masters, is to support and enthuse teachers and raise the level of teaching, rather than undermining or replacing them. ‘They might have long and happy careers rather than burning out in their 40s or being destroyed by the physical demands of relentless performance’ Will these players have less time to practise, less focus to study their scores and less drive to perform concertos around the world? Possibly. But they might also connect better with the innate joy of music, discover new ways of learning, find new stories to tell and derive real satisfaction from the change they’re seeing up close. They might have long and happy careers rather than burning out in their 40s or being harmed by the physical demands of relentless performance. (And in truth, the things that bug me about playing today relate to style and personality rather than technical perfection, but that’s for another article.) Most importantly, these players are encouraging the audiences and players of the future and ensuring that classical music is as inclusive as it can and should be. Despite the catastrophic possibilities of our present situation, there are opportunities to rebuild our world and these musicians are offering us all a better future. Long may they continue.

Coronavirus has threatened the classical music world’s very existence while simultaneously showing us how much we all need it. Can the business find ways to harness this passion in its survival plans? It’s two years to the day since one of the most magical and thrilling experiences of my life – playing Brahms in Berlin’s Philharmonie alongside the international amateurs of the BE PHIL orchestra, conducted by Simon Rattle. I wrote about it for the Guardian and followed up with an article about the under-acknowledged importance of amateurs to the music world and why we should be brought into the hallowed halls of classical music. I’m convinced that when we eventually emerge from our solitary lockdowns, the classical music world is going to need its amateurs more than ever. It should be thinking of ways to work with them and offer them high-grade musical experiences such as the BE PHIL. The current situation has taught us many things, both good and bad, one of which is how profoundly necessary music is at a time like this. Our vulnerability and mortality suddenly very real, many people have felt the need to play and sing, even as a tiny square on a computer. The online outpouring of music has been cross-denominational: top soloists, orchestral players, chamber musicians, amateurs, students, teachers and children have all posted their performances. Musicians of every standard have been playing outside their houses making their neighbours cry (in a good way). My social media feed is full of people, both young and old, picking up long-discarded instruments to fill the time. Even those, like me, who haven‘t felt like going public have been glued to Radio 3 more than ever before. It has revealed the very essence of music, which is to connect and comfort. In an extreme like this, it doesn’t matter if the sound quality is terrible or the players can’t quite hear each other. It’s all the same if they’re competition-winning stars or they only started to play at the beginning of lockdown. If either playing or listening to music makes someone feel better, it has value – simple. (I’m not saying that it doesn’t matter how well someone plays – I’m a total violin snob, but in this context, quality is not the point.) It’s a revolution of sorts – a seizure of the means of production. Anyone can perform anywhere, regardless of having a manager or press officer – or playing note perfect It’s a revolution of sorts – a seizure of the means of production. Anyone can perform anywhere, regardless of having a manager or press officer – or playing note perfect. This is a democratisation of music, and rather than feel threatened or competitive, the classical music establishment should harness this groundswell of feeling and energy, and its new recruits. The current model of the classical music community is a Venn diagram of performers, teachers, amateurs and students, all in their own circles, with only some enlightened musicians in the crossover areas. What we’re discovering is that we have much more in common than that. There is a continuum that runs from a beginner at one end to the world’s greatest musician at the other, with amateurs ranging from terrible to really quite good. Fundamentally, our needs and drives are the same. Professionals have worked harder, studied more deeply and consistently, and may have a different degree of talent. But maybe amateurs are closer to the daily ‘connect and comfort’ aspect of music, freed from technical judgement and financial imperatives. Essentially, we are the same species and we must support each other. Simon Rattle showed the way with BE PHIL, his big-hearted, open-minded vision of bringing amateurs into the famous Philharmonie – I understand that Kirill Petrenko, his successor in Berlin, will conduct another in May 2021. Nicola Benedetti has gone even further in the belief that music belongs to everyone in her efforts to reach every level of player and promote good teaching practice. During lockdown she’s ramped up her commitment, offering Virtual Sessions across the entire continuum, with an energy and generosity that will certainly see a surge in violinists and may change lives. Aside from the moral and spiritual reasons to include amateurs, there’s a more pressing practical one: most amateurs have money. While professionals have had their incomes slashed from one moment to the next for the foreseeable future, amateurs are by-and-large still going about their professions – and spending less money during lockdown (we’re also desperately missing our own concerts). The brutal reality is that orchestras, venues and conservatoires are not going to function at full capacity for months yet. I’m sure they’re all working on creative solutions with socially distanced players and audiences, and activities that can work as stopgaps: I hope they will factor in amateurs and our need for a piece of the action. Even within the possibilities of small group sizes and safe spaces, there must be real-life formats that will work as lockdown is released: play-days, chamber music sessions, masterclasses, lessons, lectures. The classical music business is at survival stations, and musicians and arts organisations have the right to hustle as much as they can In the past such events might have been free, a way of building audience loyalty, but we’re past that point and organisations should charge us well. The classical music business is at survival stations, and musicians and arts organisations have the right to hustle as much as they can. In my opinion, the time to give everything away free ended weeks ago and organisations that are still doing so are setting up problems in expectation. How many £3 cups of coffee, £6 glasses of wine and £15 cinema seats have people saved themselves now? We should all be contributing to the things that give us sustenance. I’m sure my amateur colleagues appreciate the need to pay for meaningful musical experiences, and understand the consequences if our favourite orchestras, musicians and venues fail. It doesn’t bear thinking about. 'Meaningful' is key. So, my advice to music organisations and musicians is this: grift and hustle us. But respect, challenge and stimulate us – do not patronise us. We’re on the same side and we need each other more than ever.

In my previous article I described why and how this strange time might be a chance for musicians to start writing. This isn’t just an exercise or therapy but might also be useful, so here are a few practical suggestions for what you could write: 1) Your biography for your website. This can be longer and more personal than your professional one used in programmes (which I describe here). 2) Articles about music: think ahead to future projects – this will be over eventually, and you’ll have concerts, projects and CDs to promote. Write about them. What have you discovered about the repertoire and the composer? What has inspired you? Pass your passion and knowledge on to audiences. The same article can often be used across your website, your CD booklet, the venue’s marketing and programme notes. (NB I’m not suggesting your write musicological programme notes here – better to leave that to my music writer colleagues – but your personal take.) 3) If you’re a teacher, this is a good time to summarise your teaching philosophies, and who inspired them, on your website or social media. 4) Opinion pieces – is there anything about the music world that really winds you up, or that you think you could change if you were in charge? Write about it – start a conversation. If you write it well and get a good angle, one of the music magazines might even take it for print or online – they are hungry for good content (although they usually don’t want to pay for it). 5) If you work with other musicians or are about to, you could have a conversation with them about your project and edit it up into a nice two-way interview. 6) Who are the people who have made a difference to your musical life – your earliest teacher, your conservatoire professor, a musical hero who you played to or a mentor? We all know that the role of music education has been diminished and made precarious, and we can all make the case for it by whatever means we can, as well as appreciating the very people who gave us the possibility in the first place. Write about them. But do it in very specific, thought-out and meaningful detail – don’t just skim the surface. Zoom in close to explain their strengths and philosophies, and tell anecdotes that illustrate precisely what you mean. Then draw back to give an overview and explain their impact. Make reader feel something about them. 7) How has music changed your life or what is one key thing that you taken from music into your whole life? This relates to my previous point. As musicians, we know the value of classical music and learning an instrument, not just in the concert hall but in our everyday lives, but not everyone does, so try to put that into words. Describe specific moments, realisations, actions, reactions, explanations, discoveries, painful moments, revelations. Don’t gush, exaggerate or over-emote; think, remember, pinpoint and describe. Then edit, edit, edit. A proposal If you’ve got this far, thank you and well done! As an appreciation, and as a way of trying to send some positive non-playing musical thoughts into the world, I hereby offer you to send me writing on the subjects of 6) or 7) and I will consider publishing them on Elbow Music*. Here are the guidelines: · Word count of 800 words maximum · Topic as described in 6) and 7) · Follow the style guidelines given above and here. I’ll be able to tell very quickly if you haven’t! · Think of it being published, so take time and do it as well as you can – I don’t even want to see any responses within the next couple of days. Don’t send something you’ve already written. · Make sure the basics are right: put it through the spell check and grammar app (although exceptions are sometimes allowed with the latter). · Be positive and don’t libel anyone. · Don’t try to sell yourself or any product (although I’m happy to link to your websites). · Try to create something meaningful that might provide comfort, interest and distraction for other musicians (and maybe even non-musicians). · Although the focus of Elbow Music is generally string music, I’m happy to accept other instruments! I have no idea if there will be any interest in this idea, but let’s see where it takes us! It would be nice to compile and circulate some lovely inspiring stories about what we all do every day and why we do it. * Small Print If you send me anything you are giving me permission to edit it and publish it on Elbow Music. I don’t guarantee to publish everything or anything. I will do my best to read articles and give feedback where I have time (I’m working at the moment) and will try to respond in some way, at least. No money will change hands in any direction (unless it blows up into being a best-selling book!). If I publish your piece, it remains your copyright and you can publish it wherever else you want and ask for it to be taken down at any time. I might need to add to this small print as this project evolves. Contact Get in touch here.

At a time of crisis for public musical life, performers can remain positive by practising a different way of communicating – with words. Elbow Music is here to help In happier times, I’m sure I’ve overused the cliché of a life without music being ‘unthinkable’. Yet here we are. Concerts and shows cancelled; self-isolation making even chamber music with friends seem life-threatening. Musicians may be better used to being alone than average, from hours in the practice room, and may even be more resilient. However, the prospect of weeks without the electric current of live music seems tough (although we must keep perspective and feel lucky if we are healthy). Write now Ultimately, new models and values may emerge – I’m optimistic that we might reboot the system. But in the meantime, what can musicians do? Many are already doing live streams of performances and living room concerts, and that’s great. But as you might guess if you’ve been to this website before, I’m about to bang on about content – specifically editorial content. Videos and podcasts are the rage, but I believe there’s still a vital role for print and the written word. I’ve written about what content is and why you should be doing it here, but to sum up, it allows you to convey your unique musical personality, specialisms, passions, stories and history, and to connect with audiences in your own specific way. It might even sell more tickets and downloads, and promoters will love you – the perfect virtuous circle. At its best, at a time like this it can also rally, inspire and comfort. Transferable skills The reasons most musicians give for not writing are lack of skill and time. Well now you have the latter with which to address the former! And as a player, you are much closer to being a good writer than you might realise – there are many transferable skills in music that are similar to writing: Structure: studying a piece begins with understanding its structure. Writing is usually the same, in that you have a sense of how your story will stand before you start. This might change as you work on it, but by the end the reader should be able to discern a clear, logical structure. Detail: studying music is all about the details of notes, intonation, markings, just as writing is about nit-picking grammar, spelling, accents, facts etc. When you practise you clean up bad shifts, tune notes, examine articulation – which is just like the work writers do to make their work shine. Communication: whether through notes or words, we’re all trying to communicate with our audience, so at the back of our minds we must be conscious of that communication itself – our tone, our subtexts – and try to empathise with the audience in order to understand its response. There are a few basic principles: don’t exaggerate or self-aggrandise; be honest and personal; be disciplined and a little pragmatic; try to reach your audience’s soft spots but don’t manipulate them; think of the big picture. These ideas cross every artistic medium. Blurt away The likelihood is that (if you’re any good!) you have plenty to say. I know this from having interviewed musicians for the last [ahem] years. You’ve done the hard work and research, you know what you’re doing, you’re interesting and passionate. You just need to order your thoughts a little, which is where I usually come in as an interviewer and editor – prodding musicians for details that they might not even think are interesting, and then structuring and editing them. (You can read some of these interviews here.) You could start by blurting out every thought you have – maybe by dictating into a voice recorder or transcription app and then mould it into shape. What should you write? Here is another article to help you work that out, as well as a little offer.

Biographies are an essential and powerful part of musicians' careers, but too often they read like a long jumble of lists. Here are some tips from one who has read and edited many I've been editing artists’s biographies this week. This is one of the most frustrating and infuriating parts of my editorial work, but in a masochistic, geeky way, I've come to enjoy getting stuck in. The challenge as an editor is to condense two pages or so of hyperbolic detail and lists provided by an agent into 250 words that capture the essence of an artist – in a form that can sit alongside those of other artists on the same programme. It's not an easy task, though, so to help guide you, here are the notes from a workshop I gave at HarrisonParrott last year: Know your audience Who are they? What do they need, feel, want? What is interesting and useful for them? Selling vs story-telling Biographies have a wide audience with diverse needs – they are necessarily a compromise Readers fall into two groups – wanting to buy something (promoters, agents) or to hear a story (audiences) Programme editors want the story, not the sell These are not mutually exclusive, though – a good story sells No hyperbole 'World-class', 'most versatile x of today', 'in international demand', 'universally-acclaimed', 'hard to match' etc etc etc – just don't! It’s usually meaningless, undermines trust and will probably be deleted by programme editors anyway Does it even sell? Exception: where you can back up the statement with empirical evidence Be specific, not generic Could your description apply to most other artists? eg 'x has made a unique impact on audiences worldwide with his intense musicality, charismatic stage presence and artistic curiosity' Include specific projects, roles, work and details that define the artist better and tell the story as you want it Spend time on the first line It's the most important part. Take time and care to craft it perfectly The ‘elevator pitch’ – it should encapsulate the essence of the artist This is your chance to control the narrative Its form and content will be different for each artist News story structure Most important information goes in the first line and paragraph Then the useful background Save least important information to the end – can be cut easily Use short paragraphs Easier to read They force discipline in telling the story concisely Beware lists Hard to read and process They don’t tell stories Pick the most important orchestras/conductors – if you don’t, an editor will Maximum of four things in a list Detail There are many types of detail to include and most are valid Pick the detail that supports your narrative Don't overdo it Check your subtext Is the overall message as you mean it? eg competitions/teachers = young; debuts = on the way up; less-famous regional orchestras = not well-known yet; awards in 1990 = no recent successes Have you got the right balance between projects/repertoire/styles? Don’t use quotes within the main biography They will probably be deleted List them at the end Accuracy Every name and orchestra title must be correct (including accents) Check Check again Chronology Be logical Don't cut and paste new information each year Update season information – including future/past tenses 'Recent' is relative but no more than a year ago Written style Be concise Use short sentences No cliché or unusual phrases Use active rather than passive voice Check the logic (chronology, subject) Be objective – avoid adjectives and adverbs Try reading it out aloud Be literal – eg while, elsewhere, unique, recent, seasons don’t ‘see’ No dangling participles Avoid repetition If you are translating into English, check with a native English speaker What have I missed? My question to agents and artists is this: wouldn't you rather take control and do it as well as you can, instead of leaving choices to me or some other hapless editor? My suggestion to the business: it's time for a consistent approach that saves all our time and provides the best outcome for artists and promoters alike. I propose a 250-word 'essential' biography followed by bullet pointed lists of orchestras, prizes, venues, past projects, educational work, philanthropy and kitchen sinks.

In this article, first published at ChamberStudio in 2015, the late and much-missed first violinist of the Lindsays pulled no punches with his views about music Accompanying Martin Lovett – one of the best quartet players ever – said that it’s very easy to play chamber music. He explained that you sing the tune when you play the accompaniment and you sing the accompaniment when you play the tune. He said that by doing that he could make someone play exactly as he wanted them to. He’s absolutely right. Amateurs I didn’t start practising until I was 18, and I had a lot to make up. I think that’s why the quartet was successful for the four of us – because we were four amateurs, and amateurs love things much more than professionals. Hans Keller said that there isn’t such a thing as a professional quartet, because quartet people love playing quartets. We did it because we loved it, and I think it came across. I don’t say it was always immaculate. Who wants perfection? Perfection is sterile. We’re human beings. Beethoven You can’t compare Beethoven and Bach and say one is the greatest. Or Haydn, Schubert, Brahms, Monteverdi, Purcell – they’re all at the pinnacle. Once somebody is great you can’t say one is better than the other. However, in the end Beethoven is the one I couldn’t live without, because he shares all the shit of life and all the glory of life, all the time. He’s more euphoric than anyone else, and more dirty than anyone else. The Grosse fuge is the greatest double fugue ever written, but more than that, it’s the story of life. He chose the fugue form because it’s the story of life the struggle of life, and as always, he ends triumphantly – only two of his works end up minor. Colour I don’t think people change colour like they used to. I think I have more colours in my ammunition chest than most and that’s by using different bow speeds, but also different angles of the fingers – upright if you want a hard sound, and when you want a special sound, more flat. And the bow varies from on top of the bridge to way over on the fingerboard. Communication Isn’t music really all about emotional communication? Isn’t that what life is all about? If you bake a cake, you don’t want to stuff your face with the whole lot, you want to share it. If you make anything, you want to share it with people. Compliments The best compliment I ever had in my life was, ‘It doesn’t sound like you’ve got a violin under your chin’. Most violinists would hate that – they’d much rather hear, ‘You’re the best violinist I’ve ever heard.’ To me it was much better to hear them say the violin was like an extension of my hand. Dynamics I don’t think there’s such a thing as dynamics. There isn’t a forte, a piano, a crescendo, a sforzando, a fortissimo: they’re all emotions. Expression The secret is that if you want a note to be emotional or stressed, in the sense of having warmth, you do it on the note before it, not on the note. The note at the top of the phrase is always the longest note, metronomically, but you don’t stress the on the note which shows the passion, you do it on the note before it, aiming for the next note. The greatest musicians delay it the longest. First violinists I think nearly all first violinists are prima donnas. But in quartets it’s the person with the leading voice who leads, and that’s not always the first violinist, although obviously it is in a lot of Haydn and Mozart. If the first violinist doesn’t have a big personality it’s not going to work, but the four have to be as one – nobody can act like a diva. The dynamics of a string trio are completely different, though – everyone has to be a diva. Historically informed performance I think Haydn would have bought an Aston Martin. He would have preferred that to coming to England in a stagecoach. He was as sick as a dog on the Channel coming over. Can you imagine coming from Vienna on a stagecoach at five miles an hour? I think the researchers have done a terrific amount of good, but why do we want to play like they did hundreds of years ago? Boulez talked about whether we’d want to hear Stravinsky played as it was first played, when people didn’t know how to use the new sticks for the percussion, and the bassoonist couldn’t play any of it. Do you want to hear it like that now? Things change. Imagination You have to start with imagination. For my final recital I started with the Bach G minor Sonata. I practised that first chord several thousand times. Sándor Végh told me that the first line is like a clothes line, with clothes pegs and washing hanging up in between. It’s a lovely idea. Intonation You have to be able to play in tune and that means listening, which is the problem. Nobody wants to play out of tune, it’s just that they don’t listen. Intuition It’s easy for me now because I’ve been doing this game for 50 years, so I feel fairly confident that I have an idea what Mozart, Beethoven and Haydn wanted. Lessons You have to be your own doctor. Some people go on having lessons the whole time as a crutch. Practice is being your own doctor, diagnosing yourself. Are you doing what you want to do? Listening When I’m coaching a group and the players don’t seem to be taking my point on board I get one of them to come out and listen, and say, ‘Do you understand what I’m talking about?’ And they always agree and say, ‘Oh, I thought we were doing that.’ Octaves Too many second violinists, if they’re playing in octaves with the first violinist, play quietly. But to get the intonation good they need to play more. With any two players, the person playing the lower octave should be the loudest, so the other person can hear. Quartet chemistry I think Sigmund Nissel put it so well when he said, ‘A string quartet is like a bottle of wine. The cello is the bottle, the first violin is the label and the contents are the second violin and viola.’ Rehearsals There are things that you don’t have to rehearse, they just happen. It’s the things that don’t happen that you have to talk about. Try to do the whole rehearsal without anyone saying a word apart from ‘letter A’, or ‘bar 137’. Play something through a few times, and maybe say two or three things, such as ‘try it a little slower’, or ‘that seems to be over the fingerboard’, just the occasional point. It’s all about listening. In my experience if someone knows how a piece goes, they don’t change, anyway, even though they do in the rehearsal. We had a good example of this when we were playing the Brahms Piano Quintet with a Hungarian pianist and in the rehearsal he agreed to change things, but when it came to the concert he did exactly what he did in the first rehearsal. Singing What is my job as a mentor, when I teach? It’s to inspire people to do what they want to do. Everyone always thinks they’re doing that, but nobody is. But as soon as you ask them to sing something, they solve all the problems. The only way to sing in Mozart quartets is to go and hear one of his operas. Così fan tutte is the most stupid story you could think of, but Mozart brings cardboard cut-out figures to life, and it’s full of duos, trios, quartets and quintets – it’s perfect chamber music. Everyone’s singing, and when they sing, they have character. Solos The biggest secret of string quartets is that you don’t play louder when you have a solo – you play nearer the bridge. The others play with the same character and vivacity as you, but nearer the fingerboard. Story-telling Music is about communication. Our job is to tell a story that is written by Beethoven, Haydn or Schumann. How many concerts have you been to that have been truly great – ten, maybe five? And what makes them special? Every note means something to the player and they give you every note. Technique Technique is the ability to do what your imagination demands. That’s all. It’s not about who can play fastest. Tempo Someone did a PhD on the first movement of Beethoven op.131 and apparently our beat changed ten times as much as anyone else’s. Fischer-Dieskau said that metronomes should be banned and I totally agree with him. There isn’t a piece of music, except maybe Steve Reich, which has four equal beats. If it does, it’s bad. There are times when a composer is saying, ‘I want this to be absolutely tick-tock’ – Ravel was mad about clocks, for example, and perhaps conducting Haydn’s ‘Clock’ Symphony it has to be like that, but the tune doesn’t necessarily have to stick with it. Urtext Urtexts have done a huge amount of harm, because people say, ‘That’s what Haydn wrote.’ It means that people don’t think about the music. For example, in the development section of Haydn’s op.20 no.2 the second violin has five lines of semiquavers with not a slur marked, but you can’t play five lines of semiquavers like that. So you need to use a bit of imagination.

Shmuel Ashkenasi led the legendary Vermeer Quartet for nearly 30 years. In this interview, first published by ChamberStudio, he offers his advice to young quartet players What are the most common problems you see with young string quartets? Some young quartets get together too early, neglecting to develop their instrumental skills. Others develop properly on the instrument and then when they get to 25 they decide to form a quartet and they think that just because they’re good instrumentalists they will be good quartet players. That’s not the case, because they need to devote a lot of time to developing and polishing the many technical aspects of quartet playing. It’s not wise for young musicians to devote most of their energies to the string quartet, for chamber music to be their raison d’être, while neglecting their individual practice. They should play quartets but not devote all their musical energy to chamber music. Is there a difference in approaches between concerto and quartet playing? There is, but I don’t think there should be, because all our Western music is chamber music. Most of the music that we play has more than one voice. Even if you play a solo piano sonata or Bach solo suites, there is an element of chamber music that needs to be respected. You have to develop many skills when you start playing quartets, such as listening more, expressing yourself while being rhythmically flexible. There should be a lot of give and take between the principal voice player and the accompaniment. When you play with piano or orchestra it’s relatively easy because there are only two rhythmic minds, two entities, but when you have four people it gets more complicated. You learn not to fight for what is not important and to make a distinction as to what is important for the music and what isn’t What was the most important thing you learnt when you made the transition from solo to chamber playing? The most important thing was discovering how not to waste time. You learn not to fight for what is not important and to make a distinction as to what is important for the music and what isn’t. You learn to mature emotionally as individuals and not simply to prefer your own suggestions over those of your colleagues, because you’re one entity. It’s healthy to disagree, but it’s not healthy to fight or to assume that everyone else’s opinion is inferior. It’s good to put arguments in three categories. The first is that it’s not important: ‘I’m sure they’re wrong, but let them have it.’ The second is, ‘I need to fight for it because I can’t live with the movement played in this tempo or with this character.’ The third is a compromise, which is usually not good for the music. If player A thinks it should be much faster and player C thinks it should be much slower, then in the middle it will usually be just right. And with certain strokes, if one person wants it long and another wants it short, there is usually a compromise in the middle. But for more important things, such as tempos and phrasing, compromise doesn’t usually benefit the music. It’s neither this way nor that way, but wishy-washy. Those are the things that save a lot of time. Also, rehearsals are more efficient if everyone has studied the score. What does it mean to know the score? It’s important to know the structure of the whole work as well as the individual movements, and to know what every instrument has and what its function is. It’s important to see freedoms such as rubato from the perspective of the whole. A work of art is a little like a building. An architect can make incredibly beautiful details – windows, staircases, doors – but when the whole thing is finished it’s hideous, because they don’t hold together as a unit. It’s vital to look at the structure as a whole and not the sum of the details. What is the hardest part of quartet playing? Balancing seems to be the most difficult aspect of the technical side of string quartet playing. Even some of my favourite string quartets didn’t balance properly, in my opinion. They played incredibly beautifully, in a well-structured way and very well together, but they were not always balanced. In the past the first violinist was boss in every way. It was terribly unjust, undemocratic and unfair 50 years ago there was a movement in chamber music, particularly with string quartets, to emancipate the middle voices. They wanted equal power and opinions. With that came equal balance, but the music is not written that way. In the past the first violinist was boss in every way. It was terribly unjust, undemocratic and unfair. They got more money and decided what was played and how it was played. It worked, and there are some phenomenal quartets from this era, such as the Busch and Capet, but it was unfair. Quartets such as the Juilliard and Guarneri strove for more equality and more collective opinions rather than individual ones and they were excellent. Today, everyone has an opinion, and sometimes there are two or three, and young quartets waste a lot of time. Sorting it out takes a lot of time and creates social problems because it’s difficult, even if you’re pure and honest, not to sabotage someone else’s opinion because you don’t relate to it. So it takes more time than having one opinion of a great musician who says this is how it will be. But that’s not just. So there are plusses and minuses of both approaches. How does this play out musically? Usually there is a melody or motif or principal voice and the next most important things is the bass. The middle voices are very important, but not as important. If they strive for equality you give up transparency and you don’t hear the music properly. When a pianist is a great musician the balance is good because it comes from one heart and one mind. When we have four hearts and four minds we tend to be too connected to our parts, rather than being part of the whole. Whether or not players should express themselves individually depends on what they’re playing. In a development section where there is more than one element – you have material from the first and second subjects going against each other or with each other and both need to feature – then it’s important to play with different sounds. But if the first fiddle has the principal voice and the middle voices have an accompanying figure, it’s important that the middle voices blend. Occasionally the four voices will be equal and then you need even more transparency. You don’t always have to blend but if you’re playing the same material at the same time as someone else it’s important for one instrument not to vibrate more or use more bow, pressure or pressure-and-release. What are the common causes of bad balance in quartets? There are many reasons for poor balance: egotism, or people thinking, ‘It’s my part, I’ve practised it and I want to be heard.’ Sometimes it’s because of poor knowledge. Some or all of the members might not know the score, so they don’t know which is first, second and third in order of importance. Another thing is that they’re not aware that whatever is higher is heard more than what is lower. It can also be because of the register of the part within the group, or in the instrument. There is also the quality of the instruments, which doesn’t necessarily relate to price, because modern instruments that aren’t so expensive can be very penetrating. One or more of these things can contribute to poor balance. In most cases this is the biggest challenge. Intonation and ensemble are also difficult, but many groups have mastered those – only a few have mastered balance. If the accompaniment must be wrong it is better for it to be a little too soft than a little too loud What are the best solutions for creating a good balance? There is no quick fix, other than a change in attitude – not to accept poor balance. That is the beginning of improving. It’s also important to know that it’s not always up to the principal voice player to play more: often it’s for the accompaniment to play less. It’s about a manner of listening differently and learning to play well as part of a collective energy, while playing your individual part well, which contributes a lot to better balance. If the accompaniment must be wrong it is better for it to be a little too soft than a little too loud. Most pianists play with their right hand considerably louder than their left, to a fault. It’s rare a pianist plays the accompaniment covering the principal voice. If the bass line is in the cello it’s important for the cellist to know they are more important than they sometimes think they are. It’s also important to release the sound, which improves the balance. How useful is it to record your own performances as a group? It can be helpful if it’s done in moderation. Recordings are invariably imperfect, especially in terms of balance. If you have one microphone it usually favours one instrument. Unless you have a perfect set-up where all the instruments are equally favoured, you don’t get a true version of balance. You do hear intonation and ensemble, and those elements can be improved. But I don’t think it’s the best way to spend time. It’s a crutch. It’s more important to develop your ears so you can react in an immediate way while you’re playing, rather than sitting back and listening to a recording. But it does have some value. There’s a great art in playing freely with the metronome What about metronomes? A metronome also has value and saves a lot of time. Quartets should play every movement they study at least once with a metronome. In the Vermeer Quartet we used to write down metronome marks. We were not married to them, but at least we knew what we’d agreed the day or week before, and if there was disagreement we could check, which saved a lot of time. It is helpful that the metronome is not a musical entity. It’s not emotional, and it doesn’t accelerate when it’s excited, so it tells us what we actually do mechanically. Many movements suffer with too big swings between tempos and so the metronome can help in that way. But you have to stick to the metronome otherwise there’s no point. There’s a great art in playing freely with the metronome. It doesn’t have to be that every click meets every beat, but you should meet the metronome every two or three bars. How do you help young groups explore different characters in music? We should become the music so if we can feel a certain character, we have already gone a long way to changing the character. The hands follow the heart. If I hear a group playing Classical music too Romantically – with a lot of expression but little grace or elegance – I give them a speech about the difference between Classical and Romantic music, and some of the characteristics that define different eras. Very often it’s successful because they understand they don’t need to do so many hysterically expressive things, but rather concentrate on elegance and refinement. And vice versa: sometimes they play Romantic music in too Classical a way, which means it’s rather boring. A fast bow and a lot of fast hysterical vibrato are the two elements that contribute most to making the style unsuitable to classical works, as well as glissandos and tempos. In the Classical style pianissimo and fortissimo were new so they should be done very sparingly, and the difference between forte and piano should be slight. Read about Ashkenasi’s own violin journey, including learning with Ilona Fehér and Efram Zimbalist, and his views on musicianship in this interview. This interview was first published at ChamberStudio in April 2015.