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Who or what inspired you to take up the harpsichord, and pursue a career in music?

I started as a pianist – we had a piano at home and I just enjoyed the sensation of interacting with it. Things seemed to go OK and I got a place at Chetham’s School of Music. While I was there I discovered the harpsichord and started to learn it with David Francis whose enthusiasm and approach to the instrument and music suited me perfectly.

Who or what were the most important influences on your musical life and career?

I think it’s been everyone I’ve ever made music with; the harpsichord is such a collaborative instrument and as we spend so much of our time improvising, everyone has an influence on what we do. Two teachers played a big part in my thinking about the instrument – David Francis and the late John Toll.

What have been the greatest challenges of your career so far?

Maintaining my own musical personality whilst needing to work and pay the bills.

Which performance/recordings are you most proud of?

It’s always hard listening to my own recordings – the music is always developing so often recordings feel like an earlier statement of a work. Performances are very much more satisfying and I’m proud of every one I’ve done – even the not very good ones!

Which particular works do you think you play best?

I think that depends what I’m working on and on what instrument at any moment. Each new project needs immersion in the musical language and also a different approach to the specific instrument. Every different harpsichord/clavichord/piano needs listening to as well to bring out what they offer so I play best what I’m working on at any moment.

How do you make your repertoire choices from season to season?

I try and have an idea of things that I’d like to get under my fingers in the next few years, but working with a record company and concert promoters has to be more flexible than simply what I’d like to work on next season.

Do you have a favourite concert venue to perform in and why?

The nature of the instruments I play means that smaller is better. The Wigmore Hall is, of course, ideal. However, any venue where the instrument is balanced with the acoustic is great.

Favourite pieces to perform? Listen to?

I love performing the Goldberg Variations – it’s such a journey for performe and audience.

Who are your favourite musicians?

Anyone that makes me think about the music first, and the performance next.

What is your most memorable concert experience?

So many spring to mind: but the most memorable ones are nearly always collaborations. There’s something special about sharing the experiences with other people.

What do you consider to be the most important ideas and concepts to impart to aspiring musicians?

Practice, train and develop yourself to be as flexible and adaptable as possible. You never know what a concert situation or instrument is going to bring. Treat each new factor as an enhancement of the music, rather than a hurdle that must be overcome. There is no “perfect” musical situation.

Where would you like to be in 10 years’ time?

Doing what I do now and working with as many musicians across the world as I can!

What is your idea of perfect happiness?

At home in the garden with my family and a lovely glass of something.

 

Steven Devine enjoys a busy career as a music director and keyboard player working with some of the finest musicians.

Since 2007 Steven has been the harpsichordist with London Baroque in addition to his position as Co-Principal keyboard player with the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment. He is also the principal keyboard player for The Gonzaga Band, Apollo and Pan, The Classical Opera Company and performs regularly with many other groups around Europe. He has recorded over thirty discs with other artists and ensembles and made six solo recordings. His recording of Bach’s Goldberg Variations (Chandos Records) has been received critical acclaim – including Gramophone magazine describing it as “among the best”. Volumes 1 and 2 of the complete harpsichord works of Rameau (Resonus) have both received five-star reviews from BBC Music Magazine and Steven’s new recording of Bach’s Italian Concerto has been voted Classic FM’s Connoisseur’s choice.

He made his London conducting debut in 2002 at the Royal Albert Hall and is now a regular performer there – including making his Proms directing debut in August 2007 with the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment. He has conducted the Mozart Festival Orchestra in every major concert hall in the UK and also across Switzerland. Steven is Music Director for New Chamber Opera in Oxford and with them has performanced repertoire from Cavalli to Rossini. For the Dartington Festival Opera he has conducted Handel’s Orlando and Purcell’s Dido and Aeneas.

From 2016 Steven will be Curator of Early Music for the Norwegian Wind Ensemble and will complete his complete Rameau solo recording for Resonus Classics.

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Launched in May with a fine performance by noted fortepianist and academic John Irving, the first tranche of Kingston Chamber Concerts (KCC) closed last night with a recital by the Armorel Piano Trio, who performed works by Beethoven, Schumann and Dvorak.

The KCC formula is quite simple: quality chamber music performed by young professional artists and local musicians in the convivial setting of the East End Café at All Saints’ Church, right in the heart of Kingston-upon-Thames and its historic market place. Tables are set out salon style and the bar serves good wine at a fraction of the cost of a glass of house white at the Wigmore Hall. You can take your drinks to your table and share a bottle with friends, as I did last night.

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The Armorel Piano Trio comprises Kathy Chow (piano), Lucia Veintimilla (violin) and Sebastian Kolin (cello). Their programme, opening with Beethoven’s ‘Ghost’ Trio, Op 70/1 and closing with Dvorak’s ‘Dumky’ Trio, Op 90, B 166, with Schumann’s Op 80/2 the middle of the triptych, demonstrated the development of the piano trio genre, from the strictly classical three-movement structure of Beethoven, though already showing the forward-pull of Beethoven’s vision in its eerily dramatic middle movement which connected it, in this concert, to Schumann’s sweeping romanticism, to the freedom of Dvorak’s six-movement ‘Dumky’ which feels more like a suite than a trio in its organisation highly  contrasting moods and textures.

This was a very committed performance by all three musicians, and extra credit must go to the young players who had had their final recitals for their post-graduate studies at conservatoire the same day: they must have been shattered but they hardly betrayed this, and their playing really came alive in the Dvorak which was replete with folk idioms and fine solos from cello and violin, with vivid colouration from the piano, in particular in the third and final movements. The Schumann was genial, laced with a bitter-sweet poignancy (the work was written in 1847, the year of the deaths of the Schumanns’ son Emil and Felix and Fanny Mendelssohn), and Armorel really caught the fleeting mercurial moods of this music.

The Beethoven, meanwhile, provided drama of a different kind, with much boisterous dialogue between violin and cello in the first and final movements, and colourful interplay between the piano and the other instruments. The slow movement was freighted with Gothic gloom, with its fragmented themes, uncertain harmonies and eerie tremolos in the bass of the piano. This was a movement of great tension, rich in quasi-orchestral textures.

This was a fine end to the first three concerts in KCC’s six-concert first season and the sizeable audience prove the series is already off to a very good start. The series resumes on Saturday 16 September with Ceruleo, an early music ensemble, whose concert entitled ‘Love and Betryal in the music of Handel and Barbara Strozzi’ includes performances on harpsichord, theorbo and Viola de Gamba.

For further information about Kingston Chamber Concerts/join their mailing list, please contact kingstonchamberconcerts@gmail.com, or telephone 020 8549 1960

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Despite the best efforts of those inside the profession, and many outside it as well, classical music still suffers from an image problem. It is perceived by many as stuffy, high-minded, exclusive, expensive and boring. So marketing classical music successfully is not easy, given the entrenched preconceptions about the art form and an apparent inability by some within the profession to market themselves and their concerts effectively.

Few musicians can tell you anything about what they do and/or why. They have been a few famous exceptions like Leonard Bernstein and Itzhak Perlman, but most are strangely inarticulate about their craft [EM]

Maybe musicians just assume that their performances speak for themselves, without giving any thought to why anyone else should want to listen. Maybe we are all so immersed in what we do that we forget to promote ourselves. A lot of musicians don’t seem to know how to get people to care about (their) music [RC]

Unfortunately, we’re starting out from an already difficult position: the words “classical music” have a stigma attached to them – as do words like “avant garde”, “contemporary”, “modern” or “new music” – and are immediately off-putting to certain people. Finding the right vocabulary to describe something that is already freighted with negative connotations ain’t easy. In addition, classical music is in competition with a whole host of other activities which want your attention.

I have lost count of the number of unenticing, badly-written, poorly-proofread and overly long emails I’ve received from musicians and/or their publicists trying to interest me in their concerts. Five paragraphs of densely-written text telling me about their concert series or tour, a dry list of pieces in the programme, the places where the performer has already played (this reminds me of the weatherman who gives an overview of what the weather has been before the main forecast), a boring impersonal biography (basically just a list of pieces performed, places, last season, this season, plus a few quotes from extravagantly positive reviews) – and then, right down at the very bottom of the message in the place where by this time I might not even look because I am bored, a link to purchase tickets. And sometimes that link doesn’t even work…..

I want musicians to connect to the content they share, to the music…. A link on its own is hardly enticing or engaging. On the other hand, a long press release can have pretty much the same (non) effect [RC]

If you can’t tell me why I should attend your concert within the first paragraph – or even the first two lines – of your email or marketing blurb, you’re not getting your message across clearly enough.

Too many people seem to start from the premise that classical music is boring and write slightly apologetic marketing material, hinting that I might like to come to the concert but there’s no guarantee I’ll find it interesting or exciting. Or that because music is “art”, they believe it should not be marketed in the manner of a new film or bestseller.

“Young pianist to perform at concert”

– hardly attention-grabbing is it?

Sometimes an attempt at humour may be used to attract my attention:

“Schopin, Schubert, Schampagne and Suschi!”

Nice try, but that particular concert promotion tweet made my toes curl in embarrassment. Using silly, sexy or just plain weird gimmicks to make classical music look cool or interesting tends not to work, in my experience.

Another offender is the person whose publicity material is overtly egocentric – It’s all about ME! This article examines this particular issue rather well.

If people who don’t know classical music keep getting ‘meh’ press releases, with nothing in them to interest any person with any spirit, any involvement with the world, then all of classical music suffers.

Because we’re not just flacking the project du jour. We’re representing all of classical music, in every public communication we make. That’s a big responsibility. If we fail in it — if we can’t bring classical music vividly alive — then we’re failing our art.

Greg Sandow – Why I’m talking about publicists (1)

When marketing concerts it’s important to remember that our publicity material – from tweets and Facebook posts to flyers, listings and the diary section of our website – reflects back on us and must reflect well. Such material is the potential audience member’s first point of contact with us, the performer, and first impressions really do count. The name of a composer or artist spelt incorrectly on a press release or website listing, errors in press releases and flyers, incorrect or broken links on your website, missing information: all these things will discourage people from purchasing tickets for your concert. And let’s not be coy about this: never mind all the high-falutin artistic reasons for giving concerts – sorry to say it, but we want “bums on seats”!

I get particularly hung up about badly-designed or difficult-to-navigate websites, possibly because I spend a lot of time online and can recognise a really well-designed website when I see one. As a blogging colleague of mine said recently, “Why do some websites still use white text on a black background? Are there people who enjoy having their eyes melted trying to read such things?“.

Instead, why not make it easy for your potential audience?

  • Describe the programme/pieces/concert format in a way that is enticing but not naff, nor dull or patronising
  • The classical music audience, and potential audience, is intelligent – probably as intelligent as you, or maybe even more so! Don’t talk down to them or over-simplify what you are trying to say. Respond and appeal to their intelligence in your marketing material.
  • Provide clear information about date, time, venue, ticket prices – and make sure the links to venue and/or ticketing site actually work
  • Remember that “brevity is the soul of wit” (Shakespeare, ‘Hamlet’) and keep marketing material concise and to the point
  • Use good-quality images (but not too many of yourself in white tie and tails or 1950s evening gown) and use natural, conversational language in marketing material
  • Avoid saying flattering things about yourself and instead focus on fulfilling your potential audience’s hopes and desires. Ditch the self-indulgent self-promotion and instead motivate your potential audience (or “customers”) to buy tickets.

Further reading

How to write a press release

If you think you need a publicist….

Marketing the Arts to Death – blog of Trevor O’Donnell, full of intelligent and relevant articles on arts marketing