Concert pianist. Thanks to movies and popular culture, this job title brings to mind conflicting images of a starving artist, mad genius, or supernaturally talented magician who communes with the Muse – almost never the hardworking professional that a pianist must be in order to maintain a successful performing career.
Lifting the Lid: interviews with concert pianists seeks to change this. In this brief book, authors Michael Johnson and Frances Wilson [The Cross-Eyed Pianist] give readers a personal, off-stage glimpse of some of the world’s most accomplished concert pianists. This thoughtfully-curated collection of interviews allows pianists the opportunity to talk about the music they love – and the lives they lead – in their own words. What emerges is composite picture of the joys and challenges of a specialized job, as well as the passion that pulls each of these players to the piano each day to wrestle with the music (and themselves) in their quest to bring moments of beauty to the rest of us.
An interview with celebrated baritone Benjamin Appl ahead of his appearance at this year’s Leeds Lieder Festival
Who or what inspired you to pursue a career in music and who or what have been the most important influences on your musical life and career?
I started to sing when I was pretty young. Although no one in my family had trained as a professional musician, we sang a lot together while my mother accompanied us on the guitar. Aged ten I followed my two brothers and joined one of the most renowned boys choirs, called the Regensburger Domspatzen (which means the ‘cathedral sparrows of Regensburg’). Originally I wasn’t so fond of boys singing together – I disliked the sound and thought it sounded shrill – but after being part of this choir community and experiencing that amazing feeling of making music together on such a high level, I then really loved it. I think this was the moment when this addiction was first planted inside me, the feeling that life without music would not be the same.
Then, as a professional musician, of course it was my teacher and mentor Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau. To have had the privilege of working with him is one of the highlights of my career to date. He was a real mentor in many ways and taught me so much, not just vocal technique or interpretation but much more beyond this: he taught me the essence of being a musician, and the responsibilities with which that comes.
I was deeply impressed by his level of preparation, and the seriousness with which he achieved such a deep level of understanding of the music. Every time I went to his home he had prepared himself for our session, looking through the scores again, reading about the poetry and the background of the songs – doing all this even though he had already spent a lifetime on it. But this is also one of the most wonderful aspects of this profession: you never can be too well prepared.
What have been the greatest challenges of your career so far?
I think what’s important is to find a personal connection with the music and how to present it and how to communicate it to people. If you’re yourself and you try to find a good emotional connection and how to communicate it, then it can be fairly easy. Generally, though it’s quite a difficult job in that as a singer, you carry your instrument with you 24 hours a day! We can’t, like a pianist for example, leave the instrument at home for two hours in the evening and go to the pub. That’s also something else we have to live with regarding our instrument – we have to accept when it’s not working and to be kind to it. That does mean that it can be difficult not to become too self-centered and think only about ourselves. That is something very challenging and we have to find ways to cope with it.
Of which performances/recordings are you most proud?
Actually, it will be one of my forthcoming album releases, a project I have been involved with for quite some years now. Together with one of the greatest contemporary, living composers György Kurtág, I am recording some of his compositions as well as songs by Franz Schubert, where he, aged 97, plays the piano. The working process with him is incredibly detailed and challenging, but the rewards are at a level you normally never experience anywhere else.
Which particular composer do you think that you perform best?
I probably would say Franz Schubert. With him and his music I feel most at home, not only because I spent the most time with his music and learned around 400 of his songs by heart. There is something in his music which gets right into my heart – how he creates an environment, a beautifully carpeted pathway, for the poetry to speak directly to the listeners. There is no extraneous material or conceit; the musical textures ar. He is a composer who somehow stands with both feet on the ground. His music feels somehow deeply rooted inside me and I resonate with his sentiments in his music – and therefore I think I can transfer this connection the best also to the audience.
What do you do off stage that provides inspiration on stage?
Finding inspiration is a key element of our profession. We give so much on stage and every evening try to give what we can that we actually have make sure that we fulfil own our inner inspirations – to go to museums, to casually observe life passing by in the underground in how people move around and suddenly think “This is a character in this song.” I enjoy wonderful times with other inspiring people, listening to their stories, being curious, having every pore of your body open so as to find inspiration again a new way of interpreting songs. Also always questions about why we do it this way, why this tempo, why do we take time here, why is this word important for us etc so that we actually create and never just deliver.
How do you make your repertoire choices from season to season?
It really depends on the different kinds of inspiration I get from outside or from within myself. Often reflecting on processes lcan ead to a different direction which you didn’t plan on and then of course the choices also depend on the interesting offers which are given to you.
Do you have a favourite concert venue to perform in and why?
Of course there are certain parameters which are important in a venue. Mostly it’s about the acoustic, so that you as a singer have the feeling that the space is giving you something back, and enhancing the reverberation of your own voice. But just as important is an ambience which makes you feel welcomed and comfortable when you enter. A good piano for my accompanist doesn’t hurt either!
But what would even an ideal venue be without an open and attentive audience? Especially for song recitals which are in many ways presented as a dialogue: even though one party is usually silent, it is an exchange of emotions and very much a shared experience. So the ideal really is to have a wonderful audience who is willing to be taken by the hand to go on a journey together.
What is your most memorable concert experience?
There are a few. Of course someone now would expect me to name performances in the biggest, most prestigious halls around the globe. But for me very often these ‘stellar moments’ happen under different circumstances: music is a comfort for me in moments of solitude or sorrow, and exaggerates my happiness in joyful moments. Performances which stay with me forever are very often linked with big moments which happened in my private life at the same time, like the loss of my grandparents, when I had to go out on stage and sing songs about facing death or mourning the loss of beloved ones; but also when I fell so deeply and freshly in love.
As a musician, what is your definition of success?
Often I hear people say that art song is dead or that we cannot connect anymore to all those old texts and music. And I think exactly the opposite. All these songs are about emotions and feelings we carry very deeply in us, essentials like falling in love, being disappointed, loss of a beloved person or solitude – strong feelings we all can connect with and have experienced. I think within this art form there lie many opportunities and I am constantly searching for ways of combining it with other art forms or putting it in a current context. As a performer I experience very strongly that these songs make me understand myself and others better: My definition of success is when the same happens to my audience, that people connect with each other, go together on a journey and start a process of reflecting.
What advice would you give to young/aspiring musicians?
Find the right balance in life of the amount of performances, travel, working hours and try to have an interest or hobby outside music, which gives you the opportunity to put music aside for a moment and find pleasure and happiness somewhere else as well. It will only enrich your musicianship in the end.
What do you feel needs to be done to grow classical music’s audiences?
The field of Art Song is a bubble within the classical music world, which is a bubble in itself. So, I am very much aware that we will never have huge audiences or huge crowds and millions of people listening to us, but that is also fine to accept. I think that generally, elderly people who have more time in their lives, who don’t have to worry about small kids, or making a lot of money in their jobs, or having to learn a lot in schools etc have the luxury of time. And when you do some recitals, you have to focus fully on the music and the text. It’s not something which you can listen to on playlists or during to a fancy dinner. It really requires one’s full attention. And that’s challenging in the 21st century when everything’s very hectic and people have a short attention span. So that’s a reason why I think particularly people listening to song cycles are very often are in the second half of their lives.
I’m trying with my own programmes to go into schools and bring this Art Song to schoolchilren to try and make them curious about this music. It’s very important to plant the love I feel for this music into the hearts and ears of these young people so that at least they have the chance to encounter it at a young age and to see that other people are passionate about it.
What’s the one thing in the music industry we’re not talking about which you think we should be?
I think it’s wonderful that there are so many young people interested in studying singing or classical music. In colleges there are so many applications, like never before, so that’s something very positive. I find the lack of interest in politics and about people in the arts quite worrying. There are so many studies around the world which show the impact of music on human brains, on children such as how it makes them better human beings with better social skills, but also they learn other subjects faster, like languages etc. There is only good in it and I find it strange that no politicians really see the huge impact of music and how important it is. We have to plant music and art into the brains and hearts of young people. And even if they don’t like it in the beginning, I think it’s important that they have the chance to encounter it so that when they get older and listen to classical music they feel familiar with it. If they don’t get the chance from the very beginning it’s very hard later on to really understand this world which is so important in shaping for everyone. That’s something I feel very passionate about.
What’s next? Where would you like to be in 10 years?
There are so many ideas and interesting places to perform. I would love to perform song recitals for example like Schubert’s ‘Winter Journey’ in the Arctic. Pushing boundaries with other art forms, and strong collaborations. I have so many ideas in my mind that it’s sometimes overwhelming! I definitely have to write them all down, firstly not to forget them, but also to focus my mind on one idea. I have so many ideas all the time and would love to go in different directions, work with different people and never loose the joy and filfillment in performing. Just probing the horizon, being curious, not thinking in boxes but outside my box, and appreciating other people and their work and their love.
What is your idea of perfect happiness?
Despite the stress and demand of my life as a professional singer I always try to remember that it is a huge privilege to live this life. Sometimes I ask myself the question if there is anybody in this world with whom I would like to swap lives and I can always truly say that I am most happy and there is no one with whom I want to exchange life – as long as I can say that, I am very happy with this accomplishment.
What is your most treasured possession?
Due to my profession, I feel like I spend a huge amount of my time researching and booking transport and then travelling from one concert hall to the next. In work circumstances, I often have to prioritise speed as time can be tight and pressure is high. As an antidote to that, a few years ago I bought an old Volkswagen Beetle: a beautiful red convertible from 1974 which I love to drive around the beautiful Bavarian landscapes with their with mountains, lakes and castles. Driving my little car relieves all the stress I typically experience whilst travelling and it calms me in a wonderful way. Also when the roof is open, I get the feeling that I can appreciate the surrounding nature so much more.
What is your present state of mind?
I often ask myself how does doing the kind of work I am doing in the arts change me as a person and as a creator. In this process of reflection, we have to be open, we have to find inspiration and that’s something, of course, that has a huge influence on ourselves as musicians. As singers, if we change our daily routine, we have to be careful with our voice, we can’t have the wildest life before performances, and so on. And the curiosity we have as an artist influences us very much.
The way of reflecting about ourselves, that we try to become better and better, is also something which changes us. I think of course, the art and the voice are so dominant in our lives as singers and really leading our lives, that we have to follow the music and the voice as a person within our life.
Benjamin Appl appears at this year’s Leeds Lieder Festival which runs from 13 to 21 April 2024. Full details/tickets here
English musician and polymath Michael Lawson has established a reputation in a diversity of professions – composer, pianist, psychotherapist, documentary filmmaker and archdeacon of the Church of England. As a therapist, he has worked with a variety of individuals, ranging from child prodigies to sex offenders. His remarkable new novel, International Acclaim: The Steinfeld Legacy, is an ambitious work of ‘faction’, combining real-life giants of the Romantic music era with his family story of the “Steinfelds”—four generations of brilliant Jewish Polish concert pianists.
What drives this man? “I am definitely an enthusiast for the things I love to do,” he says in the interview below. “Does that make me a workaholic? Maybe, maybe not…. I can also be something of a sloth.”
His narrative chronicles the tumultuous story of Europe’s composers and performers through political change and wartime crises on the Continent. Leading his parade of historic figures are, among others, Alexander Siloti, Josef Hofmann, Sergei Rachmaninoff, Theodor Leschetizky, Ignacy Jan Paderewski, Sergei Taneyev, Leopold Godowsky, Huw Weldon and of course Nadia Boulanger.
In response to questions that led to his novel, Lawson granted an email interview:
How long a gestation period preceded the writing of your first novel, International Acclaim?
In short, about 40 years! I had always been fascinated by the great Romantic pianists. As a teenager, I’d listen for hours, enthralled by extraordinary virtuosity which shone through the hisses and scratches of their early 78 rpm recordings. I not only amassed a huge record collection, I researched and read everything I could find about them. So initially, I didn’t know where to begiin the novel but I’d worked out how it would end— a passage inspired by the death of Simon Barere, one of the last of the late Romantics, who tragically died during his performance of the Grieg piano concerto. at Carnegie Hall in 1951.
What took you so long to write these nearly 500 pages?
The novel remained unwritten as my growing family and day job took precedence. Yet an editor’s stimulus kept the aspiration alive, and the story gradually emerged in my imagination. Yes, the process started 40 years ago. And then in 2020 came the first coronavirus lockdown. That was my opportunity. I researched and wrote non-stop for six months till International Acclaim was complete and published. After six more months thinking about it and taking advice, I began the revisions. That is how the novel came to be republished recently – with a new subtitle to celebrate it: International Acclaim: The Steinfeld Legacy.
Was this story always in the background as you proceeded with your composing, church and psychotherapy careers?
Yes, it was on a slow boil but I knew that one day its time would come. Accumulated observation has taught me so much about human life and living, which I have worked into my story of the world of musicians. And to take on these different roles in parallel has enabled me to explore the passions that I have discovered within myself. This is why I don’t normally speak of “my career in music”. Music touches a deeper passion and informs my very identity. I feel the same about my work in psychotherapy and ordination.
Isn’t this what you therapists would call a split personality?
No, the worlds are different and yet at times so complementary. A prime learning experience for me has been my work in private practice with musicians of all kinds including child prodigies. Many of these have sought help feeling the unravelling of their emotional complexity may be assisted by someone who can understand the peculiar pressures of the performing piano world. Later in my career, my seven years in the prison service meant working with broken people with exceptionally convoluted life stories. For them rehabilitation is the goal. My therapeutic aim is the same with prisoners as it is with musicians – to bring support, to unravel self-understanding and thus to alleviate suffering.
You must have been a lifelong student of music history. What was your training?
Alongside my conservatoire training at the Guildhall School of Music, and the Écoles d’Art Américaines in Fontainebleau, France, my first degree in music was at the University of Sussex. Over my lifetime, I have built up quite a library about the whole of Western music and especially the composers and pianists of the late Romantic era. Although I had no other models in mind when I wrote International Acclaim, I included real figures of history alongside my fictional Steinfeld family. Allowing for literary license, I aimed for the best verisimilitude I could imagine. Bringing in the key figures of the era helped tell the story. We meet Alexander Siloti, Theodore Leschetizky, Sergei Taneyev, Leopold Godowsky, Sir Henry Wood, Huw Weldon and others. In a class by herself is my teacher Nadia Boulanger.
Workaholism seems to be your driving force, right?
I have thought about that, and my answer is I am definitely an enthusiast for the things I love to do. Does that make me a workaholic? Maybe, maybe not. I recognise I can also be something of a sloth. It’s only then that I say with Jerome K Jerome, “I love work. It fascinates me. I can sit and look at it for hours!” It’s my family that should take the credit. They are my reason to come up regularly for air.
From the age of 8, you knew you wanted to be a composer. Wasn’t that before you had started piano?
It didn’t take long for me, as a youngster, to discover that it was more enjoyable to create tunes of my own than to play others’ compositions. Some three years before I began piano lessons, I composed a set of “Hungarian dances”. On a family vacation there was an excellent pianist who played every night in the lounge of our hotel. I noticed that he often played requests. Without consulting my parents, this rather bold 8-year-old, with Hungarian dances in hand, asked the pianist to try them out. He was very nice and said that he would look them over.
Was that the end of it?
Not at all. As my parents were sipping Asti and my sister and I were exploring the ice cream menu, I heard a tune I recognised, looked up and realised this pianist was playing my music. It was thrilling to hear it played by such a good musician. But I was resistant to the effort that piano lessons might require. Finally, I gave in and started lessons. So, yes, that’s how it worked out – composer first, and piano second.
Did this lead to something of a career as a pianist?
Yes and no. My father, in his quest to get me to learn the piano, bought me a Kazoo! I could hum away and out would come music. I loved it. A few weeks later my dad popped the question, “Wouldn’t you like to be able to make music as easily on the piano?” My time had come.
Were you some kind of late-blooming prodigy?
I may not have been a child prodigy but I was certainly like a duck to water. I fell in love with the piano, and practised all hours, seemingly night and day, and passed grade 8 (by the skin of my teeth) at only 14 months after my first lesson. At age 14, I remember playing Bartok’s loud and ferocious Allegro Barbaro in public. In the audience was David Wilde, winner of first prize in the Liszt Bartok piano competition in Budapest in 1961. David was encouragingly complementary, but frank also. If I wanted to become a concert pianist I would need to develop considerable reserves of technique. To that end, he generously took me on as a private student and for several years taught me so much about the beating heart of the music as much as the mechanics of playing.
Didn’t you mix with some of the great players?
Yes. Through David, I met conductors such as Pierre Boulez and other leading musicians. I learnt so much from observing them in rehearsal. And there was another spin-off. Around this time, while I was a student, concert organisers often asked me to turn pages for some of the world’s greatest pianists, including Artur Rubenstein, Sir Clifford Curzon, Daniel Barenboim, Vladimir Ashkenazy, and others. I also turned pages for Geoffrey Parsons when he accompanied Elisabeth Schwarzkopf, and for chamber musicians like the remarkable American pianist, Lamar Crowson.
As a music student, you were in a position to learn informally from some of the greats.
I learnt much from all of them – by closely watching their hands, asking questions about interpretation and technique, and occasionally even getting a mini-lesson in return. On one occasion I asked Sir Clifford Curzon, the perfect English gentleman, how he recommended practising the demanding octave trills in the Brahms D minor piano concerto. “I don’t know,” he said, “I just do them.” But he did know really, and he showed me – in musical slow motion. When his fingers shook, his arms and shoulders shook with them. The facility flowed from the extraordinarily looseness and relaxation of his arms and shoulders. The effect was electric.
How close were you to Nadia Boulanger?
I was fortunate indeed to have studied with Mademoiselle for five very fruitful years. That is, during the summers at Fontainebleau, and while pursuing my other studies by flying back and forth to Paris during the rest of the year. During all that time she refused to let me pay for my lessons. The list of Boulanger pupils reads like a Who’s Who of many of the greatest figures in 20th-century music. The composers include Walter Piston, Aaron Copland, Elliott Carter, Virgil Thomson, Roy Harris, Philip Glass, Darius Milhaud, Jean Françaix, Thea Musgrave, Lennox Berkeley, Joseph Horovitz, and Emile Naoumoff. Her conductors include Igor Markevitch and John Eliot Gardner. She and I kept in touch until the end of her life.
Have you always considered yourself a writer?
Socially, I was quite shy. But something clicked in my brain and released all kinds of creative energy hitherto so dormant that my teachers thought was non-existent. I had been particularly poor at English. That quickly changed. I had been a poor reader but was encouraged by an older friend who had taken an interest in me. He was knowledgeable about literature and was an excellent classical pianist too. He introduced me both to novels and poetry. I began to read everything I could get my hands on. This all had an almost explosive effect on my use of language. And I began to write—words as well as music.
What was your introduction to music criticism?
By the time I went to Sussex University, I was appointed music critic of the University’s weekly newspaper. I’m not too proud of my youthful arrogance which surfaced in some barbed reviews. I admit I took some ungenerous liberties with the power of my pen. A lady in orchestral management helped me see the error in my ways, and after that I learned to be more encouraging in my writing. It was an exercise in understanding how your words are received. Eventually I was able bring all the rigour that I had learnt in composition and performance to producing regular material for sermons, script writing and presenting for the BBC Radio 2, which I did uninterrupted for 20 years. And for filmmaking and for eighteen books – so far.
International Acclaim: The Steinfeld Legacy by Michael Lawson is published by the Montpélier Press, and is available exclusively from Amazon
MICHAEL LAWSON is a Composer, Writer, Psychotherapist, Film Maker and Broadcaster. His varied career began in music as a composer and concert pianist in the early seventies, having studied with the great French teacher, Nadia Boulanger, at the Paris and Fontainebleau conservatoires, with the British composer, Edmund Rubbra, at the Guildhall School of Music, and at Sussex University with Donald Mitchell, the leading Britten and Mahler scholar. His piano professors were the distinguished British pianists, David Wilde and James Gibb.
MICHAEL JOHNSONis a music critic and writer with a particular interest in piano. He has worked as a reporter and editor in New York, Moscow, Paris and London over his journalism career. He covered European technology for Business Week for five years, and served nine years as chief editor of International Management magazine and was chief editor of the French technology weekly 01 Informatique. He also spent four years as Moscow correspondent of The Associated Press. He is a regular contributor to International Piano magazine, and is the author of five books.Michael Johnson is based in Bordeaux, France. Besides English and French he is also fluent in Russian.
Who or what are the most significant influences on your musical life and career as a composer?
Rather than a particular person, I feel the greatest influence came from a breadth of musical experiences. In addition to playing in orchestras and performing solo piano, I performed in bluegrass, rock, and jazz bands, Balinese gamelan ensembles, West African drumming, Bowed Piano Ensembles, and live electronica performances. The biggest drive for me has always been curiosity, about music’s role in humanity and the connections to ourselves, our memories, and our emotions.
What have been the greatest challenges of your career so far?
As artists, we wear our hearts on our sleeves. When a song or piece of music comes together, it almost feels like a gift. In those moments, you can almost touch something bigger than ourselves, and that is an emotional experience, where words fail us, and music steps in. In this day and age, it is learning how to share that experience of music with others, and that means opening oneself up emotionally, and publicly, on the internet. Building a brand out of myself was the largest challenge that I’ve encountered so far!
What are the special challenges/pleasures of working on a commissioned piece
Most of my commissions are for film and tv music productions, which I enjoy because it allows me to move from one music genre or style to another, experiencing different stories and different perspectives (again, with the curiosity!). The challenge is navigating the larger team dynamic, especially in the entertainment industry. I had to learn how to create through the shared experiences and perspectives of my collaborators, which is a bit trickier than sitting in my studio writing music simply for myself.
What are the special challenges/pleasures of working with particular musicians, singers, ensembles or orchestras?
The greatest gift we have in music is the connection we can get through amazing humans performing. Every instrument on the globe has been meticulously recorded, sampled, and is available on my keyboard in my studio. Yet, working with a musician or ensemble who is a master of their craft is one of the joys of creating music. Whether it be coaching a school choir learning a choral piece, or hearing a film cue performed by the London Symphony Orchestra, the experience of connection though music is very meaningful.
Tell us more about your work with film composer Howard Shore.
I’ve worked with Howard Shore for 15 years, on over 25 films. I’ve worked as his right hand man (or Octopus man, as orchestrator Conrad Pope has called me) handling arranging, orchestration, and producing of his film scores. I started out within a technical capacity, and over the years was always quick to volunteer for more musical tasks. As we navigated the challenges of various film productions, Howard found me well equipped to handle the unique technical and musical requirements of assembling a film score. As part of my work with Howard, I’ve travelled to London, the Netherlands, France, Belgium, Montreal, and many other locations to record orchestras and produce music for films.
What are the special challenges and pleasures of working on film scores?
Working on film scores is incredibly labour and time intensive. It requires many hours sitting at a desk to create the 1000s of notes heard in a film score. Not only writing the music, but producing the demos, “conforming” the music to follow picture changes and edits, revising the music based on filmmaker feedback, and orchestrating, recording, editing, and mixing the music makes for a very busy work schedule. One of the great pleasures of working on film scores is amazing resources. While I had to run a Kickstarter campaign and obtain grants to raise the funding for my album of piano quintets, on big budget film scores I have a hundred piece orchestra and any other resources I need. Twelve bagpipes? A group of Didgeridoo players? No problem!
How has your work in film music influenced your new album ‘Everything More Than Anything’?
Working in film music for so long has given me a very strong skillset in how to produce very high quality music. I feel very at home in the recording studio working with musicians, and all that experience makes the writing, producing, and recording of my albums much easier. As all musicians have heard, the more you practice something, the better you are at it!
What do you hope listeners will take from this new album?
I hope listeners will appreciate just how impactful music can be when made with highly skilled musicians playing acoustic instruments. So much of music production these days happens in front a of a computer, and technology has allowed us to create music easily and professionally. But despite these technical advances, making music with other musicians in a room all together has a certain magic which cannot be replicated with technology.
Dark Before The Dawn – the first track from James Sizmore’s new album Everything More Than Anything, with pianist Stephen Gott
Of which works are you most proud?
All of my solo albums are dear to my heart, as they are closest to my artistic sensibility. I’ve got pieces of film music that have been heard by millions, but some of the songs I’ve written for my wife, my daughters, and my parents are the most meaningful to me. Even though they’ve only been heard by a handful of people!
How would you characterise your compositional language?
I pride myself on being a music chameleon for my film work, but my solo albums are rooted in the classical tradition, and certainly owe a debt to both the late French impressionists, Maurice Ravel and Claude Debussy, and also the 20th century minimalists Steve Reich, Philip Glass, and John Adams. Probably some film music influence in the harmonies as well!
How do you work?
I am regimented in my schedule, actively working in my studio from 9am-6pm (when I can, some productions require constant attention!). Keeping to a schedule helps me to be able to write music quickly, often writing a new piece in a single day.
As a musician, what is your definition of success?
When you’re able to do something you love doing for 33% of your time.
What advice would you give to young/aspiring composers?
Let the music be the most important thing. At first, you must set aside your career aspirations, music business approaches, social media branding, and really focus on the passion for music. While all of that other stuff is important, the only way one can sustain a career in music is if you really love it. Fall in love with music before you try to make it your career. I doubt anyone was ever successful by approaching music with the intention to make a lot of money. If you really love making music, everything else is secondary.
What do you feel needs to be done to grow classical music’s audiences?
Live film music performances have done great things for building interest in orchestral music. The Lord of The Rings is performed live every month, and the experience is a nice gateway to the orchestral classics. I recently attended the new David Geffen Hall in New York City, and the experience was outstanding. I applaud NYC for rebuilding the hall inside out and recognizing that the home of the NY Philharmonic is a cultural institution that they want to support wholeheartedly. I believe that strong arts initiatives, and bridging the gap between traditional classical music and popular culture are important for growing audiences.
What’s the one thing in the music industry we’re not talking about which you think we should be?
How is it that the terms breve, crotchet, quaver, and minim, never caught on in the USA? My music would be 10% more fun if we had the proper terminology when making it!
What is your idea of perfect happiness?
Every moment (or at least most moments!) of our lives can contain perfect happiness by being present in the moment, and feeling gratitude and agency over this amazing life were given. We’re surrounded by beauty every day; one just needs to keep their eyes and hearts open to the world around them.
‘Everything More Than Anything’, James Sizemore’s new album created in collaboration with British-American pianist Stephen Gott, is being released track by track over the coming weeks. The second track is released on Friday 19 January.
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