Trusting the ensemble Charles Hazlewood

I am a conductor and I’m here today to

talk to you about trust my job depends

upon it there has to be between me and

the orchestra an unshakable bond of

trust born out of mutual respect through

which we can spin a musical narrative

that we all believe in now in the old

days conducting music making was less

about trust and more frankly about

coercion up tune around about the second

world war conductors were invariably

dictators these tyrannical figures who

would rehearse not just the orchestra as

a whole but individuals within it within

an inch of their lives and I’m happy to

say now that the world’s moved on musics

moved on with it we now have a more

democratic view and way of making music

a two-way street as the conductor have

to come to the rehearsal with a

cast-iron sense of the outer

architecture of that music within which

there is then immense personal freedom

for the members of the orchestra to

shine for myself of course I have to

completely trust my body language that’s

all I have at the point-of-sale it’s

silent gesture

I can hardly bark out instructions while

we’re playing

ladies and gentlemen the Scottish

ensemble

so in order for this to work obviously I

have got to be in a position of trust I

have to trust the orchestra and even

more crucially I have to trust myself

think about it when you’re in a position

of not trusting what do you do you

overcompensate and in my game that means

you over gesticulate you end up like

some kind of rabid windmill and the

bigger your gesture gets the more

ill-defined blurry and frankly useless

it is to the orchestra you become a

figure of fun there’s no trust anymore

only ridicule and I remember at the

beginning of my career again and again

these dismal outings with orchestras I

would be going completely insane on the

podium trying to engender a small-scale

crescendo really just a little upsurge

in volume bugger me they wouldn’t give

it to me I spent a lot of time in those

early as weeping silently in dressing

rooms and how few tiles seemed the words

the words of advice to me from the great

british veteran conductor Sir Colin

Davis who said conducting Charles is

like holding a small bird in your hand

if you hold it too tightly you crush it

if you order too loosely it flies away I

have to say in those days I couldn’t

really even find the bird now a

fundamental and really viscerally

important experience for me in terms of

music has been my adventures in South

Africa the most dizzyingly musical

country on the planet in my view but a

country which through its musical

culture has taught me one fundamental

lesson that through music making can

come deep levels of fundamental

life-giving trust back in 2000 had the

opportunity to go to South Africa to

form a new opera company so I went out

there and I auditioned mainly in rural

Township locations right around the

country at about 2,000 singers and

pulled together a company of 40 of the

most jaw-droppingly amazing young

performers the majority of whom were

black but there were a handful of white

performers now it emerged early on in

the first rehearsal period that one of

those white performers had in his

previous incarnation been a member of

the south african police force and in

the last years of the old regime he

would routinely be detailed to go into

the township to aggress the community

you can imagine what this knowledge did

to the temperature in the room the

general atmosphere let’s be under no

illusions in South Africa the

relationship most devoid of trust is

that between a white policeman and the

community so how do we recover from that

ladies and gentlemen simply through

singing we sang we sang we sang and

amazingly new trust grew and indeed

friendship blossomed and that showed me

such a fundamental truth that music

making and other forms of creativity can

so often go to places where mere words

cannot so we got some shows off the

ground we started touring them

internationally one of them was Carmen

we then thought we’d make a movie of

Carmen which we recorded and shot inside

on location in the township outside cape

town called Khayelitsha the piece was

sung entirely in Plaza which is a

beautifully musical language if you

don’t know it it’s called Oh Carmen of

Kyle each are literally carmen of

Khayelitsha when I play with tiny clip

of it now for no other reason than to

give you proof positive that there is

nothing tiny about South African music

making

Hey

something which I find utterly

enchanting about South African music

making is that it’s so free you know

South Africans just make music really

freely and I think in no small way

that’s due to one fundamental fact they

don’t they’re not bound to a system of

notation they don’t read music they

trust their ears you can teach a bunch

of South Africans a tune in about five

seconds flat and then it’s if by magic

they will spontaneously improvise a load

of harmony around that tune because they

can now those of us that live in the

West if I can use that term I think have

a much more hidebound attitude or sense

of music that somehow it’s all about

skill and systems therefore it’s the

exclusive preserve of an elite talented

body and yet ladies and gentlemen every

single one of us on this planet probably

engages with music on a daily basis and

if I can broaden this out for a second

I’m willing to bet that every single one

of you sitting in this room would be

happy to speak with acuity with total

confidence about movies probably about

literature but how many of you would be

able to make a confident assertion about

a piece of classical music why is this

and what I want to say to you now is I

just urging you to kind of get over this

its supreme lack of self confidence to

take the plunge to believe that you can

trust your ears you can hear some of the

fundamental muscle tissue fiber DNA what

makes a great piece of music great I’ve

got a little experiment but I want to

try with you did you know that Ted is a

tune very simple tune based on three

notes te D now hang on a minute I know

you’re gonna say to me t doesn’t exist

in music well ladies and gentlemen

there’s a time-honored system which

composers have been using for hundreds

of years which proves actually that it

does if I sing you a musical scale

ABCD efg and I just carry on with the

next set of letters in the alphabet same

scale h i j k l m n o p q r s t there

you got TC it’s the same as f in music

so t is f so t ee d is the same as f ee

d now that piece of music that we played

the start of this session had enshrined

at its heart the theme which is Ted have

listened

you hear it or do I smell some doubt in

the room okay we’ll play for you again

now and we’re gonna highlight we’re

gonna poke out the te D okay if you

pardon the expression oh my goodness me

there it was loud and clear Shirley I

think we should make this even more

explicit they’ve done it’s nearly time

for tea what do you reckon you need to

sing for your tea I think we need to

sing for our tea we’re going to sing

those three wonderful notes te D would

never go for me yeah you sound a bit

more like cows really than than human

being so we try that one again and look

if you’re adventurous you got the art of

TD once more with them

there I am like a bloody windmill again

you see now we’re gonna put that in the

context of the music okay the music will

start and then and a signal from me you

will sing that

I think it wasn’t wasn’t a bad debut for

the Ted choir not a bad debut at all now

there’s a project that I’m initiating at

the moment that I’m very excited about I

wanted to share with you because it is

all about changing perceptions and

indeed building a new level of trust the

youngest of my children was born with

cerebral palsy which is you can imagine

if you don’t have an experience of it

yourself is quite a big thing to take on

board but the great gift that my

gorgeous daughter has given me aside

from her very existence is that it’s

opened my eyes to a whole stretch of the

community that was hidden to hidden the

community of disabled people and Pharma

start looking at the Paralympics in

thinking how incredible how technology

has been harnessed to prove beyond doubt

that disability is no barrier to the

highest levels of sporting achievement

of course is a grimmer side to that

truth which is that it’s actually taken

decades for the world at large to come

to a position of trust to really believe

that disability and sports can go

together in a convincing an interesting

fashion so I find myself asking where is

music in all of this you can’t tell me

that there aren’t millions of disabled

people in the UK alone with massive

musical potential so decided to create a

platform for that potential it’s going

to be Britain’s first ever national

disabled Orchestra it’s called

para Orchestra I want to show you a clip

now of the very first improvisation

session that we had was a really

extraordinary moment just me and for

astonishingly gifted disabled musicians

in a normally when you improvise an idea

at all the time around the world there’s

this initial period of kind of horror

like everyone’s to fright to throw their

hat into the ring an awful pregnant

silence and then suddenly as if by magic

bang they’re all in there it’s complete

bedlam you can’t hear anything no one’s

listening no one’s trusting no one’s

kind of responding to each other now in

this room with these four disabled

musicians within five minutes there was

a rapt listening a rapt response and

some really insanely beautiful music

my name is Nicolas McAfee I’m 22 and I’m

a left-handed pianist and I was born

without my left hand right hand I do

that one again when I’m making music I

feel like a pilot in the carpet flying

aeroplanes I become alive

I would rather be able to play an

instrument again than walk there’s so

much joy and things I could get from

playing an instrument and performing

yeah it’s um

removed some of the paralysis

I only wish that some of those musicians

were here with us today’s you could see

it firsthand how utterly extraordinary

they are peril or kissers the name of

that project if any of you thinks you

want to help me in any way to achieve

what is a fairly impossible implausible

dream still at this point please let me

know now a parting shot comes courtesy

of the great Joseph Haydn wonderful

Austrian composer of the second half of

the 18th century spent the bulk of his

life in the employ of Prince Nikolaos

Esterhazy along with his orchestra

now this prince loved his music he also

loved the country castle that he tended

to reside in most of the time which was

just on the austro-hungarian border

place called Esterhazy a long way from

the big city of Vienna

and one day early in 1772 the prince

decreed that the musicians families the

orchestral musicians families were no

longer welcome in the castle they were

not allowed to stay there anymore they

had to be returned to Vienna as I say an

unfeasibly long way away in those days

you can imagine the musicians were

disconsolate Hyden demonstrated with the

prince but to no avail so given the

prince loved his music I didn’t thought

he’d write a symphony to make the point

I’m going to play just a very tail end

of this symphony now and you’ll see the

orchestra in a kind of sullen revolt and

please let’s say the Prince did take the

tip from the orchestral performance the

musicians were reunited with their

families but I think it sums up my talk

rather well this that where there is

trust

there is music by extension life where

there is no trust the music quite simply

withers away

you