Roger Benedict
violist - conductor
“Creating Community – A Vision for Australian Musicians”
Walking around the centre of this beautiful city, how many viola players do you see among the throngs of people going about their daily business? They should be easy to spot, weighed down with a somewhat unwieldy instrument case, a purposeful look on their face - and this is a large city of over 4 million people. Even here in Sydney, which has the highest concentration of professional musicians in Australia, we feel like a very small element of society, not only isolated in our own society, but isolated from what we perceive as the main centres of the musical world, London, Berlin, New York. In the West End of London one regularly bumps into fellow musicians in the street; there are some 400 professional viola players, and over 1000 violinists listed in the Musicians Union directory for London alone (and there are many more who are not members of the Union!). Walking through the Upper West Side in Manhattan, it’s a similar story; every other person seems to be carrying an instrument case.
Due to their relative isolation, Australian musicians need reassurance that they are doing alright, and at all levels, in secondary and tertiary education, and even at the professional level, there can be a lack of motivation or sense of purpose. “Yes I am passionate about music, but is it a realistic career option, is there really a chance I will succeed when there is little available work for musicians? Are musicians and artists really valued by this society? Am I really an artist or merely an artisan? How do I measure up against those American or German players?
I think that the stronger sense of community we have as musicians, the better all our chances are of being really great musicians and feeling completely fulfilled in what we do. A community – an association of people who share common ideals and beliefs – can also be described as a fellowship. Hence the name of the Sydney Symphony’s training program for young professionals could not be more appropriate as far as I am concerned. Our Fellowship Program aims to build a community of highly motivated, highly skilled and highly adaptable musicians to invigorate our profession, and secure its future.
I am privileged to be able to spend some of my time teaching in this august institution – The Sydney Conservatorium of Music - with some wonderful colleagues and easily the best facilities in the world. But while there is great talent, I feel there is a lack of a sense of community in the student body here (and to a lesser extent, in the staff body). In trying to work out why, I asked a group of Postgraduate Conservatorium students who had recently returned from an exchange semester at the Royal Northern College of Music in Manchester in the UK how they thought it was different. They felt that the students there seemed to have a better work ethic – they said that while the Sydney Conservatorium becomes very quiet by 6pm, the English students were still in practise rooms at 11pm. (- it is not to say that the Australians practise less but they possibly do it in isolation at home rather than in their shared community building). They also agreed with me that the English students had more sense of belonging in that community. Asked why, they thought about it and concluded that it was mainly down to one thing. The Sydney Conservatorium has no communal area for the students to meet and socialize, the one major failing of this great building I believe. No common room, and even the café closes at 3.30pm! In Manchester there is a bar in the large lobby of the college which is open late every night and a place for students and staff to meet, exchange ideas and let off steam after a long day honing their musical skills. Yes, they would probably be gossiping, but they would also be comparing notes on the best way to improve vibrato or explaining what they had learnt in their Alexander technique lesson that day. I studied at the RNCM myself and would always end the day talking to my peers and teachers in the bar. The bar was, in those less responsible days, the only place you could be guaranteed to find the head of strings if you needed to speak to her (at any time of day!). Conservatorium students here will have these kinds of interactions on Youth Orchestra camps and tours, but it is the ongoing, daily contact with our peers, and real engagement with them, that is absolutely vital for the learning process.
In the Sydney Symphony we have generally excellent working conditions and enjoy mostly friendly and healthy relationships with each other. We have a sense of camaraderie and readily unite behind a common cause (usually a bad conductor), but are we really a fully fledged artistic community? I am not sure. For the last few years we haven’t toured much – and I think that reduces the time we can spend in in-depth conversations about our art and craft. Sharing the experience of playing in different countries, to different audiences and just “being on the road” certainly helps bring an orchestra together as a community. A symphony orchestra is a large and disparate group of people and finding shared values and common goals is not always easy, but it is possible I think. The key is breaking that large group up into smaller units – chamber ensembles, “outreach” groups – regularly, to help players rediscover these values and goals. That is why chamber music is so important in the fellowship program – we start with a small manageable community and take all the skills learnt there into a larger one.
A sense of community is vital for every artistic endeavour, even in the more solitary art forms of the visual arts or writing, I would contest. Performing music is always an act of collaboration; collaboration not only with our fellow musicians and conductor, but with the composers, the audience, our financial supporters, even with the concert hall itself (which I see as one of the performers actually).
One of the things that I love about Australia is that there still exists a genuine sense of community; one only has to look at the enthusiasm with which Australians will organize a neighbourhood barbeque, on public holidays for example. This was very noticeable after moving from the UK, where society has undergone rapid changes in the last 20 years, including a loss of that sense of community and a growing distrust of one’s neighbours. I reflect that Margaret Thatcher famously said “there is no such thing as society” and she certainly helped to foster a culture of individualism that tends to dominate British life these days. So I believe that Australians will naturally warm to the idea of building a stronger community of musicians.
Through an intensive one-year fellowship integrating chamber music, mentored orchestral playing and specially designed workshops, the Fellowship program aims to offer a vital stepping–stone from study to work. It also aims to create a real sense of belonging, of pride in the professional community and encourage true artistic integrity.
A fellowship with the Sydney Symphony includes:
- A stipend of AUD$14,000
- Regular coaching and support from me, as well as the opportunity to have tutorials from other members of the orchestra and visiting soloists on chamber music repertoire. Recent masterclasses have been given by Steven Isserlis, Viviane Hagner, Midori, Julian Rachlin and Peter Wispelwey as well as the Jerusalem Quartet and members of the Vienna Philharmonic.
- Frequent chamber music concerts in Sydney and across New South Wales, including broadcasts on 2MBS FM and ABC Classic FM.
- Invitations to perform as a regular casual player with the Sydney Symphony in their mainstage concerts (paid separately at award level remuneration).
- The opportunity to work on specially commissioned works in collaboration with their composers.
- Leading roles in Sydney Sinfonia, Sydney Symphony’s mentoring orchestra.
- Specially designed workshops on such issues as audition techniques, performance anxiety, Alexander Technique, musical analysis, communication and presentation.
- The opportunity to become acquainted with operations, marketing and development programs run by the orchestra.
- The opportunity to engage in meaningful partnerships with our supporters and donors, both private and corporate.
As opportunities in our profession become more competitive and less predictable, fellows are encouraged to show adaptability, initiative and resourcefulness as well as being able to perform the widest possible repertoire at the highest possible level.
In addition to being masters of their own instrument, I would list the ideal attributes of our fellows as:
- Independent
- Imaginative
- Flexible
- Lateral thinkers
- Lifelong learners
- Hard working
- fanatical about music (“fanatical is the only way to be about music” – Vladimir Ashkenazy (The SSO’s new Principal Conductor) said to me last week).
Mentoring is at the heart of our fellowship. The fellows are mentored by more experienced players in the SSO as well as by visiting soloists to the orchestra. In a healthy musical community, the mentor benefits from this process as much as the mentored. The inexperienced players are inspired and enlightened by the experienced who are in turn invigorated and challenged by the young. I know nothing makes me want to practise more than hearing a student of mine play with more virtuosity, more ease or more imagination than I can! Currently there is much discussion in the Sydney Symphony about performance assessment (it is a condition of our government funding that we implement a formal system of assessment), and it is clear that this is one very effective method of self-assessment.
Composers are also an important part of our fellowship family. For too long composers have been isolated from the musicians who perform their music and at times regarded with some disdain. In connecting postgraduate composers from Sydney University with our fellows, we hope that the musicians will understand more deeply the creative impulses of the composers and the composers will understand how musicians approach their scores.
Of course a major aim of the program is to search for and train players to fill future vacant positions in the orchestra. In the past I think there has been a somewhat hands-off approach to recruitment – young players were expected to be trained up and ready-to-go by the time they left tertiary education and it wasn’t our job to offer remedial help. When someone on an audition panel says “why are there no players of a sufficient standard?”, I say “It is up to us to make sure they are of a sufficient standard. If we don’t do it, who will?” Many of us teach at those tertiary institutions of course, but some training can only be offered “on the job”, and a community that mentors and nurtures and counsels young players is essential - and it’s essential for the whole profession; we give post-audition feedback to all who audition for our fellowship program because even if a player will never win a position in the Sydney Symphony, they may end up eventually being the teacher of someone who does. We therefore have a responsibility to influence standards and attitudes from beginners right up to professionals.
Orchestras are changing and will continue to change. I believe we will still be playing Brahms symphonies in fifty years time, and probably still even wearing tails to do so! But orchestral musicians will employ an even more diverse range of skills. They will be far better communicators than we are, they will be specialists in one or two areas, often breaking up into small groups and task-forces – maybe they will form a baroque group playing period instruments, maybe compose and arrange their own music using increasingly sophisticated computer software for the orchestras contemporary music group, they will perform in prisons and refugee centres, some might be musicologists and write research papers and articles, all of them will teach, and run outreach programs for the orchestra, one or two may even qualify as music therapists and work sometimes with autistic children or in dementia care. With additional training some may become Alexander teachers or the orchestra masseur, or be active in other areas of musicians’ health such as performance anxiety. They will be actively involved in the orchestras programming and planning. They will all be involved in chamber music activity of some sort. Some members of the orchestra are already doing many of these things, but it isn’t as a result of orchestra policy – I would like to see it more formally encouraged and supported.
Encouraging musicians to multi-skill, to involve them in a wider range of activities, is not about exploiting and economizing, it is about engaging them more with their art, deepening their experience and consequently that of their audiences. Orchestral musicians sometimes feel like small cogs in a big wheel, unable to fully express their creativity, often at the mercy of their “oppressive” leaders. Orchestras are naturally hierarchical and there is constant debate about what constitutes good leadership (from conductors and section principals). Scott Peck, the American psychologist who has written much about community building, says that in a perfect community “there is a group of all leaders. Members harness the “flow of leadership” to make decisions and set a course of action. It is the spirit of community itself that leads and not any single individual”. In my experience this describes the dynamic in the best orchestras and chamber ensembles.
There is a growing tendency to see what we do as entertainment rather than art, to commercialize and devalue the art form. Yes, we should delight and charm our audience, but it is also our duty to educate, stimulate, challenge and even occasionally confront them. Our audience should not be seen as consumers or shareholders, but as partners and fellow travellers on a wonderful journey (and ideally a life-long journey). If we cease to take risks we will soon make ourselves redundant. Musicians have to learn to be resilient against attempts by individuals and society as a whole to undermine their artistic integrity, and to be more pro-active in determining their future. If I have one message for the fellows it is to search for truth in everything they do - and remember to stay fanatical! And let’s all work together at creating a strong and lasting musical community.
Thank you.
Roger Benedict is Artistic Director of the Sydney Symphony Orchestra’s Fellowship Program, and the orchestra’s Principal Viola.
www.rogerbenedict.com
www.sydneysymphony.com
© Roger Benedict 2007
The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily represent any official view or policy of the Sydney Symphony Orchestra.