Ordinary fool

My social life has picked up a little now that I'm conducting a new choir here in London. Already there are a core of us who regularly head off after rehearsals to the Prince Arthur (a local recommended by the St Mary's priest, Father Rob Wickham). A couple of the guys asked me how I became a conductor. After a few jokes about the sort of qualifications you'd need to go riding around in a Routemaster clipping tickets, I told my story.

My mother played the clarinet and some piano. My father was a manager for the national orchestra (when it was the NZBC orchestra) and a fine whistler. Back in those days the orchestra thought it was a good idea to introduce visiting international stars to a good New Zealand-style home-cooked meal. My Mum still tells stories about the times Janet Baker or Vladimir Ashkenazy came around to our place for dinner. Janet Baker, as Mum tells it, would take off her shoes and run her toes through our sheepskin rug with great delight, not realising there was a petrified housewife in the kitchen cooking up TVP for the rich and famous.

All that was before I was born. There are no stories of a passing Glenn Gould predicting great things for me having heard me playing Für Elise between courses of fondue. Like most kids I played a little of this and that, badly, for a few weeks before casting the unfortunate instrument aside. I think I tried violin and piano. Then, for some unknown reason at around the age of 17, I picked up the electric bass guitar. In collusion with my brother and a few misfit friends, I played in some pretty awful bands and wrote and recorded some fairly diabolical songs. I realised I didn't want to be awful forever, so I decided I should learn how to compose. There was no School of Rock so I had to go to university. They didn't teach me much about writing pop hits, but I found out a lot about classical music. I loved it anyway. I took up composing seriously—serious music you understand—and I wrote a lot of string quartets. Part of me was sad though because I liked performing but I couldn't really play any classical instruments. What was I to do? I realised that back in my band days I had been the one bossing everyone around, getting my way with music, for better or worse. The answer was obvious. I took up conducting.

My first conductorial dabblings were during my university studies. I took a conducting course where we got to wave our arms at our fellow students. As it turned out, Nicola was among them, and this is how we first met. My first real choir was the Upper Hutt Choral Society. They were desperate for a musical director. Later I started conducting the Wellington Capital Boys' Choir. Screaming boys. I had a lucky break and became conductor of the Festival Singers of Wellington. The singers were good and we sang lots of masses and hymns. Through that I had the opportunity to work with orchestras, performing Handel, Beethoven and so on. I liked that. Then, with Mandy Wong, I started a professional singing group called Cantiamo con Gioia, made up of off-season opera chorus singers. We performed at Civic functions, in Te Papa, and in the Wellington Botanic Gardens during the Summer City programme. Still not content, I started conducting the Schola Sacra choir in Wanganui, travelling up on the bus once a week. Schola Sacra were quite good too, and together we recorded items for Praise Be, and a CD called Pohutukawa Carols. Also in Wanganui, I helped set up an orchestra, the aptly named Wanganui Sinfonietta. Wanganui was “well worth the journey” in many ways, not least of which being the wonderful late night conversations I had with so many choir members. Every Tuesday night I was billeted with a different choir member. Over many bottles of wine I made some firm friends.

I was busy. In some ways I was pleased to give it all up at the end of 2002 when Nicola and I left New Zealand for the UK. However, I found an application form for a conducting course in Bulgaria. I applied, and Nicola and I went. That trip was something else. Musically speaking though, that was it for a whole year. I'd had enough... or so I thought. Now, here I am in London working with a new group of singers, making some sweet choir music once more. All the singers are students of Louisa Langston, Nicola's singing teacher. It's a real privilige to work with 100% training singers. This week the choir will perform for Louisa for the first time and I think she will be very proud. I think the choir will be proud of themselves too. If they're not, I could always pick up one of these and take up the other kind of conducting.

* My mother played in an orchestra in Hawera with Ross Pople. Ross was a prodigy and went on to become a well respected conductor and recording artist here in London. I saw him conducting here recently and went and said hello backstage. Who said nobody famous comes from a small town?