Who or what inspired you to take up conducting and pursue a career in music?
I always wanted to make music in some way. After a childhood spent listening to the increasingly alternative and experimental corners of a huge variety of music I finally discovered contemporary classical music, and – after some digging – the Late Romantics and the Early Modernists. That was the moment when a musical life suddenly felt concrete, and conducting and composing – getting my hands dirty with all this stuff – felt like the only natural way forward.
Who or what are the most significant influences on your musical life?
As a conductor-composer, I feel especially interested in and energised by what artists like Mendelssohn, Berlioz, Wagner, Mahler, Boulez, Maderna, and Knussen achieved – even if our ideas of art and music might be very different. Everything we musicians take for granted today always had to be worked hard for and fought for. They act as brilliant musical examples and salient reminders that we build the musical world – and its infrastructure – within which we live.
What, for you, is the most challenging part of being a conductor? And the most fulfilling?
Constantly meeting new people and travelling/being away from home is the most challenging and the most fulfilling.
As a conductor, how do you communicate your ideas about a work to the orchestra?
Sincerely.
How exactly do you see your role? Inspiring the players/singers? Conveying the vision of the composer?
Both.
Is there one work which you would love to conduct?
Messiaen’s opera Saint François d’Assise. If any dodgy billionaires are reading this and fancy burning some cash, hit me up.
Do you have a favourite concert venue to perform in?
I have to say Wigmore Hall, as unusual as that might be for a conductor to say as it’s the most fantastic chamber music space. Although, recently I conducted Klangforum Wien in an outdoor seven-hour concert that ended at 2.30am in an ancient Sicilian amphitheatre carved out of rock, and where our dressing room was a deep, damp cave. That was quite special.
What do you do off stage that provides inspiration on stage?
The most obvious but truest answer is studying scores.
What do you feel needs to be done to grow classical music audiences?
Talk up to audiences. Ditch all infantilising aesthetics. Make everything authentically and unapologetically rich, complex, mysterious, tentacular, extraordinary, a little intimidating, perhaps, but ultimately more seductive because of that.
As a musician, what is your definition of success?
The third martini in a decent bar with a friend in a country where you don’t live.
What advice would you give to young or aspiring conductors/musicians?
Compose.
What’s the one thing we’re not talking about in the music industry which you feel we should be?
That my entire generation has become young artists in a time of austerity which has utterly warped our expectations of art.
What is your most treasured possession?
A Gaggia coffee grinder from the 1980s that doesn’t work anymore.
Jack Sheen conducts Manchester Camerata at The University of Manchester on 16 October and at Wigmore Hall on 18 October. Find out more here: https://manchestercamerata.co.uk/performances/jack-sheen-manchester-camerata-eleonore-cockerham/
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