Lateral programmer

I came from a background in which nobody was a trained musician but everybody sang: in church, in community choirs and round the piano. I was a beneficiary of free instrumental music teaching, the County Youth Orchestra system and bursaries to the Royal Scottish Academy of Music Junior Department. At Glasgow University I did a very traditional, academically rigorous music degree and then went to York University as a postgraduate. York in 1980 was a hothouse of experimental music, a Mecca for composers and performers.

After York, I did what every self-respecting young musician was doing in the early 80s: I went on the dole and formed a band (I recently read that the unemployment benefit system in the 1980s was the single most significant supporter of the pop music industry). As the realisation dawned that fame and fortune did not lie down that road, I accepted what seemed like a dream job for a girl who loved modern music: Education Officer for the London Sinfonietta. This turned out to be the first such post with a UK orchestra and, at the age of 24, I was an unwitting and very green pioneer. With the arrogance of youth and a reliance on hugely talented and experienced figures – such as music educationalist Richard McNicol, composers Nigel Osborne, Judith Weir, Peter Wiegold and George Benjamin, and inspirational colleagues in the education sector including John Stephens and the late Ian Horsburgh from the ILEA – I found myself running programmes in inner city schools, teachers’ centres and prisons. We were dealing with the music that people were supposed to find scary: Varese, Xenakis, Reich, Messiaen, Stockhausen. My first major professional lesson was ‘never underestimate your audience’, as I saw the power that great music has to change and move people, as long as it is presented with imagination and without compromise. Talk down to people and you’ll fail.
New audiences
This principle continued to guide me when I became Artistic Director of the London Sinfonietta in 1998, working alongside Cathy Graham as Managing Director and Oliver Knussen as Principal Conductor. Whilst passionately sharing the general desire to broaden concert audiences, I had witnessed too many rather feeble attempts at crossover – music with its muscle removed. So, while continuing to perform important new music for a specialist audience, we reached huge new audiences through placing modern music in the context of other music and other art forms: Ligeti and Stockhausen with Aphex Twin and Squarepusher, Magnus Lindberg with Akram Khan, Messiaen and Dutilleux with Radiohead. We were pushing at an open door and these experiments have, I believe, created a landscape where Southbank Centre can now expect full houses for concerts of Xenakis, Nono and Stockhausen.
When Jude Kelly came to Southbank Centre as Artistic Director in 2005, she invited me to join her as part of a core artistic team which also includes experts in literature, dance, learning, visual art and music. My brief was to bring some of that lateral programming thinking to create arresting contemporary projects. Following the reopening of the Royal Festival Hall in 2007 and the introduction of an overarching artistic policy, there has been a new focus on what it really means to be a centre for the arts: it means not only that there is a team of programmers – people like me – but also that we put artists at the centre. We have a roster of artists in residence and association: four orchestras, a beatboxer, a choir, a string quartet, two choreographers, two composers, a performance poet, a visual artist and temporary artistic directors for festivals. Our job is to work with artists, give them confidence, make suggestions, help them make their ideas reality, and provide opportunities through commissions. When Choreographer in Residence Rafael Bonachela said that he was looking for some very dark, string-based music for a new work with Candoco Dance Company, we were able to put him together with the musician and former Meltdown Director, Scott Walker, who was keen to work in dance. Shlomo, the resident Beatboxer, has long nurtured a desire to work with orchestral musicians, so he is currently engaged in creating a concerto for Beatboxer and orchestra with composer Anna Meredith.
Economic constraints
How do we sustain this vision for the organisation in the constrained climate of limited public funds and economic uncertainty? It is the boldest, most fearless ideas which, although often requiring huge investment, are the ones which ensure survival, vitality and, ultimately, financial stability. For the Royal Festival Hall it was important to make some clear statements of intent. The centrality of classical music was one such statement, with brilliant concerts by the resident symphony orchestras, the Philharmonia and the London Philharmonic as well as the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment and the London Sinfonietta. The presentation of engaging, cutting edge new work was another statement of intent: Klaus Obermaier’s Rite of Spring in stunning, digital 3-D and Heiner Goebbels’ specially commissioned Songs of War I Have Seen were among our opening events. [[I saw the power that great music has to change and move people]]
Making overtures
The Overture Weekend, the opening event, was perhaps the boldest statement of intent: how could we re-envision the Southbank Centre as a site for the future and rediscover a new version of the spirit of the Festival of Britain in 1951 – 21 acres of land by the river dedicated to the human imagination in the immediate aftermath of war? And how could we create a sense of involvement from people from all over the UK? Over one weekend, 250,000 people came, 18,000 of whom had been invited to perform. Central to the idea behind Overture was that, while it was a great celebration, it was not a generalised jamboree. It had to be artistically real: choirs from all round the country sang a gospel song and a Purcell Ode, Billy Bragg led 1,000 buskers in Waterloo Sunset, Lea Anderson choreographed hundreds of children, Paul Daniel conducted the Philharmonia and 1,500 amateur singers in Beethoven’s ninth. There was absolutely no face-painting.
One of the key ideas to have come out of Overture is a commitment to children and young people as audience, as performers, as programmers. This April will see the clearest manifestation of that idea. The Simón Bolívar Youth Orchestra of Venezuela will be in residence for a week, our own National Youth Orchestra will play a programme of 20th century music, the B-Girls festival of Young Women in Hip Hop will pervade the halls and public spaces, Dan Zanes, a rock star for the under tens, will play the Queen Elizabeth Hall and the children of Lambeth will hold their music festival in the Royal Festival Hall. Looking to the future, we are working with the Esmée Fairbairn Trust to commission new work for children as audience: high quality work from some of the world’s leading artists. Never underestimate your audience.