Peter Fran­cis is a gradu­ate from the Queens­land Con­ser­vat­orium and the Uni­ver­sity of South­ern Queens­land. He began teach­ing in 1985 with Edu­ca­tion Queens­land and since then has worked in a num­ber of schools as a multi instru­mental and classroom music teacher. Peter has been highly involved in com­munity music hav­ing been the found­ing con­ductor of the Clev­e­land Sym­phony Orches­tra, the con­ductor of the Red­land Shire Bands as well as work­ing with the Adult Starters. For thir­teen years he was the con­ductor of the Queens­land Youth Orches­tra Wind Sym­phony and was the found­ing con­ductor of the QYO Big Band. Peter is a part-time lec­turer at the Queens­land Con­ser­vat­orium where he teaches Multi Instru­mental Fun­da­ment­als. Peter has been a con­duct­ing clini­cian for the Singa­pore Band Dir­ect­ors Asso­ci­ation. In 2005 he was appoin­ted Dir­ector of Music at Iona Col­lege where he is respons­ible for both the Aca­demic and Instru­mental Music programs.

Peter’s present­a­tion was called ‘Com­mu­nic­a­tion from the podium: the devel­op­ment of the inter­me­di­ate con­ductor’ and it was designed to aid in the devel­op­ment of con­duct­ing skills that reflect the intent of the com­poser. Peter covered con­duct­ing tech­niques that included the right hand, the left hand, the baton, hand inde­pend­ence, stance, cue­ing, and score preparation.

Peter emphas­ised hav­ing a relaxed stance (as opposed to the ‘fight­ing stance’ that many of us sub­con­sciously adopt). He also spoke to the import­ance of cue­ing and how a good con­ductor needs to be able to cue with the left hand, the right hand, the eyes, and the mouth, and be able to do this on every beat of the bar.

He also gave an excel­lent example of breath cue­ing and how this simple tech­nique can be used to enhance lyr­ical play­ing but also free the con­ductor from the ‘tyranny of the baton’. The del­eg­ates fol­lowed Peter as he downed the baton and cued an entrance with the breath alone, and then amaz­ingly he turned his back on the audi­ence, breathed again and his body move­ment was able to be fol­lowed per­fectly by the ensemble. This was a great example of the power of breath cue­ing and how we don’t always need to rely on the baton.

Here is Peter’s handout from this session.