By Patrick Thomas

Are we as a Nation sup­port­ing tal­en­ted Aus­tralian con­duct­ors to the fullest extent, enabling them to make their fullest con­tri­bu­tion to our national music scene? Altern­ately, whether from the giant loaf of oppor­tun­it­ies, we are offer­ing them but a hand­ful of ‘crumbs’. One thing is axio­matic: One or two per­form­ances a year do not a con­ductor make! Nor, on their own, do ‘pass­ive’ train­ing pro­grams. No! Tal­en­ted, devel­op­ing con­duct­ors need con­tinu­ous prac­tical exper­i­ence as an essen­tial determ­in­ant of whether they will develop to high levels and with a capa­city that ulti­mately enables them to pro­duce the goods under pro­fes­sional, or those less-than-perfect con­di­tions that exist in Music’s real world. Gran­ted, select­ing someone who should be given such oppor­tun­it­ies requires real cour­age and ima­gin­a­tion on the part of orches­tra man­age­ments and con­cert organ­isers. Indeed, they may need at times to be no less than gam­blers — albeit astute ones! Sad to say, in Aus­tralia, there has not been suf­fi­cient cour­age demon­strated in recent years by our lead­ing entre­pren­eurs; and det­ri­ment­ally also, in terms of fin­an­cial and artistic cost. Sig­ni­fic­antly also, play­ers in the orches­tras have seemed curi­ously reluct­ant to see the situ­ation clearly. Yet, just ima­gine if they were denied oppor­tun­it­ies to pur­sue their chosen careers as a pro­fes­sional instru­ment­al­ists in their own country!

Devel­op­ing con­duct­ing skills at the prac­tical level is, and has always been, depend­ent on the ‘doing factor’. Train­ing courses, how­ever excel­lent, are all very well; but on their own, they will not make up for the exper­i­ence of hav­ing to pro­duce the goods under oper­a­tional con­di­tions. A case in point is in the USA, where there are hun­dreds of advanced pro­grams and PHD courses for would-be con­duct­ors. Yet com­par­at­ively few post gradu­ates sur­vive as Music Dir­ect­ors at the pro­fes­sional level, without real and con­tinu­ing oppor­tun­it­ies to put their train­ing into practice.

Leav­ing mod­esty aside, my own con­duct­ing career began when I was ‘cata­pul­ted to the tigers’ and required to prove myself pro­fes­sion­ally from the very first per­form­ance (without rehearsal.) I can now say that, although fright­en­ingly for­mid­able at the time, this, and a con­tinu­ing ‘hands-on’ back­ground, ensured that few future things fazed me. Another point is that this happened right here in Aus­tralia in 1964! So, someone, some­where, was a gambler!

Cer­tainly you and your col­leagues are far closer than I am to the status quo, the real­it­ies of the mar­ket, and other lat­ent prob­lems. How­ever, Aus­tralia has long ‘come of age’ inter­na­tion­ally in the per­form­ing arts, in terms of act­ors, cho­reo­graph­ers, film dir­ect­ors, com­posers, et al. Even more rel­ev­ant, is that vari­ous Aus­trali­ans hold pres­ti­gi­ous con­duct­ing posts abroad, so it seems a great shame that man­age­ments here at home appear to be drag­ging their feet. My feel­ing is that our best local con­duct­ors deserve increased and con­tinu­ing oppor­tun­it­ies for input, and if your Sum­mit brings this pos­sib­il­ity nearer, it will be to its great credit.

Patrick Thomas
18.6.2010

This paper was con­trib­uted by Patrick Thomas to the Music Coun­cil of Australia’s ‘Aus­tralian Musical Futures 2010: The Clas­sical Sum­mit’. You can read more about The Clas­sical Sum­mit here.