Ben Jacks, Andrew Bain and Saul Lewis talk to Sarah Willis about horn playing in Australia during the live Horn Masterclass from the ANAM in Melbourne, June 2103.
Transcript
Auto-generated from the live stream, expect the occasional robot mishearing.
Australian horn hangout ben jacks principal horne of sydney symphony and also you’re the brass head of brass here at and um i think um can some tim can you let us know how the audio is doing or am i going to have to just hold this i’ll just hold this like that okay that’s fine you can hold it can you come in a bit closer you guys it’s close to me okay your principal um your principal yeah of sydney symphony and um i kind of coordinate the brass program the newish brass program here at nm why is it a newish brass program um we’ve had
Full-time brass here for one and a half two years now this is the second year uh it’s very exciting that we’ve actually got a full orchestral brass program here now we’ve got five horns um three trombones one tuber and four trumpets and uh it’s a very unique program for australia it’s much like where andrew teaches in la in that the students here are all on a full scholarship so that they don’t have to work or babysit to pay their rent um and they get they get many lessons and lots of extra things so it’s a unique and wonderful program they’re made to play online and
Master classes poor things i’d probably prefer to babysit that’s up to us then we also have um starting this other side we have andrew bain who is principal horn los angeles philharmonic um so what are you doing here andrew i like coming back you used to be principal horn melvin from new york that’s right yeah and um andrew and i i’ve got to tell you guys we’ve actually between us andrew and i have flown all the way around the world because last week and you played first one with us in the berlin phil and you flew west you flew west berlin frankfurt los angeles melbourne
And i flew berlin seoul melbourne so between us we’ve been all the way around the world we’ve got it all covered um how long have you been in los angeles i’ve been in l.a for a year and a half since september 2011. and um how long were you here in melbourne before i should know all this but i didn’t google sorry uh i think i was here actually wearing my glasses please they google andrew bain where are my glasses tim where are my glasses i think he was charging them what my glasses yeah i was in melbourne for a couple of years what do you
Want me to do with them nothing yet videos okay okay i’ll take some videos a bit later on yeah sorry back to how you were in melbourne for how long about two years about two years but that’s not that long actually but you still feel like in melbourne somehow yeah i love melbourne so it’s always nice to come back um what is the biggest difference for you being over in the weather the weather and the traffic the traffic but in in california it’s the same weather every day yeah it’s pretty boring you wake up and it’s sunny and warm terrible okay we’ll get back to
You in a sec um saul lewis third horn melbourne symphony orchestra um do you miss andrew uh no he’s just here oh i asked for that one beginners interviewers questions don’t ask horn players stupid questions thanks for that how you but you you two were in the orchestra for two years together at the same time yeah we were actually we first met in sydney i was in the opera ballet orchestra and andrew played with us for about seven minutes before moving on to his next job seven minutes oh i was 18 months actually and um then he said can you come down and play on
Contract down here in melbourne and um yeah it was lucky enough to win the job and you’ve been living here since 2009. what’s the best thing about living in melbourne um not well actually i’d like to be able to go to the beach so that’s not so good down here um i think the bars and the cafes and the cultural side of things and he’s very good in melbourne the sydney swans winning last year against all the melbourne teams that was also one of the best things about living here sydney swans afl football okay yeah but not my football your football the big the big
Sort of wrestling mean sport football okay yeah and i think ben and andrew like me saying that because they don’t support the sydney swansea but we’ll save that for the pub afterwards ben um can you tell us a bit about the setup in in australia for horns um how many orchestras do you know and and what sort of horns do people generally play on oh mostly alexander’s of course ben is saying that because ben is saying that in the back because in the back there’s um uh philip alexander and ryman who who was here he’s gone now philip thank you for joining us he’s brought
20 horns over to try um so if not everybody’s playing on alexander’s now i’m sure they will be by the end of this absolutely um well in every capital city in australia except for for darwin whoops no one on google saw that i hope there’s there’s one major performing symphony orchestra in every capital city so that’s in in sydney melbourne perth adelaide tasmania and brisbane and then in melbourne and sydney there’s also an opera orchestra as well and then in sydney there’s also a full-time chamber orchestra although that has no horn players full-time so there are i’m not sure what is it 40 positions i
Think something like that 40 full-time positions so melbourne and sydney are the the two bigger orchestras and they’ve got um six full-time horn positions and most of the others have got five full-time home positions and tasmania has got four so it’s not bad for a country of our size um what is the what is the hierarchy what is it sydney symphony and melbourne i know this is the wrong place maybe to talk about hierarchy of orchestras tell me there’s definitely the wrong place okay we could have a celebrity death match too to work it out but um i mean you know melbourne and sydney are
The bigger orchestras and and have the larger funding base and play the bigger bigger repertoire but all the orchestras are a very high standard thank you ben yes that’s good andrew can i ask you what what did you did you have to do anything i’m sure people would be interested in hearing you you played also in germany for a bit um what did you have to do did you have to change at all to move to la uh pretty much anything i changed was um this is not going to sound good was the horn the horn oh i had previously played a 103 when i
Was living in germany and when i’d moved back to australia i stayed playing 103 and in about 2008 i changed to a gaia style of horn uh an atkinson ag 2000 is the model um mark will be happy with that uh yeah and and that’s that was purely to to um that that style of horn fits with most of the american orchestras um sound that they’re that they’re playing on was it difficult for you i’m i am listening i’m just looking here because on soul’s phone we’ve got the questions of people coming from from outside and everyone’s saying thanks this is great to hear all
All their australian heroes um on um would would you um but did you have to play if play change anything in the style you played or did that fit in very well i didn’t not consciously i was i i i listened to recordings obviously of american orchestras but um basically i played with this with a similar style that i had had done and and my philosophy for the audition was to just to present the best playing that i could so from a style point of view i didn’t really change anything it was just the horn and jess has asked that she says thanks to the
Australian hangout andrew moved from australia to the usa would you guys up and leave and move overseas for the right job or is staying and playing in australia at home important so um good question yeah i like australia a lot i’d probably stay here um i have been to san sebastian in spain which is the sso sebastian symphony option and that was so beautiful i thought i could possibly live there but um i don’t know i just come back fly back to australia and always feel like i’m at home so it’d be pretty hard to make me move i think ben oh yeah i guess
I think as as horn players and ambitious horn players you always kind of dream of the of your dream job that you you would give up a lot of things for but i think my experience with a lot of australians that go overseas and work because there are a lot of us that do that is that australians inevitably want to come home and so it’s always a a bit of a toss-up you know to you do you leave everything or yeah stay here well i i left everything in went all the way from london to berlin there’s seem quite far or culturally you could be
A very long way you could get an australian passport well you’re going to marry me that’s probably i’m already married no but it’s true ben is right because my dad was an australian citizen um and until he became an american so i could probably wangle that somehow you could you could um we’ve got talia watching from adelaide and rob gladstone’s watching in perth saying he’s playing on a lovely alexander 103. so there we go so they’ve already obviously reached perth um and uh and sarah really rob gladstone’s horn was your alexander well you should well can i ask you why you sold it it was
A moment of weakness um but yeah i i just um had a financial situation obviously that won’t get into financial institutions um for all of us uh sarah k has asked i don’t know where she’s watching but all of us she’s asked us all who have you listened to for inspiration both horn and non-horn players and sarah k she knows you shout out to andrew she said cool so um who have you listened to was barry this sounds really stupid maybe but was barry tuckwell a really big influence for you all when you when i started the first cd that i ever bought was barry
Tuckwall playing the mozart is it the same with all of you was he the first horn player you will you all had anything to do with yes yeah no who was your celia hermann bauman okay yeah mine was gunter hogner there was a little cassette tape of his mozart churches what about you i think the first thing that really got me excited about the horn was seeing the big spaceship go over in star wars at the cinema and i was like 11 and the horn started playing i went oh wow that’s that’s that’s great that’s for me have you ever played the music to star
Wars yeah yeah in the shower yeah well ben who were your inspirations ah definitely mr tuckwell he’s a you know real mentor and um a wealth of knowledge for us australian horn players and someone that we’re very proud of and look up to you know he’s quite an amazing man really no one what’s he like um he’s got a a a cutting wit he’s he’s very clever he’s um he can be quite dour as well i’m sure he wouldn’t mind me saying that um he’s alert he’s hilarious hilarious yeah yeah very charismatic and um very private as well yeah we’ve been trying to get him
On the hangout for ages so mr tuckwell if you’re watching please come we all want you to be on a hangout he’s in america i think at the moment otherwise he would have gotten today so um so so he what about a foreign uh what else did you listen to um oh probably my biggest influence would have been dale clevenger i think the man i went and studied with the lady i studied with in australia was a student of his and then i was lucky enough to go over and study with him on and off for a number of years and big influence on me
For sure that kind of sound okay and also herman bauman and yep that’s about it that’s about it um any questions from the floor i’d be really happy if you guys had any questions for any of these fabulous players now’s the moment where i’m just going to feel silly oh great there is someone here was what difficulties did you encounter going into the profession that maybe you weren’t prepared for as a student good question thanks i’m doing the interviewing here um what difficulties like that i wasn’t prepared for it’s i the the pressure of of having a job and um your whole existence depending on
It paying your rent uh is depending on how well you play the horn that’s something i never really thought about as a student and um you know you get we’re very lucky we’re paid for what we do um but uh uh that is something that i really when i when i went into a job and i realized gosh this is my job oh i better really take it seriously and um yeah if i play badly they’re not going to pay me anymore so that was something strange that that was just a personal thing um what i experienced on a chops note i went straight into
The opera so i was playing rose and cavalier one night and magic fruit the next night and then freischutz and then the ring and i i wasn’t prepared to cope with that my my whole setup was not prepared to cope with the difference of playing fine magic flute and then the ring and then all this so i had to do an awful lot of work when i started my job um to to readjust and i’m not sure whether student life really could prepare me for that that was something if i if i’d known that before i would have practiced excerpts in a different way i
Would have tried playing wagner all morning and then mozart all afternoon and maybe andrew your turn i found the biggest thing was actually learning repertoire going as a student you would do once every two or three months you do orchestral program but doing a different program every week and actually and it everything you’re playing was the first time so the first two or three years is which was your first job adelaide that was that was really tricky and then and then being my first job was as an associate and so playing all the touchy all the touchy delicate stuff and stuff that you you necessarily
Didn’t grow up listening to so like accompanying piano concertos and violin concertos and some small overtures um so you really had to do a lot of research to to learn the repertoire before you actually played in the orchestra how did you how did you do that did you were you listening every night yeah just sitting sitting down having recordings on at home all the time and then and then practicing with the recording spotify and youtube it was tough wasn’t it actually ben said the dates before spotify on youtube it was really today you could just google something and you’re up there and you’ve got it
In front of you or you pay 99 cents you’ve downloaded it or not um but i mean i went out and bought cds or records oh real real real to real now come on maybe come on but yeah it was it was really tough and so um what do you think about adjusting to a groups or horn sections dynamics after leaving college that’s something that’s quite tricky isn’t it yeah it is i think um i used to go to concerts as a kid and watch these amazing musicians on stage playing and just think it’s incredible how they pick up the instrument put on their face
And blow this sound comes out when i got into the job i found it’s not really doesn’t really work like that i mean you want to give the appearances like that but on the inside a lot of other stuff can be happening that isn’t quite as easy as that i remember one of the singers that did some mozart with us i think is don giovanni and he said singing mozart is like being a dup on the surface you’re floating along gracefully and underneath you’re paddling like hell so i think one of the things that you really find out pretty quickly is if you don’t turn
Up prepared you pay the price really fast and it’s really hard to uh to allow for that when if you’re not prepared so um i think it’s james sutherland’s inspiration she used to say you’re only as good as your next performance so that can put the bad ones behind you but if you have a good one it means you have to keep preparing for the next one as well yeah what a good advice yes that’s a really good question i’ll just repeat it for the microphone so that you can hear it um she asked uh if we’ve had a really bad moment in our career
Some big disappointment or something what would keep us inspired to keep going um yeah very good question it’s a very i’m very interested to hear some other answers yeah i am too that’s why i looked at you that’s a very probing question i think as horn players it’s inevitable that something’s going to go wrong every now and then you know it does even for the best players in the world um and you’ve just got to find a way of getting a good life work balance for starters i think and then you know if something goes wrong it’s not the end of the world you’ve just
Got to be able to fall back on your technique and all that kind of stuff but it feels like it’s the end of the world is the end of the world i’m just kidding it is it really feels like it’s the end of the world i mean i appreciate you saying that but i mean it really does you know there’s concerts where you just go out and you just you just want to die and on that positive note yeah it’s it’s tough i guess you’ve just got to find you’ve got to find a way to get through it you know and um and move on
To it on to another question i just remember a story we played um beethoven two last year in la and um but having two can be well it is always difficult and that night was particularly difficult and and i had i just walked off stage and was going to going to the room and i thought okay if i can just get out of here without seeing anyone i think i’m going to be okay like it didn’t go well and i almost got to to my room to change and the principal viola was she came out of her room and walked towards me she said yeah
Don’t you just wish the floor would open up and swallow you sometimes and and for a fleeting moment i had thought that maybe i got away with you know maybe people didn’t notice it was that bad but obviously it wasn’t um but then we had to do it the next day so it was it was actually a really good challenge to actually mentally sort of try and try and recover and not see her again i might just probably try and think of it as an evolutionary process i know we’re meant to put a fantastic product out there and people are paying a lot of money
And spending time to come and see us play and of course you want to do something at a very very high level but there’s always something you can work on if the concert went really well you could work on maybe being more efficient next time so you use less energy and try and get a greater result if the concept didn’t go so well you haven’t got a lot of tough work ahead of you to work out why did that go wrong and how i’m going to get myself sorted out for the next one that’s probably one of the hardest times i’ve ever had is having
A bad concert and having three days until the next performance and waking up every night going oh my god did that really happen and you have that those bad sounds in your head and you really have to work incredibly hard to replace them with the sounds you want to make in the next concert and that can be very challenging when it’s such a dramatic emotional experience you just went through when it didn’t go well but you have to try and get rid of that and like you know the only as good as your next performance and really be positively focused on what you can do
To sort it out and they’re great personal challenges if you do overcome that you’ve learnt a lot about how to do better in the profession and how to do better within yourself and you grow a lot and so when you have a bad performance you might want to think i want to stop all this but if you can trust that if you get through it you’ll be much better off then it’s probably going to be a really positive event in the end you can look back and think that was a really positive experience even though it didn’t go so well does that make sense sometimes
You’ve got to see it with humor as well sometimes you just gotta laugh really because sometimes it’s just so horrible what happens if you’re having a really bad bad time you don’t want to take you don’t want to make it seem like you don’t take it seriously because of course we all take it terribly seriously but occasionally you just think okay we’re we’re our whole lives are about blowing into three and a half feet of metal and um and getting something nice and in german we call we call it the glucks spiral which means the lucky spiral um and they say what you blow in
Is not necessarily what you cut but you get out get out of it and it’s true you know we do the best we can and um we love what we do but that that’s what i always come back to when i’ve had a really bad time i’ll put on some really loud amazing horn pieces uh maybe star wars in the shower or something like that and and i’ll remember why i’m doing this um and of course we’ve all had these experiences where we’ve just wanted to sneak away and not see any of the other players on the way out um it’s just why do we
Do this because we love the horn and why do we love the horn we love the sound it makes and that’s what we’ve got to remind ourselves of so yeah any more um australian based photos for you guys before we get everyone playing up and playing questions questions i wanted to also ask we’ve got some friends here from the melbourne horn you call the melbourne horns aren’t you um what what’s in as amateurs in australia how does that work are you you have a it’s a group that you you you meet and you practice do you take lessons how does it how does it work
You live a long way away don’t you on a sheep station or you live miles away three hours and you come into melbourne and bring your horn and play just first just run it you don’t you don’t have to talk you don’t have to talk but tell us just tell us a bit about the melbourne horns just for just just for a sec because you lot play in the yeah i’ve only recently joined the horn stars and i’ve been down three or four times i really enjoy coming down it’s great experience for me and where i’m from we’ve only got about three horn players in
A couple hundred miles three horn players and a couple of hundred miles that’s a little bit lonely yes it is rather and down there you know i’m the best there is and i come down here on pretty much the bottom of the house so it’s really good for it’s great experience to come down and play with these guys and i try to come down to hear concerts when i can but it’s a long way sorry we can’t swing the camera around to show you i do apologize but but celia tell us quickly um what what what does what does melbourne horns do and what what
Do you need to what do you need from teachers like like these great players you come to concerts and listen to them and well i can’t speak for anyone else because i think everybody everybody here is so different i mean everybody who’s in horn stars has a different reason for being there a lot of people are semi-professional or even we’ve even had really great professionals playing with us as well and then there are people like me who are completely amateur and just doing it because we love it um some of us have lessons um and all we all have lessons for different reasons um in
My case it’s uh if i’ve got a really difficult program coming up or there’s something that i want to improve um i think we’re all trying to become better players or i think it’s great i think i think they think the amateur horn societies are really i sometimes wish it sounds so easy but sometimes i think it would be nice just to play the horn because it’s fun and not because you have to i mean i play it but we all play because it’s fun but um can you imagine just playing it just because it’s fun that’d be great thank you thank you guys another
Question i know you guys okay we can’t really show thanks thanks thanks sorry it’s a little bit awkward we can’t really show you um can i just have that back just for a second we’re going to wrap up on this hangout i think we could have organized a proper hangout sometime in the middle of the night for you guys um how how can you how can you connect australia’s horns can you do it online can you you broadcast your concerts how does that happen um yeah definitely i mean i know sydney symphony broadcasts 10 concerts a year on big pond we’ve got our own app
That you can download for free and that’s that’s all connected much like the digital concert hall except you don’t have to pay for it it’s great and i will uh pass that on and it’s live and it’s live um you know yeah there’s lots of ways many many different ways yeah facebook is your friend yes facebook is your friend or your enemy you guys anything more should we play a little bit just the one about the yeah i think the one about that um yeah there’s a very good question that maybe you guys want to talk about the someone wrote do you blow air through
The horn and push air through the horn or do you just let the air flow naturally and maybe that was because i was saying push the air through that was not no no andrew you have the microphone so you speak of course you should to air yeah good idea just a word a word about the air and then set up the stance aidan’s got you here hi mom um yeah i tr i personally try to to blow the air as relaxed as i can through the horn and and think of it as a as a stream not as not as a sort of a lump
Of anything um but um yeah and just i mean as natural as natural i mean we all have to breathe don’t we yeah it’s just just the way it is maybe maybe i was putting too much emphasis on on the blowing but that was literally just before this this tiny little bit left over that you can use in an emergency that we all have yeah exactly i mean there’s there are points also in the when you’re playing in the upper register where there’s going to be it’s going to it’s not going to feel as though you you’re just relaxed you’re going to have to do
A bit of work but if you can move the air relaxed the sound is going to be good i think you
Horn Hangouts are created by Sarah Willis of the Berlin Philharmonic. Brassbanned is a proud long-time collaborator and streaming partner.
