Dvorak 8 recording

In November 2024 the Nottingham Philharmonic recorded Dvorak’s 8th Symhpony at the BBC Philharmonic Studio in MediCity. Available to listen on Spotify and other streaming platforms. Quite an achievement for a non-professional orchestra!

Test Match Special - Settling the Score

As a bit of a cricket fanatic, I was delighted to be invited to conduct the BBC Philharmonic for a radio documentary celebrating the 20th anniversary of the famous 20025 Ashes series between England and Australia. The best series ever, so the say! As well as recording the music, I got to be interviewed for a behind the scenes feature, and then live on Test Match Special during the Old Trafford England v India Test in July. Definitely a career highlight!!

You can listen to the programme, wonderfully narrated by Charles Dance, here.

The “making of” documentary is here.

The clip of the new arrangement of Soul Mambo is here.

BBC Philharmonic jump in

I did one of those very last minute stand-ins taking over a brilliant programme of American music more than halfway through the rehearsal process, leading to a live Radio 3 concert the following evening! It was the biggest BBC Phil to play together since the start of the pandemic in March 2020, so a real privilege to do this. I can safely say I knew the music a lot better by the end of the gig than I did at 10.45am the previous morning!

bbc phil gig.png

Listen here (if in the UK).

Launch of first ConductIT materials

In 2018 I was part of a partnership involving RNCM Conducting, the University of Stavanger, the University of Aveiro, and the Open Universiy that was awarded a major research grant from the EU’s Erasmus+ Stretegic Partnership programme. Little did we know then how relevant our project to create online resources to teach conducting would be as we approached the end of the 3 years of funding.

In December we launched the first part of the ConductIT resource. Our introductory MOOC (Massive Open Online Course) is a standalone resource aimed at those beginning to conduct, and serves as an introduction to the full range of materials that will be published towards the end of 2021.

Have a look at the ConductIT website to see what we’ve been up to.

ConductIT online conferences

The ConductIT project has been steaming ahead over the last few months and we are preparing to release an introductory MOOC before the end of the year. In place of the unfortuntaely cancelled conference in Aveiro, Portugal in November (can’t imagine why we thought that would be a good idea….) we are instead holding a series of online events. These are free of charge and will be of interest to conductors of all levels, and those interested in how conducting is taught.