Tell us Will, what’s it like stepping out from behind the viola and taking centre stage as the host for the 6pm Series?

My answer to what it’s like to host the 6pm series may be totally different depending on what time of the day you ask me! I was pleased and honoured when I was approached with the idea but also a little daunted by the responsibility. Obviously, the main part of the evening is the musical performance and, like a page turner for a pianist, I can either help that go smoothly or create a couple of awkward bumps along the way. It’s great to be able to make a contribution to this series that hopefully gives it some individuality from our other brilliant concerts.

When I arrive for a performance, it feels very different to when I’m just playing the viola. It’s been a long term since I’ve felt nervous about performing with the orchestra but I’m now very well reacquainted with the feeling. I try to avoid the usual chat and banter with colleagues before the concert so that I can keep the information I want to give to the audience clear in my head. I’m sure my comrades in the viola section notice a marked difference in my behavior on a 6pm Series concert night now. I always feel a little jittery before speaking in public. I don’t think I’ve met anyone who doesn’t. But when I’m standing in front of the audience with my genuinely supportive colleagues behind me, the nerves melt away with the focus I try to bring to my speaking. Most of the time.

What is it that you love about the 6pm Series and what do you think sets it apart from some of our other concert offerings (apart from an exceptional host of course)?

I’ve always believed that being really serious about your work doesn’t preclude approaching it with a light heart and a smile. I think that’s a central part of the ‘spirit’ of the 6pm Series. In this series we really want to show people the fun, approachable and directly communicative side of music for symphony orchestras. That doesn’t mean we make any compromises on the quality of the music we play – far from it! Our outstanding artistic management team program the concerts to show that so many of the great works for orchestra don’t require any background experience or a track record of ‘orchestra enthusiasm’. A first-time listener can take away just as much from the experience as a life long devotee. It's especially for the first-time listeners that we want to give the 6pm Series a relaxed and welcoming vibe and that’s what my main motivation as the host is.

Our final 6pm Concert in 2024 is on Thursday 1^st August featuring pianist Stefan Cassomenos.  Is there something special our audiences should know or look out for in this concert?

Stefan has long been an outstanding champion of new music which I’m sure will give him the ability to see and feel Shostakovich’s concerto with fresh eyes and ears. There’s no other composer quite like Shostakovich. A genius who, his whole life, navigating his way within the Soviet Russian Regime, stayed true to his art. Even when he had to disguise the actual meanings in his music. Without ever meaning to, Shostakovich became the face of Soviet artistic achievement. I’m not sure any musician ever lived a braver artistic life or walked a more fraught path. I’m not particularly familiar with Kurt Weill’s music but I know the esteem in which it is held and I’m looking forward to my own journey with it.

You are a man of many skills, some of our readers might not be aware that you’ve been studying conducting.  Would you like to give us a bit of an update on what’s been happening with your training and how you’re involved with the Australian Conducting Academy?

Actually, I think I’m a man who finally understands why people talk about having a mid-life crisis! I’m lucky enough to be completely comfortable and happy in my life (for now, at least) and I have nearly three decades of experience to draw on in my career as a viola player. These last few years I’ve started to miss the challenge and exhilaration of developing new skills and finding new experiences in life. That’s what led me to explore both hosting the 6pm Series and learning more about conducting orchestras.

The TSO generously supported my undertaking a degree in conducting last year through the Elder Conservatorium in Adelaide. Earlier this year I was lucky enough to be offered a place in the TSO’s Conductor Launchpad program.

Conductor Launchpad is a gateway for the TSO’s Australian Conducting Academy. It provides the almost unique experience for a conductor early in their development to rehearse a professional orchestra and discover how all of the nuances of movement that a conductor makes elicit a direct response from professional players. That, in turn, is a revelation of why it’s so important for them to be highly aware of all their movements. I have an entirely new respect for conductors!

There are several ensembles in Hobart that offer the chance to rehearse and conduct concerts. I’m very grateful to the Secret Orchestral Society and the Derwent Symphony Orchestra for the opportunity to learn as much from them as they (hopefully) do from me. There is no teacher like a video camera that will unflinchingly tell you how it is after the fact!

I’m in the lucky position to know several brilliant professional conductors who are extremely supportive and generous with their advice and tuition. Ben Northey, Johannes Fritzsch and Eivind Aadland have all been good enough to help me on my way and each of them is an inspiration in the art of conducting.

Ultimately, what strikes me is the thing that unites playing, speaking about or conducting music and that’s sharing a love of it with other people. That doesn’t change for me across all three of my pursuits – communicating the things I find in the music and being open to what other performers and listeners do. It’s a chance for us all to rejoice in the genius of our brothers and sisters, touch a part of that genius and let it enrich our lives.

In all your work with the orchestra this year, has there been a highlight so far, whether it be 6pm related or something else entirely?

So far, the highlights for me have been Yeol Eum Son’s performance of Rachmaninov’s Third Piano Concerto and playing Beethoven’s Eroica. I thought Yeol’s playing was absolutely electrifying and I love being reminded (every single time) of the power and genius of any of Beethoven’s symphonies.

See Will in action at a 6pm Series concert.

Thank you for agreeing to chat with us Simon, to start with, could you tell us a little bit about yourself and your musical background?

It’s my absolute pleasure! I started in music on the piano, back when I was eight years old. When I turned thirteen, my teacher retired, and I began to teach myself to play guitar; I borrowed an electric guitar and a massive amplifier from my uncle. I’d never had lessons when I started my Music Degree on classical guitar, and fairly quickly discovered that I wasn’t ever going to be that great a practitioner.

Thankfully, thanks to the efforts of my Performance lecturer, Rosalind Halton, a wonderful harpsichordist, I was able to access the joys of playing with others in baroque era music, at least, whenever there’s a basso continuo line. The mix of improvisation and ensemble collaboration suits my musical character down to the ground. So I begged and borrowed and did whatever I could to get my hands on lutes, guitars and theorbos.

I travelled to Europe in the late nineties on a Winston Churchill Trust, and then in 2002 thanks to a very generous grant from The Australia Council to undertake further studies in Germany with the lutenist Rolf Lislevand. I stayed in Germany for the next eleven years, working with a collection of early music ensembles and orchestras, and getting to do the most amazing things in the most amazing places! I then moved back to Australia after six years in the US. I’m still someone who prioritises chamber music collaborations over solo music, because for me it’s the most satisfying musical activity.

Tell us about your instrument, the theorbo.  When and where did it originate? How do you play it?

The theorbo is originally an Italian instrument, called a tiorba, and it originated more or less in the late sixteenth century. It was developed as a collaborative instrument for vocal performance, smack in the middle of the development of a new style of singing that we call monody today, and the emergence of opera as an art form. In many ways, it was an instrument that ushered in the baroque period. It was very quickly adopted in the rest of Europe for collaborative vocal performance, simply because it proved to be so good at it! It hung around as well in various forms until the late eighteenth century.

The most distinctive aspect to the theorbo is the neck extension that allows a second peg box to be attached. This is useful because, just like a harpsichord, or a piano for that matter, the longer the string length is in the bass, the thinner strings need to be to sound in the lower register. The rest of the instrument looks just like a lute - tear-drop body with a bowl back made of ribs of wood, a neck with frets, and a flat soundboard with a bridge long enough to take the standard fourteen courses. As I’m a right hander, my left hand fingers fret the strings, while my right hand fingers play not only the fretted courses, usually seven in number, but also the bass strings that run to the second peg box at the end of the extension. My right hand thumb tends to be very busy!

How were you introduced to the instrument and what is it about the theorbo that you love?

As soon as you start playing lutes, you’re made aware of theorbos. They are an essential instrument in a continuo player’s arsenal. But I was lucky to hear, see, and yes, touch, instruments that were brought to Uni by visiting lutenists, such as Tommie Andersson and William Carter, amongst others. The instrument maker Peter Biffin also lived in Armidale, where I was studying, and he made many lutes those days, so I got to see whatever it was he was working on and had completed before it got sent on.

And what is there not to love? It’s the ultimate rhythm instrument, with bass and tenor registers combined, and because it’s plucked, it’s essentially rhythmic. It’s very resonant, because of its size and string length; I’m a big fan of what a colleague of mine calls the “theorbo glory”, the bass register, because it’s such a distinctive sound.

Do you play any other instruments?

Apart from a raft of other lutes, such as renaissance and baroque lutes, I also play historical guitars, from baroque guitars to romantic instruments. The theorbo and baroque guitar are very closely related, despite them sounding and looking so very different, so they’re my main instruments. But I’ll still reach for my ‘lecky when I get a chance, or indeed anything with frets and strings - mandolin, ukulele… 

The theorbo is such a long instrument, how do you take it on tour with you?

The simple answer is with difficulty.

But, I’ve got to say, last year I purchased a new to me theorbo from a player in the UK, that has a neck that folds in on itself. There’s an ingenious hinge mechanism the maker came up with that works a charm, and there's a means of bending the bass strings over a sort of pulley wheel that keeps them in tension. It reduces the size of the instrument into something that’s shorter than a cello, but the case looks a bit similar. You have no idea the satisfaction that one has when for so long you needed to ask for a specific sized taxi, to just popping it in the boot!! It’s also soooo much easier to get it in the cabin of an aircraft, because it looks to similar to a cello case. You need to purchase an extra seat, but even then, full length theorbos in their case were often knocked back because they look so unusual. Now I just call it a cello, and no one bats an eyelid.

Any other special fun facts we should know about the theorbo?

Only that you just HAVE to hear one live.

There is one aspect to theorbos that many people don’t know but is central to their sound. Lutes are usually tuned like guitars, with the strings getting higher in pitch from the sixth string to the first. But theorbos are a bit different. When they first developed them, only plain gut strings were available, and attempts at making them thinner could only go so far, unlike the metal wound strings that are available today. But they were very keen to get the pitch of the instrument to the register of guitars and lutes from that time. Because of the long fretted string length that was required, no string could be made to reach the correct pitch - they were simply far too thin. So they put thicker strings on the first and second string places and tuned them down an octave. This means that the highest pitched open string on a theorbo is the third string, a b natural a semitone below middle c on a piano. We call this trick reentrant tuning, and it makes the theorbo a particularly homogenous sounding instrument. It’s a real mind bender if you’re used to the usual manner of tuning, but it’s a secret part of the special sound of the theorbo.

Thank you so much Simon, what a fascinating instrument! For more of the unexpected check out our next Obscura: Clothed in Words, emphasising voice as an instrument featuring the TSO Chorus.