Information for Artistic Planners

David has a reputation for the inspiration and energy he brings to performances and orchestral musicians appreciate his combination of passion and clarity (see Press and Media). He is equally at home with both "modern" and "period" ensembles as his artistic approach is a synthesis of the “golden age” of conducting, cutting edge musicological research (click here for some Beethoven examples) and a constant searching for new opportunities to broaden people’s experience of orchestral music. He is passionate about audience development, education and about exploring the fertile common ground between “western classical” and “world” music: all of which really derive from the same fundamental source: our need to communicate.

His repertoire is very large, ranging from Gregorian chant to contemporary minimalists. His pioneering work integrating Indian music into western orchestral repertoire has led to notable performances bringing together for the first time leading orchestras with the finest Indian musicians. Orchestras have particularly enjoyed his unique programmes exploring the common ground between "world" music and the music of Mozart, Schubert and Beethoven.

David enjoys working with organisation’s audience development initiatives and is particularly experienced at discussing music on both local and national radio and television.

Information for Education Managers

One of David’s key aims is to inspire a love of music by giving people musical experiences of lasting value. David enjoys working with the education departments of orchestras and opera companies to help create valuable education and community work which in turn can help to build and sustain new audiences.

David has conducted and presented concerts by visiting ensembles in a variety of settings including prisons, homes for the elderly, hospices, day care centres and a whole variety of schools and colleges. His projects in the community seek to enable new audiences, both young and old, to delve deeper, perhaps to create their own music, and to experience the full impact of music performed with passion and commitment. Click here to view a video clip from a recent education performance.

Talking to Audiences

Whenever possible, David introduces works verbally, either with a pre-concert talk or with a short talk immediately before each work. Pre-concert talks in an informal setting are ideal as they also facilitate one to one contact with the audience.

David writes:
"An ideal scenario presents itself when I can work with an orchestra’s education department in advance of a performance to integrate an outreach project with audience development. For example, if an education project explores some of the musical material contained in another work in the programme, the children’s own examples can then be used to illustrate the work for the audience.A recent example is an orchestra’s education project where a group of children composed and performed a piece based on semitones. Through this piece, the children then helped the orchestra and I to illustrate Mozart’s use of semitones in the Symphony No. 40, which the orchestra and I then performed.
This process managed to bring everyone: musicians, audience and the children, closer to Mozart’s music."

Masterclasses

When guest conducting, David is often invited to give conducting masterclasses. As a result he has given many successful post-graduate conducting masterclasses internationally.

Through these classes he:

• Introduces students to the conducting techniques of the great conductors of the early twentieth century
• Explores principles of technical and musical clarity
• Works on enabling each student to find his/her own natural body language in a way which is both unequivocally clear for the orchestra and serves the score
• Explores specific repertoire (score preparation and performance techniques) Televised masterclass for SABC, Johannesburg
• Explores original source material (with a special emphasis on the Beethoven symphonies) and its relevance to the twenty-first century conductor
• Explores the role of the conductor as ambassador for music