Interview with Justine Nguyen - May 29, 2017

What do you find most rewarding about music education? 

There are three distinct strands to my career, and each brings a completely different reward.

As a composer, I create works that enable huge numbers of young people to perform with professional orchestras as equals. Watching an entire audience of school kids rise to their feet and perform with joy something I’ve created – or better still, something we’ve created together – takes my breath away. 

As a presenter of educational concerts (whether they be for children or adults) introducing great orchestral works to new listeners is such a rush. Finding just the right way to illustrate a complex musical element, so that the audience not only enjoy the music but understand it too is vital to my approach. 

And finally, inspiring people of any age or ability to compose and perform their own music is by far the greatest reward; especially when working with people who previously thought they weren’t musical. Encouraging participants to take full responsibility for their music-making, to direct themselves and to play entirely form memory, turns even the youngest group into an advanced chamber ensemble. There is nothing more rewarding than listening to a group of people perform music that they’ve created themselves.

When constructing a programme for children, what’s most important for you to communicate? How do you want to make them feel?

I think it’s essential to show the vast range of sounds and colours that the orchestra can produce, and in this digital age it’s so important to highlight that this is all happening live on stage. A good variety of music and styles is important too; I love constructing a programme that continually surprises the listener. It’s great to watch the response in the audience, and of course, everyone has a completely different reaction. More than anything, I want children to feel how amazing it is to be engulfed in the sound of the orchestra. 

You’ve always included a lot of visual elements and technology in your presentations. Why do you do this and how does it enhance the audience’s experience?

Young people are such sophisticated consumers of digital content that they have very high expectations of how a concert should look. But of course, due to the vast size of the orchestra, a classical concert is more or less visually static. So, I’ve been using digital projection in my concerts for many years now and it has become an essential part of my style. 

However, I want to emphasise that I am not using a screen simply to ‘entertain’ the audience, I use projection to activate their listening. How I use that technology is really driven entirely by the audience I am communicating with. For young children, when I perform one of my musical stories, I project the pictures from the book above the orchestra, but this is not simply a case of throwing a static image on screen; I pan a camera around the picture or zoom-in on a specific element to help focus their attention. I want to highlight exactly what inspired the music, and that could be the tiniest detail in a large and complex image. 

I believe projection helps young audiences connect quicker and more directly to the sound of the orchestra, and for them, the music and visuals are inseparable. Plus, having successfully established that relationship, I can push their attention span far beyond its normal limits - and this can really only happen if there is the visual dimension to the concert. 

 At the opposite end of spectrum, when I’m performing a concert for older students or adults, I often show parts of the score or use icons on screen to illustrate musical structures or concepts. Projection is the most brilliant tool to help me explore complex musical ideas in as clear a way as possible. 

Why is it important that children interact with or are hands on with music making?

The most successful way I have found to inspire children about the orchestra and its repertoire is by getting them to make music themselves. We are all intrinsically musical beings, so if a child has explored elements of a great composer’s music in class (even in the simplest way) they will be so much more invested in the orchestra’s performance. The best letter I ever received after one of my concerts was from a primary school child who asked ‘How come the orchestra knew my tune?’.

How do children experience classical music in a way that you wish adults more familiar with the genre would?

When my concerts for teenagers were reviewed in the press back in the UK, one critic often commented “Why don’t orchestras offer this type of concert to their existing audience? They’d love it.” So my work has now diversified into creating and presenting concerts that explore great symphonic works live in concert for adult audiences. Yet there are many similarities to my work for young people; the visual element is just as essential in these concerts and there may even be an element of audience participation too! At the heart of these events is the desire to explore symphonic music in a way that is sophisticated enough to satisfy existing concert goers, but accessible enough to allow people who are curious about the orchestra to feel welcome, even if they have never have previously attended a classical gig. 

If a well-constructed concert can encourage a young audience be open to the sound of the orchestra, surely the same amount of creativity in presentation could persuade an adult audience to be more open to contemporary music.

What do you say to children who think classical music is too hard, too adult, or simply not for them?

I’ve yet to meet a child who says that! 

I find young people are more interested in the orchestra nowadays than when I started in this field decades ago. I think it must be down to the fact that the sound of the orchestra is everywhere in their lives - on film, TV, computer games. The internet is also this amazing resource where we can listen to everything ever written any time we want – and often for free! So today, there are many more opportunities for a young person to discover new music and to develop an eclectic taste – and some of that will inevitably include the orchestra (even if it is just via a movie score). 

Orchestras need to seize this massive opportunity and find creative ways to entice young audiences from popular movie-themed concerts towards our core repertoire. I doubt that will ever happen if the rigid format of a classical concert is maintained; it requires an entirely new type of orchestral event. It’s perfectly acceptable for a young person not like ‘some’ classical works, but it’s utterly impossible to dislike it all. So, surely we have a responsibility to help young and new audiences discover what it is they really love.