ABO Orchestral Manager of the Year (special commendation): Greg Felton

Greg Felton has been personally acquainted with Covid-19 for longer than most. It put the London Philharmonic Orchestra's ‘Digital Creative’ in bed for a week just before the start of the first lockdown. He wasn’t fully fit until the autumn. However, through most of the year Felton worked at a frenzy to ensure the orchestra put out quantities of online content, defying the disruptions and dislocations of life under the virus. He duly earned a special commendation from the 2020 ABO/Classical Music awards panel. As his nomination put it: ‘Meticulous, organised and calm under pressure’ Felton provided ‘both the glue behind LPOnline and the gloss on top.’

Through our conversation Felton constantly deflects praise onto the LPO team around him, admitting to feelings of embarrassment that he alone should have picked up the commendation. Under questioning, though, it becomes ever clearer just what he achieved in 2020. ‘It was immediately obvious to the whole marketing team that we had to create content as fast as possible for an online audience,’ he recalls. ‘It was a tricky situation but one full of opportunities.

 ‘As it happened, in 2019 I’d created a video in which players from the orchestra performed music from the Janacek Sinfonietta. I couldn’t get them together, so ended up filming them playing their parts individually. In a green room, in a bar, and so on. My background in the pop industry enables me to manipulate video, including time-stretching audio without changing the pitch. So I was able to stitch together the individual players’ contributions despite the variations in tempo.’

When Covid struck, Felton was able to repeat the trick in relation to Beethoven’s Harp Quartet Op 74. ‘An “Anne-Sophie Mutter & Friends” concert was cancelled, so we asked if she’d collaborate with members of the orchestra to record music from the quartet. She was brilliant about it… all four players recorded their parts separately on smartphones.’

The resulting video achieved over 200,000 views in its first 24 hours online. However, this was but the prelude to a myriad digital offerings which have substantially raised the profile of the LPO both at home and abroad via a range of platforms. Even TikTok: ‘I’ve been amazed at the quality of chatter about classical music on there!’ Felton chuckles. All a long way from the days when he was a freelance professional percussionist. The impact of the 2008 financial crash shrank opportunities to build a performing career, leaving him finding his way instead as a film-maker in the arts world, including working for the Philharmonia Orchestra and the Juilliard School in New York.

Nothing could have prepared him, however, for the demands of 2020. Following on from the Harp Quartet production, Felton worked with LPO players from across the orchestra to produce a mammoth series of videos. The viola section offered their version of the Ben E. King number, Stand By Me, for example. We’ll Meet Again was rendered by a string quartet and members of the London Philharmonic Choir. All sewn together courtesy of Felton’s back bedroom technical wizardry. This scaled the heights with his work on a recreation of the scherzo from Beethoven’s Eroica Symphony, Vladimir Jurowski conducting sixty LPO musicians playing at home. It caught the imagination of a worldwide audience.

‘It wasn’t just a matter of serving existing lovers of classical music, though,' observes Felton. ‘We had to take the opportunity to pull in new audiences. Using the talents of the creative and entertainment consultancy group Sunshine and our wellbeing advocate, Holly de Cruz, we made a series of Lean In and Listen videos, featuring musical excerpts and contributions from well-known figures such as Russell Brand, Fern Cotton, Dermot O’Leary and Paloma Faith. These had a huge impact on the orchestra’s visibility outside our own social channels, engaging with completely new listeners.’

Thanks to Felton’s expertise, the LPO was able to offer content to followers which went at least some way towards compensating for the cancellation of concerts. ‘Players and conductors chatted about the repertoire they should have been performing and recommended recordings.’ And when — in the heady days as the first lockdown was eased — the orchestra could meet again, Felton masterminded the streaming of five LPO Summer Sessions concerts from Henry Wood Hall, supplementing the performances with video material reflecting the excitement of the players at being together once more. ‘It was such a joyous edit to accomplish - action-packed!’ Felton remembers. ‘The players are the real heroes. They got used to me hanging around filming everything that moved. I don’t think there’s been a single member of the orchestra who hasn’t been involved in some way.’

After a pause to catch breath in late summer, there was the little matter of filming (with streaming partner Marquee TV) 13 concerts at the Royal Festival Hall, with repertoire from Vivaldi and Bach to Anna Clyne and James MacMillan. ‘There was no audience, so we opted instead to bring in a specialist company, Intersection, to light up and film the venue in the most amazing way.’

No space to do more than mention the education initiatives and young composer showcasing which further exemplify the breadth of focus in Felton’s astounding 2020. The man himself prefers to report that ‘everyone was flat out - it really was teamwork’. And he’s still going flat out in 2021. The LPO’s collective defiance of Covid-19 has opened online avenues which will continue to be explored and expanded way into the future.