Northern Chords Festival Mentorship Scheme: ‘it’s fascinating to see how people represent themselves’

When the Northern Chords Festival returns this week (14 May), it will be opened by the participants of its inaugural mentorship scheme. The four musicians have been asked to devise their own programme centred on a piece written by Lucy Walker (pictured) specifically for her fellow participants: bass-baritone Jacob Bettinelli, violinist Krystof Kohout and pianist Harvey Lin.

The concert is intended not only as a platform, but also a way of giving musicians experience in collaborating on a project within the context of a wider artistic event. ‘That’s something we all have to do all the time,’ explains Jonathan Bloxham, festival director and busy freelance orchestral conductor. ‘I’m continually programming concerts where I send an idea and the orchestra says: we like this, hate this, don’t like this, we did this last year but it’s a nice idea... I’m not going to put up any barriers intentionally to them, but the fact is they have to find a way to collaborate. They’ve been thrown together – chosen carefully, but thrown together – and need to find a way to design a programme that makes sense.’

Durham-born Walker, who is now based in East Anglia, decided to bring her own regional roots to the fore as she set about conceiving her work, under the guidance of mentor Grace-Evangeline Mason. ‘I found a text by Longfellow, a poem called “My Lost Youth”, all about childhood memories and returning to your childhood home and it not quite being the same as you remember it. In some places it’s quite dark but I decided to take a happier spin on the poem. I saw some really strong parallels between Portland – that’s where it’s about, although it’s never mentioned in the poem – and Newcastle, because it describes a beautiful town by the sea and things like this. Since the festival is happening in the North East and it’s almost like a returning home for me as well, the meaning of the piece is becoming quite special.’

A choral specialist in her composition so far, Walker describes the piece as her most harmonically adventurous, prompted in part by some of the mythological and marine imagery in the poem but also by the technical requirements of writing for a very particular line-up.

‘It has been a really important experience because it has pushed me outside my comfort zone in terms of instrumentation, and that will make me try new combinations in the future. Grace was saying: think about a wider range of possibilities of sounds that you can create. In the past, I’ve been very focused on harmonic colour, which I think is natural in a choral setting where the sound is a lot more blended. The instrument, if you like, is a lot more uniform.’

Mason’s fellow mentors are violinist Hyeyoon Park, pianist Martin James Bartlett and tenor Ben Johnson, all of whom will hold four consultation sessions with their respective participants before and after the festival. They will also be available to participants from a different discipline, while one-off classes with musicians such as Jess Gillam and Elena Urioste are also being arranged. It is no accident, says Bloxham, that the mentors themselves are all relatively early in their careers. ‘You need to have masterclasses with the greats and to have your teacher who has to be the bedrock and most important relationship. But that doesn’t exclude having a chat with someone who has just made it, just done those things that you would like to do, and how they did it.’

Northern Chords this year is smaller in scale than in some previous years, partly to allow preparation for its first opera in 2023 – a production with, potentially, some mouth-watering regional connections. But Bloxham was keen to maintain the festival’s efforts to engage with younger musicians. The scheme was deliberately made as open as possible, with no age limit, for example, and the application process was designed to be less prescriptive than some.

‘In the music industry we so often look for boxes to tick that actually trying to be as unspecific as possible was really important for me,’ says Bloxham. ‘We didn’t say you have to send three contrasting pieces, we didn’t have this kind of really strict criteria because it’s fascinating to see how people represent themselves and how they choose to come across.’

Although the scheme attracted some 60 applicants, Bloxham does add one note of disappointment. While most places were happy to spread the word about the new scheme, one institution was much less receptive, refusing to promote it to its students. ‘Openness and collaboration – I think that’s so important. So for an educational institution, albeit in this particular instance it was just one person but an ambassador for the institution, to have such an opposing way of looking at it, I think that’s a shame for those youngsters. I want to encourage people to be inquisitive. Not every opportunity is right for everybody, of course not. But you should consider it before saying no’.

The Northern Chords festival runs 14-15 May in Newcastle-upon-Tyne. You can find out more here.