Thomas Blunt

Currently in London preparing Lohengrin and Mahler 1. I will be assisting Lothar Koenigs on Lohengrin at WNO, and conducting Mahler 1 at the Sheldonian in Oxford with the Oxford University Orchestra.

Lohengrin is easily the largest score I have worked on to date – Act 2 alone lasts an hour and a half….but thrilled to be discovering it! Great to come back to Mahler 1 which I associate intrinsically with my student days at the Royal College of Music – very happy memories conducting it in rehearsals and studying it with Neil Thomson with the wonderful RCM Sinfonietta! So I’m very happy to be performing it with students at Oxford University – a great orchestra, which Daniel Harding recently conducted. Also on the programme is Shostakovich Festive Overture and Rachmaninov’s Isle of the Dead.

Just coming to the end of my contract working at Welsh National Opera, where I’ve been assisting on Handel’s Jephtha – also conducting the final performance on the Tour at the Hippodrome in Bristol.

WNO is a fabulous company to work for, with a great cast too, including Rob Murray and Fflur Wyn who are old friends. I have two brothers who happen to live in Cardiff too so it’s been a real treat to hang out with them and their kids. One of my brothers runs a club night in Cardiff called Time Flies, and I had to help him out at short notice to take the money on the door one night – brilliant night, not least as I got to meet house legend Brandon Block.

Next up though is a performance of Saint Saens Organ Symphony in Durham Cathedral with Orchestra North East which should pretty special in such an amazing building. Also on the programme is Parry’s Blest Pair of Sirens which will be wonderfully nostalgic for me, having sung it often as a boy. The day after I get back from Durham I fly to Chicago to assist Bernard Haitink on Beethoven’s Missa Solemnis with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra – can’t wait.

Having a brilliant time in Newcastle assisting John Wilson on a new production of West Side Story, with Will Tuckett creating a new choreography for the piece. Fabulous creative team, and they auditioned something like eight hundred dancers for the cast and assembled a fantastic company. Northern Sinfonia will be playing.

All the cast are dancers, with all except one having a music theatre background. It’s very refreshing to be working on this repertoire and on a piece of musical theatre with no opera singers – a very different dynamic. The dancers range between 19 and 30 in age and there is a great energy and ambition amongst them. I’m also quite blown away by how supportive they are of each other, and how willing they are to be helped and to help others with what they are doing.

Everyone knows West Side Story, and maybe it suffers from over-familiarity, but the music is INCREDIBLE. I really can’t get enough of it, and I hadn’t quite prepared myself for how tragic the ending is. The piece just sort of disintegrates, barely any singing at all for the final few numbers. Very bleak and very moving, particularly after all the action in the rest of the piece.

Just four performances which is a shame but it’s shaping up well, and will attract a lot of attention, as it’s the first time a new choreography has been created for the piece. Fascinating to work with Will Tuckett: he appears to have no pre-concept as to how he wants each number to choreographed but creates it there and then in the rehearsal. This makes everything vital and emotionally charged. Really the dancing just takes my breath away – never seen anything like it.

One useful by-product is that there’s dance class before each rehearsal and I tend to join in. Classes are mostly modern dance and also curcuit training and ballet. I can just about do first and second positions with plié but other than that I’m pretty rubbish. Great fun trying though.

I have just finished taking in part in the Allianz International Conductors’ Academy – it was a wonderful experience working with the Philharmonia and the London Philharmonic Orchestra, with inspiring podium sessions/masterclasses with Sir Andrew Davis, Yannick Nezet-Seguin, Essa-Pekka Salonen and John Carewe. To complete the Academy we had a show case concert last week conducting the LPO. I was allotted Mozart’s Haffner Symphony and had a brilliant time. I made the decision to conduct without a score – something I’ve never done before – and found it very liberating. The LPO were wonderfully responsive and it was an evening I’ll never forget.

Here’s a nice review: http://www.classicalsource.com/db_control/db_concert_review.php?id=10080

Next up a concert with two UK premieres, by David Bruce and Luke Bedord, in the RFH with the LPO Foyle Future Firsts, and assisting John Wilson with the Northern Sinfonia on a new production of West Side Story. Very refreshing to be working on something completely different – can’t wait!

I’ve just returned from a fantastic week in Brazil conducting the wind and brass of the LPO and the chorus of the Orquestra Sinfônica do Estado de São Paulo. We did three performances of Bruckner’s Mass no. 2 in E minor which went very well with a fabulous audience response. It really was such an enjoyable collaboration in Sao Paulo – such nice people, and we were looked after very well. Quite sad it was for only a week as everyone had such a good time, but I’ve been invited back to conduct there in ’13 which is very exciting.

The day before flying to Sao Paulo I finished a contract assisting on Enescu’s Oedipe at La Monnaie in Brussels. Astonishing piece and was a big challenge for all concerned, but the performances were a great success. Who knows, maybe this will lead to more productions of this opera – it’s very difficult to cast and to put together but well worth it.

I am now back in London with some free time which is just what I need after nearly three months away. So am preparing for assisting work with the LPO in the new year and also the Allianz International Conductors’ Academy where I’ll be one of three conductors having the chance to work with the LPO and the Philharmonia culminating in a showcase concert in the RFH.  Also just been asked to assist at Welsh National Opera in the summer and autumn which will be great, not least becasue two of my brothers live in Cardiff with their families. No doubt uncle Tom will be on first call for baby-sitting duty.  Also my great friend Andrew Tortise is singing at WNO at the same time.  Happy times!

Here’s a photo of me with the LPO and the OSESP choir after our final performance in Sao Paulo; next to me is Arthur Nestrovski (Artistic Director of OSESP) and far right is Tim Walker (Chief Executive and Artistic Director of LPO):

I’m now back in London having been away conducting for Bampton Classical Opera, performing in Bampton and also at the Buxton Festival. The production is Cimarosa’s The Italian Girl in London. BCO specialise in rarely-pereformed operas from the classical era, and this production was great fun. Bampton performances were outside and the weather held off just about. Extraordinary setting, performing opera in such beautiful surroundings in Oxfordshire, and it was a real local affair! Weather was horrific for the first night in Buxton, but luckily we were performing indoors as part of the Festival. Lovely theatre, which was packed – Cimarosa is obviously a big draw up north! Two more performances in Gloucestershire and then St John’s Smith Square in London.

I also had my LPO debut a few weeks ago, when I conducted two schools’ concerts in the RFH. Thrilling to conduct Stravinsky, Britten, Ravel and Elgar with the LPO in such an amazing (and noisy) atmosphere!  We also did two contemporary pieces – Paul Patterson’s The Magic Orchestra and Charlotte Bray’s Scenes from Wonderland, which was a premiere.

Nice to be back in London for a while. Have just been assisting Jurowski on a Hungarian programme for the LPO prom, and am also in production rehearsals for The Turn of the Screw, which I’m conducting at the Arcola Theatre in London as part of its Grimeborn Festival. I’m co-producing it with a director called Max Key (we staged The Rape of Lucretia last year), and it’s been a big effort organising it. We’ve managed though to raise the money just about and assemble a wonderful cast and orchestra. Rehearsals going well.

I have also just found out that I have been selected to be one of the three conductors on the Allianz International Conductors’ Academy next year which is very exciting. As part of the programme I get podium time with the Philharmonia and the LPO, masterclasses with their conductors, and a showcase concert in the RFH.

Lots to do now I’m back in London. I’m conducting The Rape of Lucretia in August at the Arcola Theatre in Dalston, East London. Finished the casting, one or two more players to fix and a bit more money to raise. The production will be part of the Arcola’s Grimeborn Festival, the pun meaning to represent the Festival as Glyndebourne’s antithesis. Here’s what the Evening Standard said about it: ‘Grimeborn is an opera festival that strives to be everything that Glyndebourne isn’t. Instead of boozy picnics, dress codes and country house manners, there is “theatrical innovation from the frontline of contemporary music”, all amid the grit and, yes, grime of Dalston.’   Dalston is an achingly cool part of London. I wonder if the audience will be too…

The Festival’s also a chance to hear lesser performed works, and although Lucretia is well-known it is not performed as often as other Britten operas, certainly not in the main houses anyway. In doing Lucretia for the Grimeborn Festival plenty of ironies arise. The opera was premiered at Glyndebourne just after the War, and precipitated the cooling of relations between Britten and John Christie. I’m reading Humphey Carpenter’s biography of Britten, and it sounded like quite a tricky time in Glyndebourne’s history. The interesting thing is that it hasn’t been done there since, so how appropriate for it to be performed for Grimeborn instead. 

Really looking forward to it. the director, Max Key, and I have assembled a fabulous young cast, and some great players too. Lucretia was the first opera I conducted (whilst still a student at the RCM) and I think it’s a completely gripping pieceof theatre with some wonderful music. The Arcola is an converetd old sewing factory – a really interesting space which I think will serve the drama perfectly. We’ll sort of be staging it in the round, so the audience will be in close proximity to the action. With all the references in Lucretia to fabric, spinning, weaving and so on, the libretto seems to have a certain resonance with the venue – something which we’d like to touch on in the production if we can.

After Grimeborn I shall be working for Glyndebourne on Tour which I think is rather neat. I’ll be conducting performances of La Cenerentola.

I’ve just been offered a first-round audition for a Kapellmeister position here – the repertoire is Act 1 of La bohème, and the last movement of Brahms Symphony no 1. Well they say if you can conduct Bohème you can conduct anything in the opera repertoire. Not quite sure if that’s true, but yes it’s a tricky one – changing tempi, rubato, getting the right sound… but no singers in the first round so at least that eliminates a few obstacles! Brahms 1 last movement I seem to remember conducting in a rehearsal at music college, so will be great to go back to that one. And I’d better brush up my German a bit. Well a lot really!