I was a gap-toothed ten-year-old when I first saw an orchestra. I can’t recall what they played but I do remember being mesmerised by the conductor. Even then, it struck me that he had some sort of magical connection with the musicians.
I always wanted to have a go. Since then, give me anything vaguely baton-shaped and I’d happily direct a kazoo quartet playing , all from the happy privacy of my front room. Last week, I got the chance to shoot a little higher when I made my debut at the Marylebone Festival, conducting the wonderful Orion Orchestra.
We made our blissful way through Mascagni’s exquisite intermezzo from It was both an enormous privilege and an utter joy. Music is the world to me. It always has been.
I’d like to pretend my earliest musical memory was something serious and moving but, in fact, it’s probably of me choreographing a dazzling routine to Diana Ross’s . You see, the soundscape of 1980s Southgate (where I grew up) didn’t include many of the classical works that I now love. But I do have another, slightly more profound, childhood memory: hearing the superb choir at Cockfosters and North Southgate synagogue.
As I sat there one Yom Kippur, I remember feeling that the Kol Nidrei service was pretty much the most beautiful thing I’d ever heard. It was my first real encounter with the eloquent harmonies of Jewish music. I didn’t fully understand how it was happening (I don’t know that I ever will), but I felt its power on some very deep leve.
