Who’s John Wilson?
John Wilson, a BBC Proms favorite, is a British conductor, arranger and musical scholar in all probability greatest identified for his massively standard programmes of sunshine music – which he typically performs together with his personal ensemble, the John Wilson Orchestra. However, as a visitor conductor of a number of main orchestras (together with Affiliate Visitor Conductor of the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra), he’s additionally snug with commonplace classical repertoire. Final yr he precipitated a stir on the BBC Proms together with his re-established orchestra, The Sinfonia of London, and a programme conjuring up the world of fin-de-siècle Vienna. And he’s outspoken about his want to keep away from being pigeonholed.
How previous is John Wilson?
John Wilson was born in 1972, in Gateshead,
How did John Wilson get into music?
As a Tyneside schoolboy, Wilson fell in love with film soundtracks. With assist from his musical mom, he taught himself to play the piano, and later took up the percussion at college. Then, within the Nineteen Eighties, he studied Music A stage at Newcastle Faculty, the place he lower his tooth as a conductor, placing collectively and conducting numerous ensembles, together with a 96-piece orchestra for a live performance model of West Facet Story.
The place did he practice?
On the Royal Faculty of Music, initially as a percussionist and later finding out composition and conducting. In a Guardian interview from 2017 he recollects: ‘I went from being virtually thrown out on the finish of my first yr to profitable the Tagore Gold Medal [the college’s most prestigious award for students]. They simply let me do my factor.’
When did he discovered the John Wilson Orchestra?
In 1994, when he was simply 22.
What sort of mild music does he conduct precisely?
Largely hits from the Golden age of Hollywood. And he argues that these are as critical of their craft as a Brahms symphony or a music by Schubert, conducting them with an consideration to element and seriousness of goal that has achieved an enormous quantity for his or her status.
And when it comes to commonplace repertoire?
His tastes are broad however he has a very delicate spot for British music: Vaughan Williams, Delius, Elgar and others.
The place can I subsequent hear him?
On the BBC Proms on Saturday 16 July, with the Sinfonia of London as soon as once more, in a programme of British music together with Vaughan Williams, Watkins, Bax, Walton and Elgar.
Picture by Sim Canetty-Clarke
