WHAT YOU MAKE OF IT

Well, good riddance to 2021, the year we had hoped might spell the swift end of Covid woes but instead gave us fresh lockdowns and headlines such as ‘Musicians Are Abandoning the Industry for a Stabler Career’. Arguably it was especially difficult for young artists, when lost incomes were fledgling ones, and at a career stage when every opportunity for visibility was already precious. However, the period has also been one that’s seen a few young careers rocket despite the difficulties – and one in which international young artist schemes have been busier than ever before. So, as we head into 2022, when Covid will surely be less formidable, it seems like a good moment to look at how various young artist schemes responded to the crisis, and to ask whether the pandemic has reinforced or lessened the value of being associated with one, and whether it’s even worth attempting to pursue a musical performance career right now; and if it is, which are the young artists most likely to get themselves noticed?

The speed with which the UK’s international young artist schemes responded to the pandemic in March 2020, often changing their remits in the process, was striking. Take the Young Classical Artists Trust (YCat), whose main work is as a not-forprofit management agency, building artists’ careers while training them in all aspects of career management. ‘Just before Covid, we’d increased both the national and international engagements for our artists by about 180 to 200 per cent,’ outlines YCat chief executive and artistic director Alasdair Tait. ‘The day we closed the office, we’d already seen in one week seventy thousand pounds’ worth of direct income for our artists disappearing. Normally, we don’t give our artists money – the funds we’re raising are for enabling us to do our work; but at that point, setting up a hardship fund was the one thing we could do to help.’ Within three weeks they’d raised £120,000, at which point they closed the campaign and gave each artist a substantial sum to get them through the first six months.

City Music Foundation (CMF), whose remit equally covers career training, development and management, but not financial bursaries, set up a hardship fund before lockdown even hit. ‘We saw it coming,’ explains CMF managing director and co-founder Dr Clare Taylor, ‘and our donors were very generous. We couldn’t provide huge amounts, but enough for our artists to pay the rent, eat food and wear clothes.’ As various government and charity grants and funds then became available, CMF ensured its artists got every possible penny for which they were eligible. ‘We constantly searched to make sure we weren’t missing anything. We fed them the links, told them the deadlines, and helped them apply.’

The Borletti-Buitoni Trust (BBT), which usually bestows financial awards that fund tailor-made projects, didn’t offer cash aid just to current scholarship holders in need, but to everyone who had ever been awarded a BBT award or fellowship.

Just as vital, though, was pastoral care. CMF’s monthly day of in-person workshops led by guest speakers became weekly events via Zoom. ‘The whole team is always available on the phone to talk to the artists at all times,’ emphasises Taylor, ‘but contact became much more of a need, and when even very renowned international musicians who ran some of the workshops said they couldn’t motivate themselves either, that gave a great sense of camaraderie.’ The young artists gradually started doing all manner of different jobs, too. ‘Lots of them did teaching online. Some were supermarket delivery drivers, a couple worked in care homes, gardening – anything to keep body and soul together. And we were in constant touch.’

There was no stigma attached to non-musical jobs, either. ‘Some of our artists were saying they’d have to retrain,’ remembers BBT chief executive Susan Rivers, ‘and my advice to them was, “If you can’t get enough through the government schemes and the music world, and you have to stack shelves, then stack shelves. Get yourself through this. It feels catastrophic now, but in the long term this is a very small length of time. It will ease and change.”’ She also refused to allow artists to stand still creatively. ‘Some went into a total state of shock, but we got them out of it. I just kept saying, “I know it’s tough, but you’d be amazed at what you can do, and you must keep trying to take yourself and what you do forward – because it gives you a focus, and also because there are going to be too many people wanting to fill those lesser dates.”’

BBT Award winners the Aris Quartet record Beethoven and a new work by Gerald Resch for Genuin in 2020

Violinist Benjamin Baker and pianist Daniel Lebhardt record Prokofiev, Copland and Poulenc during the pandemic –a project made possible due to YCat’s partnership with Delphian Records

BAKER PHOTO WILL COATES-GIBSON/FOXBRUSH FILMS. GOOSBY PHOTO KAUPO KIKKAS. RIDOUT PHOTO JAN DYVER

‘IF YOUNG MUSICIANS CAN MAINTAIN THEIR OWN PROFILE, NOT OVERSELLING THEMSELVES, BUT JUST KEEPING MOTIVATED AND PART OF A NETWORK OF COLLEAGUES, THAT’S SO HELPFUL’

What all these schemes were highly suspicious of, though, was their artists adding to the immediate tsunami of impromptu living room concerts. ‘I just said straight away, “Only put something out there if you feel that it’s absolutely integral to what you want to share. And would you be happy doing this regardless of Covid?”’ states Tait. ‘I felt that there were an awful lot of performances out there that (understandably) cried, “Please don’t forget me!” rather than, “I have something really genuine, interesting and different that I want to share.”’ Instead, YCat initiated professionally filmed recital projects for which its artists were paid, with the London Mozart Players and Vancouver Recital Society among the promoters. CMF, meanwhile, launched its own series of professionally filmed live-streamed concerts from an apartment belonging to one of its donors in St Pancras Clock Tower, London, for which its artists were, again, paid. A brief relaxation of pandemic restrictions then saw CMF artists perform a sold-out, socially distanced performance of Messiaen’s Quartet for the End of Time at St Paul’s Cathedral in October 2020.

There was good stuff going on beyond the UK too. Take the Verbier Festival Academy, which quickly established a hardship fund open to all of its alumni regardless of age, and then, against all the odds, mounted a successful in-person 2021 academy for its deferred 2020 intake, while also giving the option of deferring for a further year.

So that was 2020 and 2021. On now to 2022 and beyond, and first to an area that has weathered Covid better than most: the recording world. With regard to the smaller independent labels, the fact that the first CDs from YCat’s new partnership with Delphian Records were released in August 2020 and then they continued recording, and BBT and CMF artists equally recorded and released over lockdown at a similar rate to usual, would seem to suggest that there’s no reason to think 2022 should bring any change to that particular status quo, especially when costs are largely met at the artist’s end.

As for the larger labels, over the Covid period it’s been as clear as ever that young talent sells. Take the past 18 months at Decca, with new albums from cellist Sheku Kanneh- Mason and his siblings, and debuts from violinists Randall Goosby (YCat, right) and Christian Li, who in March 2020 at the age of twelve was the label’s youngest ever signing. Warner Classics, meanwhile, continues to partner with international music competitions, one notable recent recording awardee being 2021 Joseph Joachim International Violin Competition winner Maria Ioudenitch. Then there’s Harmonia Mundi, whose Covid-period releases include a label debut from new signee violist Timothy Ridout – whose stratospheric rise these past two years has transcended the disappearance of live performances – and no fewer than three albums from another new signee, violinist Théotime Langlois de Swarte (next month’s cover star); and while Harmonia Mundi’s director Christian Girardin is quick to point out that both Ridout’s and Langlois de Swarte’s albums were agreed before Covid reared its head, he’s equally quick to confirm the importance of young artists to his label. ‘Linked to the digital market, which is much younger, people are more and more interested and excited by newcomers,’ he asserts, ‘especially in the field of string, piano, instrumental, symphonic and atmospheric music.’

Violist Timothy Ridout, one of Harmonia Mundi’s new signees, joins pianist Frank Dupree to record the album A Poet’s Love in July 2020

CREDIT

Filming for violinist and 2020 BBT Award winner Alexi Kenney’s visual album took place at the Donum Estate, California, US. The 2021 digital release features X Suite, a sevenmovement work for solo violin by Paul Wiancko

KENNEY PHOTO ALICE KAO. BALANAS PHOTO CMF

There is, however, a caveat. ‘I would say that we’re also more demanding than we’ve ever been when it comes to signing new artists,’ he counterbalances. ‘For example, the Harmonia Nova young artist series gave us quite a large income four years ago. Now it’s a little bit slower, but not especially because of Covid. It’s because it’s been harder to find artists who are coming with the complete package: managers, concerts and so on. More than 50 per cent of success is down to that side of things. It’s not just talent.’ So, does that mean he wouldn’t now take a complete unknown newcomer, guided purely by instinct? ‘If everyone is convinced, then we always find a way to make things happen,’ he responds. ‘What’s also striking and different about this new generation of artists is that they are completely at ease with technology, with social networks, and how to manage administrative issues. They’re like a Swiss Army knife, and it’s very impressive.’

Margarita Balanas performs Dvořák’s Cello Concerto in a special chamber arrangement for CMF’s live-streamed lunchtime concert series in early 2021

CREDIT

‘THIS NEW GENERATION OF ARTISTS IS COMPLETELY AT EASE WITH TECHNOLOGY AND MANAGING ADMINISTRATIVE ISSUES’

Clearly, though, having a manager in the picture maximises your chance of being signed to a major label, which is less encouraging when artist management was one of the very worst-hit areas of the industry through Covid. ‘It’s not yet clear what the whole landscape of artist management agencies is going to be,’ muses Taylor. ‘On the whole, even before Covid they were taking artists a bit later than they once did, when it was a bit clearer that somebody was a going concern, and I suspect that might now be accentuated by what’s happened.’

On to concert promoters, and the story is that some are pressing ahead while others are being much more cautious. For the youngest artists, tightened belts may present opportunities, as they’re the cheapest to book,but that’s only to your advantage if you really are still a relative unknown. ‘The trouble is that some of our artists are graduating from the “emerging” category to “emerged”,’ points out Taylor, ‘and that middle group is really hard to cater for, because they’re not cheaper any more. Or they don’t think they should be, and yet they’re not yet quite headline acts.’

YCat award winner Maciej Kułakowski performs Schumann’s Cello Concerto in September 2020 for the London Mozart Players’ Classical Club series – filmed in front of a socially distanced audience and broadcast online

NICK RUTTER

‘IF YOU’VE GOT THE ENERGY AND A FEW GOOD IDEAS, THIS IS THE MOMENT WHEN YOU CAN GET NOTICED. AND WE WILL GET BACK TO NORMAL’

Tait continues that thread. ‘I feel that there’s a real sandwich effect for a certain generation of young artists. You’ve got the more established younger artists who were already making a really big name for themselves but who are now going back to basics and reintroducing themselves – maybe starting to look for opportunities that they feel they left behind. At the same time you’ve got the next tranche coming up whose studies were affected, but actually their career trajectory hasn’t been.’

So, what should young artists be doing now either to establish or to re-establish themselves as the world reopens? ‘My personal advice is to get closer to other artists,’ says Girardin. ‘Being connected to others is a far more efficient way to get spotted by producers. It’s more and more difficult for someone who is completely alone.’

Tait’s immediate response is equally about networking. ‘At the moment, it’s about young artists maintaining as many of their own personal connections as they can,’ he emphasises. ‘Every musician, even if they think they’re totally isolated, will have already met a lot of people through their musical life. If they can maintain their own profile, not overselling themselves, but just keeping motivated and part of a network of colleagues, that’s so helpful. It’s so overcrowded at the moment that anyone in a position to be able to offer either an opportunity or advice is inundated with so many people that their entire job is about filtering who they then make contact with, rather than about looking for more people.’

It’s also about creativity. ‘I think you’ve got to think outside the box a bit more to rise above the parapet,’ states Rivers. ‘It has to be genuine, but if you can do that, it makes you more interesting, as you have more to say.’

What seems abundantly clear is that young artist schemes are more valuable than ever. As Tait (YCat) puts it, ‘From giving promoters the confidence to book a young artist when they don’t know them, to being the non-financially motivated agent who can help an artist develop while building international recognition, we take the risk out of working with young artists for the managers. Quite a few ofour artists in the last year have been moving on to some of the top ones.’

Violinist Tessa Lark, winner of a 2018 Borletti- Buitoni Trust Fellowship, records with double bassist Edgar Meyer at Drew University in New Jersey for her collaborative album, The Stradgrass Sessions, released in February 2021

Plus, while there aren’t enough spaces for everyone, in some quarters Covid has seen expansion rather than contraction. In 2020, CMF saw a rise in artists applying to audition, and accepted ten rather than its customary seven or eight. In 2021 it took eleven. ‘The need for our support seems to be greater than ever,’ explains Taylor. ‘I worked hard on the fundraising last year, and I don’t see the point in belt tightening. The artists really want to be part of things, we know we can help them, so let’s do it.’

BBT scholarship holders, meanwhile, are selected via internal nominations, and equally there’s been expansion and change. ‘We’ve upped our budget to be able to give more awards and fellowships than we usually do,’ outlines Rivers, ‘and while we have the emerging talents we’d usually have, I think our nominators have also suggested some people who in the past might have been a little bit beyond needing our help, but who right now would find it very beneficial to have some money and people with experience behind them.’