Question 1

Tell us about yourself as a musician.

Accepted Answer

I started playing music when I was seven or eight. We had a piano at home, and we all had to play that and a second instrument.

I always say the horn chose me.  I heard the horn; I liked it.  I was fortunate it was my instrument.

I learned with another guy – we only had one horn, and we had to take it home one week each. I was good, he wasn't very good. They then moved us both onto the trumpet - he was really good; I was rubbish. He still plays the trumpet now.

When I went to secondary school I got the offer to play the horn again, and that was me.

Question 2

What three words would you use to capture your musical self?

Accepted Answer

Fun, excitement, and creativity.

The first thing for me is always fun. I don't care how old you are or where you started.

I started playing in local ensembles and met my best friend through music. We've been friends for 40 years. And we used to have fun. We used to play music, meet people and go to parties.

It’s a fun pastime. When you're playing, there shouldn't be any pressure. I've never heard of anybody dying playing the wrong note. And if there is pressure, you're in the wrong job.

I love music. I want people to feel the same as I do. So, I'm always going to approach it in an enthusiastic way, even if there are pieces I don't like.  I'm never going to approach them in a way that's going to put people off, because there's always something in there you can use.

You've got to be enthusiastic and transmit that. It’s the same with anything you like - you've got to transmit that into people so they find where they fit in this musical world.

Question 3

What was your route into the professional side of music?

Accepted Answer

When I was younger, I also played loads of sport - that's my other great big love. And I was torn between the two.

My horn teacher said to me: "you have to make a choice – it's either the horn or rugby. Because if you lose your teeth, then no more horn." So I chose the horn.

I went to school in the 80s and my school was predominantly white - the only two black kids were me and my sister, and that has a lot to do with the music that I perform. 
You'd have a school production at the end of the year, which pretty much everybody was involved in. My peers were excellent musicians, so you wanted to keep up with them.

After that, I was playing county stuff, because we had good ensembles in Croydon. I thought, "I'd like to do that as my profession", but I didn't go to music college when I was 18.

I was working in computers and I'd listen to classic FM driving around. I decided if I didn't try to go to music college by my 30th birthday, I'd get to 40 and it'd be too late.

So, I quit my job, bought a horn and managed to get into music college. And here I am. Lucky me. Follow your dreams.

I suppose I was lucky in that I had a good job, it paid well. And I thought, if it doesn't work, I can go back and do computers.

But it worked. I started playing the horn again and I had an excellent teacher, mentor, coach. So I thank my lucky stars.

Question 4

How did your interest in in Black composers come about?

Accepted Answer

I'm from Croydon, and Samuel Coleridge-Taylor was too.  Growing up doing music in Croydon, we were always playing Coleridge-Taylor.

When I discovered people didn't really know who he was, I was flabbergasted. I've grown up doing that and I thought everybody was in different parts of the country.

When I went to Trinity, I came across two books in the library - The String Music of Black Americans and Wind Music of Black Americans and that's where my interest started.

I started looking up all sorts of composers.

Growing up in the 80s, there were only two black guys in my orchestra – me and my best friend, and it didn't help that we played the same instrument, and we'd get the thing of "which one are you?" What does that even mean?

I always used to say: "But there are two of us. And there are like, loads of white guys. So how can you get us mixed up?"

Having said that, in those orchestras it's about if you can play the notes. If you can play the notes, nobody cares [about race]. That's my experience. 
I did my master's dissertation on Samuel Coleridge-Taylor's 24 Negro Melodies.  I always had a plan to do something in terms of Black people and composers in the classical music world, and then I came across some music that was the same and it made me think - how did three composers use the same tune when they hadn't met?

All of a sudden, I was looking at the whole world of African American composers.  I was fascinated and drawn in. Now I can't find my way out.

It was partly to do with not many Black people playing when I was playing, and the horrible discovery that nobody knew who Coleridge-Taylor was. And a lot of people thought Scott Joplin was white. Because it wasn't made explicit that he was Black.

But it's not just in music. The great Russian poet Pushkin, he was Black. Who knew? Alexander Dumas, he was also Black. And these are two great European literary giants.

Is it important to know they were Black? Well, it is if you're Black.

But it's also important if you're white, because that makes you understand not everything you're fed comes from where you think it comes from. And that's how you break down barriers.

Question 5

You've been selected as a recipient of the Arts and Humanities Research Council and the BBC-funded Fellowship Award. Could you tell us about it?

Accepted Answer

The AHRC and the BBC are presenting a concert of diverse composers and I'm one of seven. I had to submit a piece of work to the board of a composer whose works I thought needed to be brought to the wider public.

I did a piece about Nathaniel Dett, a Canadian composer, and his oratorio, The Ordering of Moses - the first oratorio to be based on African-American spirituals.

His first performance was a live broadcast on the radio - three quarters of the way through it was cut off because they discovered the composer was Black.

[The award] is a real big deal, so I was pretty chuffed to receive it, but the real big deal is that my chosen composer is going to get exposure on the BBC.

This piece has never been performed in England, or even outside Europe. Hopefully, we'll have a European premiere of the Ordering of Moses – it's out of this world.

Whitewashing of history is what happens all the time.

History is re-written. And that's why this project is important – so people understand yes, there were Black composers writing excellent music that’s comparable to anything.

I've released a podcast about Brazilian composer Antonio Carlos Gomes who wrote an opera in Italian. Verdi said "this young man starts where I finish." He was an Afro-Brazilian composer and Verdi said that. So why isn't he known in the wider world?

Question 6

What role has music education played in your musical journey?

Accepted Answer

My music education was free and it's been so important for me that I was able to get a good grounding in music. Not only the basics, but to instil the love and joy of music.

It's important you have teachers, mentors, guides who really love the thing they're doing.

Question 7

Your most influential schoolteacher - did you have one?

Accepted Answer

When I got to secondary school there was an audition for Noye's Fludde by Benjamin Britten and they needed singers.

The audition consisted of my music teacher playing a note and somebody standing at the front and singing. You just had to keep singing the note.

There were only two black kids in my school.  I found it easy, but I was surprised how many didn’t. Out of 33, only three people could do it - me, one of my best friends who's in Romania now teaching music, and another friend who's a West End star.

[The teacher's] name was Vivian Brooks. When I was doing my ‘O’ levels, we went to Guildhall to see one of my set works - Beethoven's Sixth. On the way back, she told me I was wasting my time and talent not doing music. 
Had she not done that I wouldn't be doing music now.

A couple of years ago, I was in a concert in Snape Maltings doing Verdi Requiem, which we’d done at school.  Vivian lived nearby, so I invited her to come.

She came, and I gave her a massive hug and said: "If it wasn't for you, I wouldn't be doing this.". A few months after, I was doing a concert in Oxford.  She came all the way to Oxford and I took her to dinner.

I told her, "In the 80s, as a Black child - thank you so much for looking out for me and bringing me on - you didn't have to do that. But you did. Because you love music and you saw something in me. I'm only here because of you."

I think it's so important you highlight and mention people who've had a great influence on your life. Otherwise, what's the point? She's the person who put me on this path.

Question 8

Does it matter if a broader range of children, including more Black children play classical music?

Accepted Answer

Classical music is a social indicator.  Broadly speaking, if you play classical music, you're probably middle class and you've got money.

If you want to go to a good university, classical music is used as a marker. If you play classical music, you probably have an idea about other "arts", you probably know Shakespeare, you've probably got a good understanding of paintings, literature.

Those things aren't exclusive, but they kind of are. Because if you don't have the money to go to see Shakespeare, or the Pompeii exhibition at the British Museum you're not cultured, so it matters.

In 2015, there was a report about who makes culture. It summed up that culture is made by middle-aged white guys for young white guys.

By excluding others, classical music gets perpetuated by white guys, so people think Black guys, Black girls, working class white guys and working class girls don't like classical music. |When in fact, they’ve never been exposed to it.

They don't have the money to buy a horn. “It costs £10k. How about a £99 keyboard from Argos?"

It's important so we understand music is for everybody, not a privileged few.

Once people have access, they can go and discover classical music is not just dominated by European white guys. It opens up a whole world, but you've got to expose kids so they can go on a voyage of discovery and find others like them.

Question 9

So how can we get more Black students involved in classical music?

Accepted Answer

First, it's a question of exposure.

Chineke Orchestra is doing a great job of promoting non-white musicians, but that's only one part of it. There's got to be Black teachers teaching white students and Black students.

There's got to be the understanding that some physiological characteristics for Black players may need to be changed in your teaching.

I'm a Black guy and I play the French horn and we play on a tiny mouthpiece.  My horn professor said: "You know what, let's change your rim." The surface area of my lips on a bigger rim is proportionately the same as the surface area of a white guy's thin lips on a thinner rim. So, in that way, we're playing the same.

If you don't have Black teachers who understand  might be, people will think "he can't play, let's put him on the djembe drums, he's probably good at that."

In terms of encouraging students, we need to find things that speak to young people.

I was listening to some dancehall music and it struck me there was a lot of Islamic-style singing. I thought it was weird. But when you think about it, it's not .

A lot of slaves in Jamaica came from Nigeria and Nigeria has a big Islamic population. If there are Islamic sounds in reggae music it's going to be in other places, too.

I say to my conducting students, it can't be that you're conducting an orchestra who are playing the third movement of a symphony, which is a dance, and everybody's just sitting there. Dance, for Christ's sake!

You can't unlink music and dance. I don't understand why it is that we think that [way].  We’re playing Dvořák's Slavonic dances - why wouldn't you be moving?

As classical musicians, we're rigid. We still play the same way we played 200 years ago and we're not very good at innovation.

Music is emotional. You've got to feel something when you're playing.

If you're playing the opening of The Creation and it bursts forth like sunlight and doesn't make you do that "oh God!", you're in the wrong job.

We've got to draw things out. And if that means saying to somebody, you need to dance here, then that's what you have to do.

In the second movement of Gershwin's Piano Concerto, there's a thing that's supposed to be on the banjo. I said to my orchestra "I've never seen a dude on a banjo just sitting there like that."

It changed how they played, it changed the sound. It gave it a much more relaxed feel.

My job as a conductor is that firstly, it's a collaborative effort. It's not about me. My job is to realise the notes on the page, not interpret them. There's a massive difference in that.

The way I do that is from intent and gesture. If I say, "like mice, not hippopotamus" people understand. 
But if I say, "get that right, that's not the right sound" - I know what I'm going to do if I'm playing the horn.

I want you to have fun. At end of the day, music is about communication. The communication comes from the orchestra to the audience, it doesn't come from the conductor.

I’ve got my back to the audience - I'm guiding you and helping you realise what's on there.

The best relationships are formed by people who communicate well, not people who shout at each other. That's what I do as a conductor.

It doesn't matter how long you've been playing music, you should still have fun with your ensembles. We're getting paid to play music. Brilliant.

Question 10

How do we balance the music curriculum to include more composers from diverse backgrounds?

Accepted Answer

I'm not one of these "let's kick out all the dead white guys” people. Although there are a lot of them.

We are working in a Western European art. So there are going to be lots of white guys - just deal with it.

Some of those guys are excellent, some are not, so let's look at the ones who are excellent. Then let's look at the female composers and get the excellent ones there. And then let's look at Black composers and look at the excellent ones there.

I'm only interested in excellence.

Yes, we need to diversify the curriculum. But it doesn't mean we need to smash it up.

We might need to get rid of some great composers, but not because they're rubbish and deserve to go. But we don't have enough time to include all of them. We might kick some out to move others in and that's how we do it.

There’s got to be the will to do it and the knowledge to facilitate that. We're getting there, but we've got a way to go.

At the moment, everyone wants to include Florence Price. Great composer, she's common currency, and I wouldn't say don't include her. But go away and research.

The onus should not be on me as a Black guy, or you as a Black woman to come up with the solutions.

Question 11

How do you perceive the link between creativity and the Western classical canon?

Accepted Answer

We are bound by a complicated set of rules in Western art music, but I suppose all genres have rules.

The guys we think are excellent have been able to circumvent those rules to create something otherworldly.

It's like with Amadeus and Salieri. I'm sure Salieri was a perfectly reasonable composer, but he didn't have that X Factor. And that's the kind of thing we're talking about in Western classical music.

Great composers are able to do that unexpected thing.

In Beethoven's Sixth in the second movement, he does this crazy thing where he goes through all these keys you think of as unrelated. That's creativity. And that's what gives us great composers.

Is it possible we can still be creative? Of course, because we're living in the 21st century, with technology, so we can go to even greater lengths.

That's the thing I find exciting as a classical musician. Classical music can always survive if there is the will for people to do new, innovative stuff with it.

Question 12

How have you embraced leadership in your role as a conductor?

Accepted Answer

What I say in rehearsals is I'm really happy to take on board your suggestions. But it's not a democracy.

I say it tongue in cheek - of course, this is a collaborative thing and I'm happy to listen to your suggestions, but ultimately, I’m responsible for the musical direction in which we’re going, so sometimes I'm going to put my foot down.

You have to develop in these roles. I'm much better now than when I started. It wasn't a collaboration then; I was the conductor.  Now I realise if you want people to come with you, you need to include them in the journey. If one of us fails, we all fail.

I am the musical leader, but I'm not always the leader. If somebody's got a solo, I'm not leading that - you are.  All I do is facilitate that. Sometimes you have to be subservient to whatever is going on around you but ultimately, you take the decisions.

Hopefully, my ensembles will tell you it works pretty well. They may tell you different! But that's the way I think it should work.

Question 13

How has the pandemic impacted you personally and professionally?

Accepted Answer

I quite like the pandemic as I like my own company. So I've been able to get on with a lot of stuff here in my study. 
My brother died last year in June, so it's been slightly tough because we haven't really been able to get together as a family and share our grief.

But at the same time, it enabled me to investigate other possibilities and avenues to do stuff that's not music.

In terms of my professional life, I haven't conducted since last January because of the whole thing. I'm still teaching, conducting, I've been doing that online and some face-to-face.

I'm pretty lucky that I have been getting paid. So in that respect, I appreciate it's been tougher for other people.

I hope we will start coming out of this and we can start resuming our activities. I don't know how it's going to work in terms of conducting ensembles. I'm not sure how I'm going to feel when I go back to that.

I've been able to get a lot of technique work in, so I should go back to my ensembles better equipped, a better conductor, more knowledge, slightly calmer because I understand what I want and have better technique to be able to achieve it.

Question 14

Which conductors have influenced you and why?

Accepted Answer

In the same way I don't really listen to horn music and horn players - I just don't see the point of that - I have this love-hate thing with other composers.Less is more for me. I'm not really interested in what you're doing as a conductor, because I don't really want to see you. I think you should be out of the way.

Having said that, I love my conducting teacher, Adrian Brown - he's out of this world. And Holly Mathieson and Jessica Cottis are brilliant.

I think the best female conductors are better than the best male conductors.

This is just me observing, but they're less aggressive and much lighter in their movements. They’re more able to express the dance qualities of music because they are much lighter on their feet.

There's a lot of aggression in male conductors that I don't find find in females - the best ones are a joy to watch.

If I had to watch conductors all day, I would rather watch female conductors. I think they get better lines and better flow and they're much more graceful. Music is graceful, and so the whole thing fits better.

Question 15

If you had to name only three Desert Island Discs, what would they be?

Accepted Answer

My first would be Mahler's 2nd Symphony.

I was playing it on an orchestral course and my sister came in at 9:30 in the morning and I knew my mum had died. She was in hospital and she was ill, but there was no other reason for her to be there.

So I love that symphony. I would have loved it anyway. But Mahler is my second favourite conductor.

Although, I might have Mahler's 5th Symphony because I met my wife doing that. It's a toss-up between those two.

Secondly, I would have Benjamin Britten's Serenade For Tenor, Horn and Strings, played by Dennis Brain, with Peter Pears and Benjamin Britten.

One of the composers I discovered at college was Benjamin Britten. I love Benjamin Britten. I have a recording of those guys. It's out of this world.

My third piece would be The Ordering of Moses, by Nathaniel Dett. I am so sad I didn't discover it when I was younger, but I'm so glad I have discovered it now. I don't even know where to start.

The opening is amazing, it's got an amazing fugue in there - it's just one of the best pieces of music I know. And I know loads of pieces.

Question 16

What legacy would you like to leave in the future?

Accepted Answer

I hope I could leave a body of work people could look at and delve into, to do further study into Black composers.

I'd really like to have a centre for Black musicians, Black composers, Black work. That would be my ultimate dream.

Otherwise, I just hope I don't annoy too many people and people think I was a pretty decent guy.

What people think about Black music is that we're going to be looking at bashment!  And as much as I love bashment, that's not what it's for.

I wouldn't want a centre that's set up purely to look at Black classical music in terms of composers, it's got to be the whole thing.

It's Western art music. We need to look at the whole thing and how Western art music has been influenced and changed.

We need strong voices to do that - strong enough to challenge perceptions of what Black people are, what they're capable of and what they can do.

Strong enough to be protectors and guides for young people being told they can't do that. I'm there to say: “you can do what you like, look at me.”

Question 17

What advice would you give to a young musician aspiring to work in the field of western classical music?

Accepted Answer

Practice is my number one. My experience of being Black in classical music is not one of racism. My experience of being Black in classical music is one of wrong-note-ism.

If you can't play the notes, people don't want you - doesn't matter about the colour of your skin.

Secondly, don't beat yourself up. Be kind to yourself - like I said, music's fun. It shouldn't fill you with fear and dread every time you pick up your instrument.

Thirdly, be open minded and accepting. Something you might not fancy the first time you play, in three or four times or when you hear it all together you might think: “oh, I didn't hear that”. There's always something in a piece that's going to catch you out and do something unexpected.

The last thing I would say is do not listen to your own instrument. Broaden your horizons. If you're a trumpet player, listen to string music so you understand how things fit in.

Get your head around different styles, textures, genres. Try and make yourself the most rounded musician you can.

Question 18

How can young aspiring conductors and musicians connect with you?

Accepted Answer

They can look at my website - www.blackclassicalmusic.uk (http://www.blackclassicalmusic.uk/)and send me a message on there.

There are links to my podcast, which you can listen to and follow on Twitter - https://twitter.com/the_blkmaestro (https://twitter.com/the_blkmaestro)

I'm happy to speak to people, give advice or send a presentation because I love music. So if people need a hand, I'm more than willing to help.

DWIGHT PILE-GRAY