Articles on conducting
and rehearsal practice

What is rehearsal actually for? After twenty years as both player and conductor, I have come to see it as a space for collective learning — not just notes, but the relationships that exist within the music.

The notes are only the first stage of understanding. The harder part is understanding what surrounds them — context, relationship, intention, and meaning.

I stopped the ensemble and asked: is that the quietest you can play? What happened next was a lesson in trust, tension, and how fear affects sound.

Stopping too quickly can damage clarity rather than help it. What I have started doing is allowing things to run and seeing whether the ensemble recognises the issue themselves.

By giving too many instructions and talking too much, I was making it harder for any one thing to be clear. Rehearsals were becoming more about what I said than what was happening in the music.

Through recording and reviewing my rehearsals, I recognised something clearly. I was talking too much about the wrong things, and not letting the baton and gesture say enough.

Culturally informed conducting is not something I apply after the fact. It changes how I work in rehearsal and how I respond to sound in the moment.

When working with African American symphonic music, context is not optional. It shapes how the music needs to sound — and how rehearsal needs to function.

Music is often treated as if it exists on its own. But every work is shaped by the cultural, historical, and social conditions in which it was created.

Interpretation can become about preference rather than understanding. For me, conducting is about realisation — engaging with what is already in the music.

Rehearsal is often treated as a place where problems are solved. My view is that it is a relational space where the conditions for performance are created.

Time gives structure. It does not give meaning. Conducting is a responsive art working across melodic, harmonic, rhythmic, and sonic planes simultaneously.