The bucket and beyond

BY MICHAEL FALLOW

Bucket jobs? What, exactly do elevated musicians like Invercargill's Grant and Blair Sinclair mean when they talk – with sizeable grins – about bucket jobs?

We're guessing you can't pick up your trombone and busk your way to London's Royal Academy of Music.

"It would take you a while," says Grant.

Both he and Blair, celebrated Invercargill musicians in their youth, have now passed through the academy and are making their careers in the Northern Hemisphere.

If you're really dead set on taking your music to that level, the brothers have little to say about talent, but a great deal to say about commitment, and community support, those blessed private philanthropists – and then, if you still find yourself coming up seriously shortpocketed – well, take heart.

"London has a huge freelance scene where every week there would be 30 or 40 bucket gigs," Grant says. "That's where there's not a fixed orchestra, but someone rings up and says do you want to come and play for, say, the Luton Choral Society?"

It all happens fast; almost guerilla musicianship, with typically one rehearsal – picture three hours in a freezing cold church, later the performance, and by 3am you're catching the train home.

The musicians are highly, highly skilled. And if the timescale is less than ideal, the actual timing is often just about perfect.

Blair: "It usually happens that, when you're really down in the dumps, the phone rings miraculously and someone gives you a 100 gig, or a 40 gig. The beauty of London is that there is always the chance of work. You never know what's around the corner."

It brings out a sort of battlehardened optimism.

"Grant and I have talked about it many times. We don't actually know how it worked out, but if you have your heart set on something there always seems to be a way of making it happen. You don't have to be from a wealthy family – everything can fall into place somehow.

"It's almost like it's just supposed to be."

Then his own ear picks up on the way that might sound and he adds, softly " ... without making this a hippy column".

Blair's own bucket days do appear to be behind him. He entered the academy in 2005, did his masters, then a fellowship, freelanced for a couple of years, and this week takes his fulltime principal trombone position in the ambitious Stravinger Symphony Orchestra in Norway.

Grant didn't reach the academy until 2008, and is now freelancing in London. He lost some time on his younger brother, by getting an engineering degree first, before the music pulled him back.

"At the end of the day I couldn't have slept if I hadn't tried it."

People could ask, Grant says, why they didn't do their masters at the New Zealand School of Music, where they each attained their degrees and will hands-on-heart testify to having received world-class teaching which combines with a more intimate scale to make for a uniquely immersive place to learn.

Grant: "But to go to London there's that next level of competition, where you're exposed to such a wide variety of things. And London is such an incredible place to be, musically. There's so much going on all the time. You're absorbing so much, and with all the visiting teachers from all over Europe, you're exposed to different schools of thought, different teaching ideas."

Getting in isn't easy. But once you're there, the academy isn't so very imposing or daunting.

Blair: "With a name like that it sounds like a venerable institution, and it is. But when you do get there the people are incredibly lovely and very genuine."

Alongside 500 other people, all desperate to make it, the result isn't cut-throat.

"There's a real bond about the whole building. Everyone gets along very well, despite all the competition. It's an inspirational place to study."

But the cost ... You've got your course fees of around 14,000 pounds, take it up to 20,000 for optional extras like eating and not actually being homeless, convert more than just a bit of it it into New Zealand dollars, add a few years' inflationary costs and, erm, can you help us out with the bottom line, guys?

"It's an impractical amount of money to find," says Blair.

Head off to the United States, instead, and the overall cost is liable to be about the same. It's true that the US schools have more money, but there's an extra willingness to support study in Britain, because it turns out that Commonwealth link really does mean something.

Local support has been crucial to the two Southlanders.

"There's a lot of really generous people out there willing to help you out," says Grant.

"We got some help from the academy itself but a tremendous amount came from people and organisations within New Zealand, and Southland in particular.

Familiar outfits like the Community Trust of Southland and Rotarians feature, and then there were those Invercargill fundraising concerts that brought out their supporters, so many of whom have followed the brothers' careers since they were children.

How do you lay hands on those arts scholarships and draw the attentions of the private benefactors? Just captivate them with the majesty of your musicianship then?

Apparently not.

"I think," says Blair, "you just have to convince people that it's what you really want to do. You have to show an incredible willingness to throw yourself into it, so it doesn't just look like you're doing your OE or you're there just for the fun of it."

What about the sheer pressure that comes from having made such a commitment, to yourself as well as to others?

There are times, says Grant, when you've got to keep the bigger picture in mind.

Anyone can have bad playing days – okay, weeks – and find themselves wondering why they're doing this.

"Then you remember what it's all about and what you ultimately hope to achieve."

He's not talking dollar signs.

Blair: "I don't know anyone who does music for money. You do it for the love of it. For people who want to do it, it's just the greatest job in the world."

Here's where your eye might fall on the sight of two brotherly trombones and wonder quietly what exactly the appeal is. Frankly, so do these two, sometimes.

"I have never been able to put my finger on that," Blair admits.

They're from a musical family and started Out of School Music Classes when they hit school age.

"After serving my mandatory sentence on the recorder," says Blair, "it was always the trombone I wanted to play. I have no idea what the attraction was, really, and I was far too short."

The clarinet served, for a while, until a vacancy came up in the city's auxiliary brass band and he was at last armed appropriately.

"I like the flexibility of it. That you can play anything: jazz, classical, brass band, rock, solo, chamber. It's probably the most versatile instrument."

Grant chimes in, brightly. "And it has the ability to obliterate an orchestra."

Then he glances at his brother, aware that quotes can't be taken back. He gets reassurance.

"Yes," says Blair. "You'd have to have something about the volume."

Then, lest anyone think their beloved instruments barbaric, they chat, a little, about the subtleties, the colours, to be evoked from a trombone. It's demanding, though. Blair cannot recall any time during the past decade that he's been able to leave it idle for three days in a row. Grant seems ready to protest but then seems just momentarily taken aback by the realisation he can't either. Not that it's a chore. "I think the appreciation grows," Blair says.

"It becomes more and more exciting to think that there's nothing really out of reach."

Grant: "It becomes a slight obsession. You think, I can work on that today, get a little bit better at that particular aspect of my playing."

The two can make it sound almost like gunslinging. There's always someone better.

And that's a great thing, says Blair. It helps draw you to improve.

Grant agrees. "There's a median. You need enough self-confidence to get up there and have a go, and enough humility to realise that there are things you need to work on. All the time."

Blair recalls his main professor at the academy, Ian Bousfield, principal in the Vienna Philharmonic "and in my opinion the best trombone player in the world. Yet, I've never met anyone who thinks they're worse than he does. He's constantly saying, `This is terrible' about my playing. `I need to work on this'. So it never stops."

Looking back, the brothers can see how lucky they were to have begun in Invercargill. At the academy they each worked with talented people who got there without ever having had the chance to play in orchestras or bands, due to geographical restraints or the sheer force of competition. They look back on their own musical tuition at Out of School Music Classes, then playing in the city's brass bands, then youth orchestras, national youth orchestras, and then the national training.

It all stacks up as a tremendous starting advantage.

Add to that, though, the continuing arrivals of prodigiously talented performers, who regularly present themselves, on tour, in Invercargill to play to often modestly sized audiences.

Blair: "I don't find anything more motivational than hearing a world class performer."

And you can do that in Southland, time and time again, if you're willing to show up.

- © Fairfax NZ News