Jessica Cottis: Conductor
This is the complete transcript of my interview with the acclaimed orchestral conductor Jessica Cottis.
Here’s the link to the podcast, video, and all show notes
Jessica Cottis:
I have to say that's one of the great joys of being a conductor is to collaborate with many, many musicians on stage and that collective knowledge and that collective ability and skill and passion and ideas and intellect, sometimes 70 people to work with all at once. And to channel that and to collaborate in that way is quite literally thrilling.
Leah Roseman:
Hi, you're listening to Conversations with Musicians with Leah Roseman. This podcast drives to inspire you through the personal stories of a diversity of musicians with in-depth conversations and great music that revealed the depth and breadth to a life of music. Jessica Cottis is an acclaimed orchestral conductor, and in this wide ranging interview, you'll gain insights into the special world of orchestral conductors and also some of Jessica's interests in the natural world and the arts. She spoke to me about her musical path from how she made her first trumpet to life on a sheep farm to her transition from a career as a concert organist to lessons learned from conducting mentors, including Colin Davis and Colin Metters. Jessica is such an articulate champion of the value of music and the arts, and I've also been privileged to have worked with her in my role as a violinist in Canada's National Arts Centre Orchestra. I have a special interest in synesthesia, so I was interested in hearing her experience of sound through color. And if you look at the description of this episode, you'll find detailed timestamps for the many topics covered, including some beautiful music from Julie Cooper's new album, Oculus, with Jessica Cottis conducting. Jessica also shared her difficult recovery from a concussion and how her senses were further mixed for a period of time. Like all my episodes, you can watch this on my YouTube channel or listen to the podcast on all the podcast platforms. And I've also linked the transcript to my website, leahroseman.com. The podcast theme music was commissioned from composer Nick Kold. Before we jump into our conversation, I wanted to let you know that this weekly podcast is in season four, and that I send out an email newsletter where you can get access to sneak peeks of upcoming guests and be inspired by highlights from the archive. Have a look at the description of this episode where you'll find all the links, including the support link to buy this independent podcaster a coffee. Now to Jessica Cottis. Hi Jessica. Thanks so much for joining me here today.
Jessica Cottis:
It's really great to be here and so lovely to be able to chat to you.
Leah Roseman:
You're the third conductor I've had on this series, and it is always interesting to me how people get into conducting, but I was a little sad to understand for you it did come from a place of injury. Do you want to talk about transition in your life?
Jessica Cottis:
Yeah, so for me, I was an organist, a professional organist, and I had studied initially in Australia, my home country and continued studies in London and in Paris, and had a fantastic career as a soloist and really enjoyed it. But after a number of years, I started experiencing some numbness and pain in my fourth and fifth fingers on both hands, and I had treatment for it, something called carpal tunnel syndrome. So those people who sit at their computers all day may have experienced some of this as well, and it's where the nerves can get compressed in some way, and so the electrical input can't actually go all the way to these fingers. So they stopped working and it was actually terrifying. Sometimes it was okay, and I could play a recital and I'd get through, and it was like old times, but there were occasions where they just didn't work.
And there was one moment in particular that is etched in my deep, in my memory forever, and it was playing a big piece by Liszt Ad Nos, and about two thirds of the way both hands just decided to stop and I had to improvise my way out in this public performance. And luckily I was able to do that. There was no problem with improvising, but it took some time before I could sort of get back and finish the piece. But no musician wants to have a challenge of just getting through a piece of music. We want to make something that's wonderful and colorful and inspiring and can take us to a different place. So it was after that performance that I really did question what I was doing, and I decided along with medical advice as well, to stop playing professionally. And that was so difficult because I had played music, so many of us musicians.
I'd started as a 3-year-old sitting on my mother's lap and playing simple tunes on the piano. So incredibly difficult, and I wondered what I could do. I studied law for a couple of years and that was intellectually stimulating and demanding, fascinating, really. But there was always this sense inside of me that something bigger than me really, that I needed to connect with music every day and with other musicians. So I really did think very deeply and for a long time about it, what could I do if I was unable to use my hands in this very fine manner? And it was at that point I was visiting Vienna. I visited a friend who was studying musicology and vocal studies at the time, and we went, we got some student tickets to Der Rosenkavalier at the State Opera House in Vienna. And I sat there and just thought, what is this sound coming from the pit, coming from the stage? The Australian soprano, Yvonne Kenny was singing the role of the Marschallin and just, it excited me so much that I actually couldn't sleep for about three days, this rich, colorful, all encompassing sound world that seemed to go through my ears, into my brain and into my bone marrow. And shortly after that, I thought to myself, I have to be part of that. I have to find a way to be part of that. And that was the beginning of my conducting journey.
Leah Roseman:
I'm curious about this story because was it that you had been away from music studying law that it made such an impression or the music itself because you grew up hearing, you played an orchestra, you had lots of orchestral concerts to attend.
Jessica Cottis:
It was a combination. The music itself definitely, I hadn't heard a Strauss Opera live before. Certainly had heard Strauss on recordings and his symphonic works, but there's something very tangible and physical about hearing music live in the concert hall, in an opera house that for me at least, and I think for many, many people, speaks to us on a different level because that sound waves are physical entities and they affect us as physical entities ourselves. And also this experience of sitting in a darkened hall, a darkened room with other people experiencing it at the same time is very unique and creates a heightened, for me, a heightened experience. So there are these combinations, but I have to say the quality of playing and singing as well was just out of this world to use that phrase and incredibly inspiring. And yeah, that combination, I guess it is one of those special moments in life where everything comes to an intersection and whether you're going to go north or south or east or west.
Leah Roseman:
I recently had on the podcast Gail Archer, she's a renowned concert organist based in New York, and she was saying there's a lot of challenges for women organists, but it was better in the UK where you were based.
Jessica Cottis:
Interesting as an organist, I never felt any difference because of my gender, because of my sex. I never came across any walls or any negativity, both in Australia and in Australia and in France. That's not to say it wasn't there, but I didn't feel limited in any way. It was a small but supportive community, especially in the UK of people who were passionate about the instrument, the organ itself, and the incredible richness of history of that instrument. And it's a beast of an instrument, and yet so delicate, profoundly delicate as well. And we can't carry it with us. It's not something you can pop into your backpack and jump onto a flight or a train and take it with us. So there's this community of people who are fascinated in the mechanics and the history of the instrument and also the music itself. So I certainly felt very supported. There were lots of schemes in the UK and scholarships and competitions and awards that one could apply for. And yeah, it was a great time for me musically and I think intellectually and also socially as well.
Leah Roseman:
That's interesting. I mean, you are kind of isolated as an organist compared to your profession now of being an orchestral conductor.
Jessica Cottis:
Yeah. It's a lonely profession and in a number of ways it's lonely, and there's a beauty of that as well, that isolation draws one to a special kind of listening, I think. But I remember back, for example, I did a number of recitals in King's College, Cambridge, university of Cambridge, and I remember you could only get into practice after the chapel had been used for religious services and for choir rehearsals and all sorts, sorts of things. So you could enter the chapel at 10:00 PM in the evening and then rehearse till midnight or 1:00 AM and there's no one there. So you are in this incredible feat of architecture and feat of art as well, these gorgeous stained glass windows, beautiful instrument, just you and the instrument and the acoustic itself, which impact how you can play the instrument as well. And there's a loneliness to that. I certainly remember being in cathedrals or chapels and at 2:00 AM in the morning and hearing a noise and thinking, what on earth is that? Because you've just got the light of the organ loft and the rest of the building is pitch black.
And there's also the sense that you are making music only with yourself and the instrument. And that's the challenge. And the challenge is being able to listen from the organ bench, even though the sound occurs sometimes 20, 30, 40, 50 meters away from you. And to manage that and to understand how sound travels and can balance over a longer distance in a big acoustic with a domed ceiling or a pitched ceiling, whatever it is, and without other musicians to work with. And I have to say that's one of the great joys of being a conductor, is to collaborate with many, many musicians on stage and that collective knowledge and that collective ability and skill and passion and ideas and intellect, sometimes 70 people to work with all at once. And to channel that and to collaborate in that way is quite literally thrilling.
Leah Roseman:
Well, I've had the privilege of having you on our podium here in Ottawa a few times, and I really did feel that you brought a collaborative welcoming feeling to the podium that I don't see as often as I'd like. So thank you for that.
Jessica Cottis:
It's a pleasure. These things don't always happen though. It depends also on the ecosystem that an orchestra lives in and how an orchestra likes to work and how generous I think that music making is. And certainly when I came to Ottawa and worked with NACO twice now, it's been, I felt a very wealth of generosity from all the musicians and that openness for me philosophically, this is an absolute necessity and creating music and creating any art actually is to come with ideas, is to come with knowledge, and then to almost just place that to the side and see what we can create together. And to shape that is, yeah, I mean, I'm just getting goosebumps thinking about it, different repertoire, and to work with orchestras who have that in their musical, DNA is just the best.
Leah Roseman:
It's interesting you use that term. I've heard that before. And it does feel like this organism, right? An orchestra that plays together all the time,
Jessica Cottis:
Very much. And maybe that happens in all groups because there's so many different personalities. We all need to find a way to work together, but ultimately as musicians, we have the same common goal, don't we? And that's to play really brilliantly, really profoundly to play almost beyond what we thought was capable of ourselves individually and together. And then to share that that with as many people as we possibly can, to share that with people like me who were sitting in the audience when I heard the Rosenkavalier, to share that with as many people in the community as possible,
Leah Roseman:
This would be a good place. I love to include some music early in an episode, but because you're a conductor, it's a bit different. But there was a recent project that came out a couple of years ago, the music of Julie Cooper who writes a lot for a film, if I understand, do you want to speak to that project?
Jessica Cottis:
Yeah. So Julie and I have known each other for a number of years, and we work together on a recording of hers a few years back, and it went really brilliantly well, and she's a fantastic composer and a very profound and beautiful person actually. She really thinks about what she writes and why she writes it and how that's transmitted to the musicians and those who listen to it. But we got talking about synesthesia, which is something that I experience. I experience something called Chromesthesia, which for any listener who doesn't know is basically when you hear sound or when you hear music chords, you also see in I guess your mind's eye color, physical color as well. So Julie and I got talking about this, and she was really excited by it. And so she kept sending me messages and saying, ah, Jessica, what color is E major for you? And oh, what about a flat minor? And so we're messaging each other, and we had sort of this ongoing conversation, and there's one conversation where we were talking about the gold, the flecks of gold that Klimt uses and some poetry by Byron about the Serpentine lake in central London and how these were relating to colors. And this actually led to her writing a new album. And every piece on this album is related to color based on the key that I experience, and sort of a link, a beautiful link between keys and color and related artworks as well, or extra musical sources like poetry and so on. So yeah, we recorded that in the studio last year, and yeah, it was a fantastic project and actually really interesting for me to work so closely with a composer in that way. And I do work very closely with composers in my daily life, especially with commissions, especially Australian composers, and coming up with ideas with them and seeing how and new piece can fit into a program. But this was the first time specifically related to synesthesia and color.
Leah Roseman:
I was listening to that album just this morning. It's really beautiful.
Jessica Cottis:
It is. Yeah, it's very transportative.
Leah Roseman:
You're about to hear Angel in Dark Green from Julie Cooper's new album, Oculus featuring Eliza Marshall on Bass flute, Clio Gould on violin, Grace Davidson Soprano, Camilla Pay on Harp, Joby Burgess percussion, and the Oculus Ensemble with conductor Jessica Cottis. Oculus means eye in Latin and composer, Julie Cooper writes, "Angel in Dark Green is inspired by the dark sacred painting "Angel in Green with a Vielle" a panel of the Leonardo Aa Vinci alter triptych believed to be painted by his assistant, Francesco Napoletano. You'll find the link to composer Julie Cooper in the description of this episode.(music)
My daughter, Sarah Roseman, is an artist and designer based in the Netherlands, and she has the same kind of synesthesia you do.
Jessica Cottis:
I have a bit of an obsession with now. I never thought about synesthesia when I was younger. It just is. We see, we hear, we feel it was always there. So I'm always fascinated in hearing other people's experiences of these conjoined sensory interactions with the world.
Leah Roseman:
Hi, just a short break from the episode, which I hope you're enjoying so far. If you want to check out over a hundred episodes you may have missed in addition to your podcast player or YouTube, I have an extensive website, leahroseman.com with show notes, transcripts, the complete catalog of episodes, and you can sign up there for my weekly newsletter to get access to sneak peaks of upcoming guests. Please do share your favorite episodes with your friends, follow me on social media and share my posts. And if you can spare a few dollars to help support the series, that would be amazing, and you can find that link in the show notes. I'm an independent podcaster and I really do need the help of my listeners. Now, back to the episode.
I think she mentioned it to me maybe in high school, but certainly in university when she did this project, and I was blown away by this, and she said, mom, everyone in art school has this. It is very common. She knew lots of people with this, but it really isn't. I looked it up. It's extremely rare in the population, and I was wondering if it can be overwhelming like a fragrance, just the bombarding of your senses.
Jessica Cottis:
Absolutely. It can be too much sometimes, and it's very hard to, I can't turn it off, but it's very hard to tone it down. I would say it's a blessing and infrequently a curse. For example, if something is very, very loud and slightly out of tune, then that manifests as a very, I could translate that as a very busy canvas with little structure and also slightly out of focus. Like if one has the wrong prescription lenses on, it feels disorienting, and it's hard to grasp what exactly the colors are and how they interact with each other. It's actually quite unpleasant.
Yeah, it feels like being attacked by a big ball of paint all at once, and no way to clean it up or clear it up. But conversely, actually, when working with a really good orchestra and there's a real focus and intent on balance, and I don't just mean, oh, is someone louder than someone else, but the musical color within a chord, and how does the wind speak through? Does a particular wind instrument speak through? Does it shine through a little bit of light, like a little bit of sunshine early in the morning through the strings or a little fleck of starlight from the percussion? These kind of things, these nuances and this real attention to detail, it can just be so beautiful. And if what I hear creates this clarity of, I'll use the word canvas of painting almost 3D painting, then it's like staring at a Van Gogh and really jumping into a 3D painting. Really, it's wonderful. And there's an extra element for me as a conductor that if I have a visual image in my head that from the sound that I hear that's a bit fuzzy, there's some kind of fuzziness to it, then it's normally because something is out of balance, and that could be tuning or that could be how the instruments interact with each other.
Leah Roseman:
Yeah, it's really fascinating. In a way, it's like a psychedelic drug trip that some people might achieve through those means, right?
Jessica Cottis:
Yeah. I remember reading Vladimir Nabukov who was interested in this later in his life, and he was a synthesthete already, but it's interesting reading some of his writings on how he experienced it, a heightened synesthesia when he took, I think it was an LSD, I'm not sure, some kind of drug to experience that. Yeah, well, drug free here and still a huge experience.
Leah Roseman:
I was wondering, I think you had an accident or something a few years ago that sort of affected it, so you also have smell as color like crossed your senses.
Jessica Cottis:
Yes. I unfortunately was randomly mugged attacked in London, just going for a walk on a Sunday afternoon in broad daylight and completely provoked. And some young men came up and attacked me, and part of that attack was a very, very strong blow to my for it with some kind of glass implement. And thankfully I wasn't cut at all, but I did sustain quite bad concussion. And the recovery to that took some time, and I'm completely fine now and have been for a long time. But the recovery to that was actually quite fascinating because for a while, and thankfully I don't experience this anymore, but for a while I was getting color with smells, and that could be anything from freshly toasted bread to the garbage truck outside to the smell of toothpaste. I mean, really mundane things, a cup of tea eliciting color as well. And I have to say that was too much. That was a step too far in the synesthesia, and I'm glad that eventually it just dissipated. Occasionally, I still have this color sense if I smell something very strong or very evocative,
Leah Roseman:
I am so sorry to hear about that assault. I think I'd seen a picture on social media from a while back of some reference, and I hadn't realized that's just terrible. You must've been afraid to just go for a walk after that.
Jessica Cottis:
Well, a lot of people have said that, and actually I wasn't. And the next day I went back to the place that it happened, which was probably silly, but I did. And a year later, I also decided to go back and be in that place and to sort of banish any fears, psychological fears that I may have had. It felt very important to me to sort of mark that myself and also, so it was just so random. And I think what it did do, it made me think very philosophically and how we exist in the world and how we treat others, and are we subjectified, do we become as humans sometimes just, or are we objectified? Do we become an object of somebody else's boredom or yeah, a play thing in a way or an object of anger through no fault of our own. We just happen to be in a certain time and place when these things happen.
And yeah, I think there's a lot to think about as how we exist in the world and how we can be as humans, how we can exist together, and how actually music is a place of respite and love in many instances, and can soothe us and can provide balm certainly as I was recovering from that, from those hits to the head, interestingly, I was unable to listen to music. I didn't have the space for it, but as I knew I was recovering when I wanted to listen to Bach again, and after a while listening to Bach, I wanted to listen to the romantic repertoire again and a little bit longer than classical, and then into more 19 hundreds and onwards. And then music really was solace to me in those latter parts of the recovery and provided great uplift.
Leah Roseman:
I know quite a few people who've suffered bad concussions like that, and the recovery can be so frustrating. What were things that helped you?
Jessica Cottis:
For me, actually resting a great deal and trusting that the recovery that I would recover as long as I rested properly, but going out and walking gently in nature, being out in nature, connecting with fresh air, sunshine. I have a great interest in the natural world. So yeah, it's sort of getting back to the basics, eating well, enjoying that, enjoying nature, and then very gradually starting staying off all screens, of course, nothing, no technology for some time and very slowly starting to read again and crosswords and puzzles and things, and just gently getting my brain back into it.
Leah Roseman:
Okay. Well, let's go back to your childhood in Australia, because you grew up in a sheep farm.
Jessica Cottis:
Yes, I did. So initially, actually, my father was, he worked in, he was an Australian diplomat. So we traveled every three years, and I grew up in Australia and the United States. We grew up near Washington, DC and some time in New Zealand. And my siblings grew up in the UK as well, but when he retired, I was in my early teens and he'd had a lifelong ambition to own to run a sheep farm. So that's what he did. So my teenage years was spent well at school, of course, and playing music and all of those kinds of things, but also every weekend and often throughout the week on a fine wool sheep farm. So we had Marino sheep, which do very well in Australia. They're originally Spanish. They were bred in Spain, and they do well in warm climates. And this kind of wool is ultra fine wool, very small micron, a low number of micron in terms of the thickness of the wool.
It's used for fabrics. So that kind of fabric could be in Italian suits, for example. And yeah, they were wonderful years, a lot of work to have a farm in Australia, and we lived through a long drought where there was very little water, and the sheep would be, my father would often hand feed the sheep every day because there was just very little grass on the property. But a real connection with the seasons and the landscape, that particular landscape of southeastern Australia, which is eucalypt, eucalypt trees, rolling hills, very dry grassland. And for me, a very strong color palette between this golden yellow of the grass and the bright blue sky of very, very particular blue. I actually feel it in the beginning of Mendelssohn's, Italian symphony, similar kind of blue of the Australian sky in Southeast Australia.
Leah Roseman:
Okay. Well, butterflies, I mean, I know you are very interested in butterflies. Were there butterflies in that landscape?
Jessica Cottis:
Yes, absolutely. Australia is very rich in all kinds of wildlife, but especially for any budding entomologist, anyone who's interested in bugs and beetles and lepidoptera. But many butterflies in that part of Australia, the ones that are most vivid color-wise are as you get closer to the equator, of course, they become very flamboyant. But yeah, that was where my first kind of fascination with butterflies happened as a young, actually, it was some years earlier, but certainly continued at our family property. And I picked up as children, you see something that looks enticing, and you don't just look at it, you pick it up, a lizard or a wall, whatever it is. And I saw a butterfly on the ground and I picked it up, and the color on the wings, the scales, of course, butterflies have wings of many, many, many scales that give it this iridescent color. It came off into my fingers, and I thought this was absolutely magic that I had this iridescent color on my fingers from this butterfly. And I think from that point onwards, I, I've been fascinated by moths, but especially butterflies. And in recent years, wherever I travel in the world, if it's the right time of year, I try and spend, and if I have time in my schedule, I try and find a few days or an extra day or even half a day to go and explore nature and try and see local butterflies. I wasn't able to do that in Ottawa because both times I've been there, it's been too cold. They would all be hibernating or elsewhere. They would've traveled away from North America at that time of year.
Leah Roseman:
And you played the trumpet through your youth?
Jessica Cottis:
Yes. So look, I was primarily a keyboard player, but I was fascinated in the sound of the trumpet. We had a neighbor who played trumpet in brass bands, and I heard her practicing, and I was so keen on this sound that I decided to make my own trumpet from a spare hose pipe that I found in my dad's shed and a funnel. And I borrowed a mouthpiece from my neighbor, and I ran around annoying people, tooting this makeshift trumpet. And eventually my grandmother decided that it was time I got an instrument for myself. So yeah, I started trumpet lessons when I was about 10, I think, or 11. And I loved it. It was a great foil in a way to my piano playing because it allowed me to play in orchestras and in bands and to play with other musicians, different repertoire. And as appeared as though I played, I worked with singers and I would accompany friends who played violin and cello and flute and so on. But there was something different with the trumpet, and it was just such an immediate sound for me that I loved. I loved the tamra of it, and I loved that it could play loudly, and I loved that I could do that with friends.
Leah Roseman:
Well, we had mentioned about collaborating with composers, and maybe we could talk about programming. In your role as a conductor, how do you think it's good to build programs? Traditionally, we would do familiar repertoire and then do the one new piece.
Jessica Cottis:
Yeah, programming is dependent on, there's no one blanket rule for programming. It depends on the orchestra, it depends on the concert series that that orchestra is playing in, and it depends on the city and who we're trying to reach. So all of these things have huge impact on programming can come about. But generally speaking, for me, I like to program. I think storytelling is interesting, and I'm really fascinated in this idea of myth and creating worlds, I guess. And I think we can program in really appealing and fascinating ways, even with repertoire that we know so well and that we love so well, so much. So for example, I would tend to start, say with one core work, and maybe we have to use a core work because we need to make sure that we're really appealing to as many people as possible in our audiences, and finding one aspect of that work that could be carried through cohesively, even if tenuously throughout an entire program.
And that could be something as, I mean, if we go back to this color idea, this could be something as vague as the color blue. And I could say, well, what about Rimsky Korsakov's Scheherazade? And he wrote this in most of the pieces in E Major. And for him, for Rimsky Korsakov who had synesthetic tendencies, E major was the color of the dark blue sea. Of course that makes sense because so much of the Scheherazade myth focuses on these sea journeys and pirates and so on. Okay, well, what can we program with that? Well, perhaps we could look to Scriabin's piano concerto, which is infrequently performed, but a beautiful piece. Scriabin probably wasn't a synesthete, but he was very interested in the relation between color and tones and sound. And we know that he wrote this piece in a key that for him was a spiritual key, and he related religion and spirituality to light blue, which are the color that we associate with.
I mean, of course the sky doesn't have color, but the color that we see, that light blue kind of whiteness a daylight sky. So already we've got two pieces that are sort of tenuously linked by a simple color. And then for me, I might think, well, depending on the orchestra, we have a commissioning focus as well. What could we do there? Maybe there's something that we could link in any number of ways. A blue note in jazz, maybe a new piece could be written around the idea of a blue note. Maybe we could look at a particular artist, Mark Roscoe often painted with different hues of blue. Maybe there could be a collaboration there between contemporary composer and that connection. So there are a myriad of ways to create connections that I think we can approach concerts almost like worlds or books or ecosystems or environments. So we can sort of jump in and experience the music with these extra musical ideas that often actually can, I'm not going to say can help us understand the music better because it's not really about that, but can provide gateways into allowing that music to enter us, to enter our hearts and our minds and our imaginations in often novel ways.
And it's different for everyone, of course. So I'm looking for ways to bring that music in any possibility.
Leah Roseman:
So with new music, we have to convince the audience and the stakeholders and the musicians. Sometimes you go in front of an orchestra and maybe you believe in this piece, but it's complex and the musicians have a wall up. What are some strategies?
Jessica Cottis:
As a conductor, we have to believe in what we're presenting. And sometimes a piece of music comes across my desk and I look at it and I think, oh, I'm not sure about this. So part of the challenges actually at that point, even before I am on the podium in the first rehearsal, is convincing myself and finding something in a piece of music that speaks to me that I can get behind, that I can find a path through the overgrown. I feel like I'm in the middle of a forest and I'm not sure which direction to go left right up. Do I dig down? I'm not sure. But that's up to me to really spend time inhabiting that piece and finding it. And I've never had an instance of a piece where I haven't found something that I could then stand in front of the orchestra with all honesty and an open heart, bring excitement and some kind of vision to that.
I think we all know when someone's bluffing, and as a musician, even if there's something that one doesn't about a piece, if there's somebody up there saying, you know what? Actually this is worth a bit of an exploration, this is worth it. I think most people are willing to give that a go. So yeah, I come with the spirit of enthusiasm, openness, trust that I've done the work that needs to be done to find a way through a new work. And also respect, because a lot of new music is technically extremely demanding. It makes such high expectations on the athleticism of the individual musicians, and that has to be respected. And in many cases, there still needs to be a discussion actually between what's possible realistically. And a composer saying, well, actually this is the effect I'm looking for. Is there another way that we could do that? And using that collective resource of the musicians as well. But I also think that there has to be a real reason as to why. What is an organization's reasoning behind commissioning new work and how are they sharing that? How are they presenting that to everyone? What say does every individual in an organization have to that vision as well? And I'd hope that there's a ideal and a collective input into these things so that it's not just one person saying, well, this is important, so therefore you should do it. It's a vision of everyone. And then anything's possible.
Leah Roseman:
Yeah. Now you're based in Sweden. Yes. When we were on tour in Stockholm, somebody in the orchestra had said to me that they had a policy, I believe it was 50% women on the podium and also the composers they were playing. I might've got that wrong, but that's what I seem to remember.
Jessica Cottis:
I don't know what the policy is exactly, and I don't know whether that policy is set in stone or it has been ratified somewhere. But certainly I can say here in Sweden and in the Nordics that there is equity, there's equitable division. I don't want to use the word division. There's real mix of conductors who happen to be male conductors who happen to be female, and also for composers as well. And well, it's done without any discussion. Now it is. We come up with programs and they're a wealth of composers of it just seems to happen here now. And maybe that's because they did have these policies or this way of thinking, this active way of thinking that now it just is, and I don't really get the impression that anyone particularly talks about it anymore. There's a balance that just happens.
Leah Roseman:
Well, we're certainly seeing changes here in North America. I think they could move a little quicker. I think I probably spent the first 20 years of my career without seeing a woman on the podium or maybe once or twice.
Jessica Cottis:
Wow.
Leah Roseman:
Yeah.
Jessica Cottis:
That's so interesting. I find it fascinating and in so many aspects of life, even if we think back, for example, this to go off topic from music briefly, but even to think of Viking burials, and there have been so many of these burials dug up by archeologists, and they find these bones of these incredible warriors from the Viking period with shields, weapons and so on. And nobody thought to check whether those bones were male or female. They just assumed, oh, they're warriors from the Viking period. So they definitely would be what no one even questioned. They would be male. But of course, we know now that actually many of them were women. And one of the very famous burials here actually in Sweden, in Bjoörka they've found definitely to be a youngish woman who, I mean, we don't know exactly what her role was, but without any doubt out a high level warrior with all of her war themed paraphernalia buried with her as well. But I just find that fascinating that nobody thought to question the sex of those bones.
Leah Roseman:
Yeah, I had not heard that. Yeah. Yeah. I visited in Newfoundland here in Canada. We have this site where, I think it was the first Europeans who had come were actually the Norse Vikings.
Jessica Cottis:
Yeah, they traveled.
Leah Roseman:
So there's, yeah, there's recreation with actors that they hired. It's kind of fun. And they rebuilt a boat. Anyway, I want to talk about your mentors. So the late Colin Davies.
Jessica Cottis:
Yes, I am very grateful to the mentors I had. Earlier on in my career. I studied at the Royal Academy of Music, and my main teachers there were Colin Metters, who was our head of conducting professor of conducting a wonderful, wonderful teacher. And our visiting professor was, yeah, Sir Colin Davis, wonderful, just an incredible musician beyond understanding actually. And there was something in the way that it was like he was music. It's like he himself, his body was music. He wore music, he ate music, he breathed music, and he was just so generous with his time to us as young conductors and these wonderful sort of tidbits of conducting information. I remember we had a class on Beethoven's fifth Symphony and we're all being very, we were swatting up on how to conduct the beginning of Beethoven five and very diligently trying to get the orchestra together on those opening bars.
And he just caught up there and he took his baton, and he literally whipped it in the air. So that made a cracking noise. He said, watch this... crack. And off the musicians went, and it was electrifying. He said to us, once you know what you're doing, you just have to ignite. You have to ignite it. And there was such a huge lesson in that. And certain things, for example, and I use, well, I don't use the Beethoven actually, I don't crack my baton before Beethoven five, but I always think about it before I start that symphony. But even things like somebody could say, oh, excuse me, Jessica, how long should we play this last note of this phrase? There's some discrepancy here. And so Colin would say, rather than saying that's an eighth note or a quarter note, he'd say, well, he'd sort of sing it.
He'd say, well, that's fwaa Well, that's fwah. And from that, not only would you have a sense of the length of the note, you'd also have a sense of the character. And I think that was one of the biggest takeaways I had from him was this sense that do all the work, know what you're doing, and when it comes down to it, express yourself in the most clear musical way, a succinct musical way possible when you get there and make music. But what an incredible conductor and all his recordings of Sibelius and Berlioz and Mozart, just incredible.
Leah Roseman:
I understand he used to sort of talk through scores with conducting students.
Jessica Cottis:
Absolutely. So most of our lessons with him were not really about technique. It was about talking through a composer's intentions and how you might show that and what an orchestra might need at a particular time. All of the stuff that actually, I mean, it's the core of what a job of a conductor does really, and a bit of the psychology as well of the music itself and how we work together with musicians
Leah Roseman:
And with Colin Metters. I had listened to you speak in another interview about, he talked about carrying the sounds, the arrival and departure, and he encouraged the sort of exploration technically.
Jessica Cottis:
Absolutely. And this is something that I carry with me every day and is deeply, deeply entrenched in my philosophy to what we do as conductors, and that we don't make sound, but philosophically, we have to show, we have to show, and physically we have to show sound. So for Colin Metters, the way he taught was it's not about where the beat is. It's not, here's beat one and here's beat two, and here's beat three and here's beat four. Once you've set that up, of course everyone knows, and we don't need to be human metronomes in a way, but what happens between the beats? What happens between those structures? Of course, yes, of course we have to show it, but how can we manipulate in a good way? How can we shape, how can we mold like a piece of clay, really? How can we shape that?
And by doing that, actually a lot of thought is spent on how we get from A to B, how we get from beat one to beat two. And it's actually incredible what you can show in space in an undefined space, or it is defined, but in what is essentially a nothingness, I guess. And that has to do with how we move the speed of how we move and the shape of how we move, the energy of how we move. It's almost metaphysical, I guess, in a way, but even to this day, it takes up a lot of time in my thinking as to how we can show that. An example would be if say the second violin have an offbeat rhythm, ostinato (singing), fine, we could say as a conductor, or please, could you put some hairpins in there, a little bit of a crescendo and a de crescendo, and maybe one has to say that, but actually that can be shown (singing)in between the beats, by just pushing that nothingness between beat one and beat two and three. And once an orchestra understands that that's what's happening, then very quickly actually you don't need to say anything. They just pick up on it. Or maybe there's a sense of rubato between beats and you can show that as well. And I even think that color can be shown. These things are super human. We don't necessarily have to articulate them. And in a way, that's the beauty of language, that some things are inarticulable, we can articulate them, but often it's just quicker and more effective and more profound to communicate on a physical level.
Leah Roseman:
There's something else I heard you say that's really been resonating with me, both as a violin teacher and just as a person existing in the world. Someone had asked you about mentoring younger conductors, and you had said, if they really want to do it, they have to understand it either on an intellectual level or on a physical level, and then it'll get to them. I'm paraphrasing here, but do you remember,
Jessica Cottis:
Yes. I'm not sure what I said exactly, but was it in relation to
Leah Roseman:
Helping young conductors?
Jessica Cottis:
Yeah, emerging conductors, absolutely. When I started conducting, in my mind, I knew that I needed to learn the technique of conducting. And then of course, you graduate and then you get thrown in front of a professional orchestra and you realize that there is a complete universe of information that you also need to digest quickly. So yes, technique crucial, and it goes without saying that one needs technique, and we have to spend many, many years actually to develop that. And through our careers, it's a lifelong process. It never stops. We never stop learning and discovering and refining.
But there's also this intellectual, psychological, really level of conducting that is so important. And in my belief, it needs just as much time and thought and dedication as the physical technical elements of conducting as well. Because we live in the age of AI and incredible technology machines can conduct, now we can put droids in front of an orchestra and they can do something akin to conducting, and sure it's very unpleasant. But this much deeper level and higher level quest, I think that we all have as musicians in instrumentalists, conductors and soloists, whether in chamber music or orchestral music, whether in opera, a new music, canonic music, we're all looking to find ways to express our humanity and something beyond that. And that comes from this, I think, from this combination of intellectual and psychological and spiritual as well. And that can really only be learned by living and exploring other art forms and constantly questioning what it is. Why did Rembrandt paint in this way? Why did Rembrandt use this size of canvas? Why did Beethoven make a particular movement shorter than all the other movements? I jest with these questions, but yeah, all of this sort of deep quest for artistic knowledge, I think combined with how we interact with humans and how we can inspire other people and be inspired ourselves.
Leah Roseman:
I'd like to ask you about the way you learn scores and digest them. You're a keyboard player, so do you do score reduction
Jessica Cottis:
To certain extent? Actually I don't. No. I just look at scores. And first of all, in a new score, it comes through. I work from macro to micro. So I would look at a score, and on its most simple level, I would look at how many movements there are or how many sections there are. That's forms my very basic architectural structure. That's the framework. And from there on, I go deeper. I build on that. So in my mind, there's a kind of polyhedric shape in my head, which is the basic structure. And then smaller structures are built within that. And then the fabric of that architecture happens. Bricks, mortar, plaster, fabrics, furnishings, almost in a way to use that kind of analogy. And so that keeps going down and down to the notes themselves and the articulations and the interactions of instruments, whether the bassoon is higher than the first flute, things like that where the cellos are playing higher than the violas and how that interacts and so on. And it's a very unscientific science, I would say, for me. But each level goes both ways. It goes deeper, but it also adds to the structure itself. All of that happens in my head, unless it's a very complex score, and sometimes actually new, recently written music can be like this very atonal, for example.
Then I might sit down and just play out a few notes, but I rarely sit down and play chords. There's something about the piano actually, that it's just such a foreign sound with orchestral scores, it's completely different. And in a weird kind of way, it's not helpful to have a piano sound in my head. The colors are different as well. The piano has a completely different color from an orchestral sound.
Leah Roseman:
So is it easy for you to hear chords in your head when you look at a score?
Jessica Cottis:
Yeah, it's always been that way. It's always, it's never been difficult for me. And it's developed, certainly it developed through playing the organ. And certainly as a pianist, I used to sight read orchestral scores as a kid just for the fun of it without thinking there was no purpose to it. It was just because I enjoyed it. I liked sight reading, and I liked the challenge of finding a score and playing it and choral pieces and different clefs and things like that. For me, that was fun. Some kind of nerdy fun with that. I honestly didn't give any thought to it. It was just what I enjoyed doing. So I guess those skills were developed quite young. And then through playing the organ, when you've got multiple keyboards and then you've got your feet as well, there's some sort of extra development there. And then of course, as a conductor, anything we do, if we practice something over and over then and we have an aptitude for it, then actually it can become very strong quite quickly.
Leah Roseman:
So I have to admit, I love playing an orchestra, but I don't like listening to orchestral recordings, even with great speakers, great headphones, because of the physicality missing, and I'm not in it.
Jessica Cottis:
Yeah, I get you.
Leah Roseman:
But as a conductor, of course, you need to listen so much and get to know different interpretations, and I'm wondering about the core repertoire, how much those interpretations might affect your interpretation. And then of course, for new music, you don't have a recording
Jessica Cottis:
With new music, actually, there's a lightness with it. There's no pleasant weight on the shoulders because it's fresh. And we are doing the birthing as it were with historical repertoire. I'm actually really fascinated in the history of interpretation and recording processes as well, listening the other day to an early recording of Elgar's Enigma Variations. And clearly they had limited time on the cylinder to get through the whole piece in a certain amount of time. So some of the movements are surprisingly fast. And of course the question is, is that on purpose or is that because they had to get through it quickly? And there are all kinds of things like this crazy portamenti where they're slide slipping and sliding through the string lines, which we wouldn't do in that way today. But I also feel similarly when I listen to recordings that it's a very, it's not the same as standing on the podium in the middle of an orchestra, which is a huge privilege.
But I find it historically fascinating to hear the kind of interpretative lineage from its earliest recording through different national interpretations piece recorded in Germany or in England or in the Americas, how those things can differ even, for example, the different sound of brass sections at the same time in different countries. Or for example, the ring cycle recording that Schulte did with John Khor, who was the producer of that, and they were looking to create an operatic effect by having the soloists actually walk around the orchestra when they were singing. So we'd have a sense when somebody rushed off stage or somebody dashed in or they were isolated away from other people. That kind of acoustic performance, I would say is actually really fascinating and does have an impact on my own interpretations. I'm not saying necessarily that what Walter did in the 1950s has a direct effect on me and my interpretation of a piece, but what it does is it makes me think, it makes me think, well, why did Mendelssohn write this and why did Walter decide to do it that way, and why has Nicholas Harnoncourt decided to do it this way?
And what is my knowledge, what's, what is my research? Obviously I do a great amount of research into a composer and their output and what was happening in their lives at that time in the world at that time, and what they had written before and their chamber of music, and there are so music and all of these kind of things. So all of this feeds into a world that then of course comes through my vision, through my understanding of the world.
Leah Roseman:
Do you have favorite biographies you've read that you'd recommend?
Jessica Cottis:
I think mostly, I like reading people's letters. There's an incredible collection of letters by Sebelius that are so mindblowingly interesting, and so I'd recommend I'd recommend those. But they're wonderful. I mean, there's books written by Barenboim and Said, Edward Said as well on various composers and philosophy of music. I think a very interesting look. Everything is interesting. Sometimes we don't know it. We could read the Letters of Virginia Wolf or a novel by anyone, really?
Leah Roseman:
Which book I just finished reading that you'd probably enjoy, Around the World in 80 Plants.
Jessica Cottis:
Oh, that sounds fascinating.
Leah Roseman:
And it's beautiful illustrations. They're these little essays about plants, and it's really from around the world. So social history, and of course the botany, and it's a beautiful book. I just happened to pick up.
Jessica Cottis:
Thank you for the recommendation. I just jotted it down.
Leah Roseman:
We talked quite a bit about synesthesia. There's something I wanted to ask in reference to that, because my daughter, the artist who has that, she also has this thing that I think might be related where she perceives time visually.
Jessica Cottis:
Wow.
Leah Roseman:
Do you have that?
Jessica Cottis:
No, I know that when I'm making music, there is no time, or actually we create time. The time that we make when we make music is different from the temporality that we have on our watches. I feel that we exist out of it and in it at the same time. And that's one of the extremely precious things of live music. But how does your daughter experience that?
Leah Roseman:
I was reading a book by a science journalist, she's British, and I can't remember the name of it, a number of years ago. And she said it was a book about, I can't even remember the book, but it was stuff about memory and how some people perceived time in different ways, and there were diagrams and some, it was showing spirals, and it showed, and I mentioned this to my daughter who was still in high school at the time, and she said, well, of course. And then we had this conversation and she described to me at that time how she saw time, and we never really talked about it again, but it stuck in my head and I was just curious. And then later on I learned about her synesthesia. So it's just one of these things that popped into my head, seeing how your senses are mixed.
Jessica Cottis:
Yes. That's so interesting.
Leah Roseman:
Curious, if we could go back to your young childhood where you're sitting on your mom's lap. So I understand music was really important means of communication for you as a young child.
Jessica Cottis:
Music was the way to express emotion. And by that I don't mean if I felt angry, I had to sit at the piano. It was more express emotion within myself. I was able to feel through playing. It somehow was a necessary link for me to, it's very, very hard to describe this also because I was so young. But to allow feelings and in some way even as a to experience and feel that as well. But it was also a means of communication. When I was very young, I found it difficult to talk actually and to articulate not things I could articulate very clearly, what was going on and what I was reading and all of these kind of things, but to actually articulate how I felt was not impossible. So the piano actually allowed me to feel okay about that. I didn't know that at the time, but as I became older, I realized that that was such an important part of my existence.
Leah Roseman:
Well, I'm mindful of your time. To wrap this up, I was thinking one thing we didn't talk about in terms of your assistant conducting experiences, emergency step ins, we could go there. You were very active as a young conductor. You founded the Bloomsbury Opera, getting sponsorship, all those initiatives, if you want to talk to any of those early experiences.
Jessica Cottis:
Yes. Well, I mean, for me, I jumped right into conducting, having had a wealth of knowledge as an organist and pianist of course. But I realized very quickly when I was studying that I needed experience. I needed to work with musicians as a conductor, because when I'd applied to the Royal Academy, I had almost zero experience as a conductor. And I was just lucky that they saw something latent in me that encouraged them to let me in on that course. But we had some conducting time in classes, but it just wasn't enough. And in those days, I was very interested in opera and of course in the symphonic repertoire. But it seemed to me like there was a possibility to create an opera company because I had so many friends who were student opera singers, and I had a lot of instrumentalist friends who said that they were interested as well.
So I just set about setting up an opera group with a dear colleague of mine who's a theater director, and we were living in halls of residence, student halls of residence. And we went to the head of this college, residential college and said, look, we would like to put on a Magic Flute. Jessica has found the musicians and she's got all the singers. She's cast it. We have a really great concept. There's a massive hall, sort of a Harry Potter-esque hall that we could perform in. Can we do it? And if so, can you support us. And to our surprise, they said yes. So we put on five or six performances of the Magic Flute, and it was very student run, and it was run on almost no money. And I remember actually, we had enough money to hire in some timpani, but we didn't have any timpani sticks for some reason.
So the Timpanist ended up using some wooden spoons, very authentic in a way. But anyway, it went extremely well. And we had sell out performances. And so we went back and said, well, this is going very well. And from there on actually, we were able to get sponsorship from private donors, sponsors to this residential college, which was a college for students from outside of the UK. So it was very multinational, local financial institutions. We had a bank sponsor us all kinds of things, local businesses. And it was a huge success. We did a number of operas. We did a Don Giovanni, which was part of London Fashion Week, for example, with these brilliant new fashion designs, all kinds of operas. And it was a wonderful experience for me to conduct this amazing repertoire to work with these brilliant singers who are now on, at Bayreuth and the Royal Opera House and the Met and so on, and wonderful musicians who are now dotted across orchestras across the world.
But also to have this early experience of going to these very respected people who are so high up in their organizations and saying, hello, music matters. And we have this brilliant idea, and we would love you to get behind it financially. Can you get on board? And nine times out of 10, they did. And this is something that I now carry with me now. We have to advocate for classical music and why it's important and find those people who also believe in the power of the arts and can continue this wonderful tradition and help it grow in our era as well. So really, really wonderful times, and I'm grateful that I had to do that. I felt compelled to do that hard work, a lot of hard work, but really it paid off and I wouldn't have had it any other way.
Leah Roseman:
Well, that's wonderful. Well, thanks so much for this
Jessica Cottis:
Today. A real pleasure. A real pleasure.
Leah Roseman:
I hope you enjoyed this episode. Pleased to share this with your friends and check out episodes you may have missed at leahroseman.com. If you could buy me a coffee to support this series, that would be wonderful. The link is in the description. Have a wonderful week.
