E5 S2: Christopher Millard

In Episode 5 Season 2, I spoke with my colleague, the renowned bassoon player Christopher Millard about many topics, including many fascinating insights into the orchestra profession, the physics of sound production on both the bassoon and violin, great advice on how best to practice music, the legendary flutist Marcel Moyse and much more. I asked him about learning jazz piano as a teenager. “I attempted to and I loved it. And the great thing about studying jazz as a teenager is it got me off to a real headstart in terms of understanding harmony.

…I think it's really important to say and to say it publicly, that the average jazz musician has a far, far deeper and more sophisticated understanding of harmony than any classical musicians.

Because, in real time, they have to know where they are. They have to know their modes and their scales, and their substitutions. It's an extraordinary gift to learn that early on. And it helped me enormously. When I mentioned early in our conversation how important it was in a radio orchestra to be a quick learner, being able to look at a piece of music and see four or five notes and be able to say, I don't have to learn those notes sequentially. I look at the notes and I say, "Ah, they fit into a pattern with which I'm familiar."

This was indeed a wide-ranging discussion, and I’ve included timestamps in the descriptions of both the podcast and video:

Video link Spotify Apple Amazon Music/Audible RadioPublic Podcast Transcript