Arts Entrepreneurship Podcast: Making Art Work
Arts Entrepreneurship Podcast: Making Art Work
#291: Matthew Barley (Cellist) (pt. 2 of 2)
This week on the podcast is part two of our interview with renowned English cellist Matthew Barley. He has performed in over 50 countries, and with numerous orchestras including the BBC Philharmonic and the London Sinfonietta, and in venues from Ronnie Scott’s to Wigmore Hall.
In addition to being a busy performing musician, his varied experiences include founding Between the Notes, a performance and education group that works with musicians and artists in other arts genres; he was a former music director and presenter of the BBC2 Series Classical Star; and he founded the Matthew Barley Arts Foundation to run creative workshops using music and theatre to help university students improve their mental health.
Matthew’s most recent project is Light Stories, a new program for cello, electronics and visuals which launches this month in London’s Southbank Centre.
https://matthewbarley.com/
Welcome to the Arts Entrepreneurship Podcast. Making art work. We highlight how entrepreneurs align their artistry, passion and vision to create and pursue opportunities to capture value in the arts. The views expressed by guests on the Arts Entrepreneurship Podcast are solely their own and do not necessarily represent the views of the podcast or its hosts. The appearance of a guest on the podcast, the venture they represent or reference to any product or service does not imply an endorsement or recommendation by the podcast or its hosts. The content provided is for entertainment and informational purposes only and does not constitute business advice. Here are your hosts Andy Heis and Nick Petrella.
Andy Heise:Hi podcast listeners. My name is Andy Heis.
Nick Petrella:And I'm Nick Petrella. Renowned English cellist, Matthew Barley is with us today. He has performed in over 50 countries and with numerous orchestras, including the BBC Philharmonic and the London Sinfonietta, and in venues from Ronnie Scott's to Wigmore Hall. To being a busy performing musician, his varied experiences include founding Between the Notes, a performance and education group that works with musicians and artists in other arts genres. He was a former music director and presenter of the BBC Two series Classical Star, and he founded the Matthew Barley Arts Foundation to run creative workshops using music and theater to help university students improve their mental health. Matthew's most recent project is Light Stories, a new program for cello, electronics and visuals, which launched in London's South Bank Center in September 2024. Matthew's website is in the show notes so you can check out the volume and variety of his activities. It's great to have you on the podcast, matthew.
Matthew Barley:Wonderful to be here. Thank you so much for having me.
Andy Heise:Well, it's interesting. Have you done a recording project prior to this one?
Matthew Barley:Not in this way, not at all.
Andy Heise:no, Well, I guess that's kind of my question not in this way. So it's music that you composed based on your story, that you're recording yourself and I'm guessing. Was that intentional? The choice're recording yourself and I'm guessing, did you. Was that intentional the choice to record yourself and do all of this rather than going to a, you know, a professional recording studio or whatever?
Matthew Barley:yeah, very much. So. I mean a couple of reasons for that. I mean, first of all, simply, if I had wanted to do this in a professional studio, I would have had to hire the studio for six or eight weeks or something, which would have been prohibitively expensive, right.
Matthew Barley:But um, it's tricky. It's a little bit of that thing where you try and pat your head and rub your tummy in circles at the same time, um, trying to play the cello and be your own engineer, so you're, you know, working with one hand on the laptop, and so on and so forth. It's a little bit tricky, but the payoff is that you get that feeling of complete privacy and making music in in the way. That is different when you're completely in private and you can experiment, you can improvise, you can take risks, you can also have a cup of tea whenever you want it. There's no studio, it's studio staff waiting there twiddling their thumbs, or or record company wondering how the beer is going, and so on and so forth. So, yeah, very much intentional, and that's been very much a part of the journey.
Nick Petrella:But those skills you learned are transferable, right, you can use that time and time again.
Matthew Barley:Absolutely, absolutely, and I've been inspired by the younger generation. My kids are musicians. They all know how to use all the equipment. Jacob Collier you know we all love Jacob Collier these days and he's so extraordinary the way he talks about how he creates his music, engineering, producing it on his own. It's just like a second language to these kids, and I thought that's very inspiring. I want to be able to learn to do that too, so it's been very good, Good, good for the old brain cells.
Andy Heise:So I imagine you have dozens of new ideas every single day based on your your past work experience and all the different things you're working on currently. How do?
Matthew Barley:you approach new ideas, new projects and collaborations. How do you decide which ones to pursue? Yes, it's also a lovely question.
Matthew Barley:It's more like I see which ideas won't leave me alone, because, you're absolutely right, ideas come along nonstop. I always think ideas are cheap. It's making them work. That takes a lot of work and time and energy. So, yes, I suppose it's just the way my brain works, is that things pop out all the time, and sometimes I get a sort of visual image of tiny little seedlings, like dandelions or something like that. Some of them seem to take root and some of them just nag away at me. Some, some of them just won't leave me alone, and it tends to be those ones, um, that I make happen.
Matthew Barley:Yeah, um, you know the ones that just, you're thinking about non-stop, sure, um, which was the case of light stories. Um, you know the. The idea can come very quickly and sometimes it just disappears. Sometimes, I case of light stories, um, you know the the idea can come very quickly and sometimes it just disappears. Sometimes I'll jot it down, and you know, I've got a huge storehouse of unused ideas. But the ones that seem to build on themselves, um, in the days after the idea comes, they're the ones that seem to take root and just sort of a follow-up to that.
Andy Heise:I'm wondering if you remember what the initial idea looked like and what, and now what it's actually manifested as and maybe what the changes were from there. Maybe that's not how it works. Maybe you don't start out with a grandiose vision and then figure out how to make it happen. It just starts with a, like you said a little seed sometimes I do.
Matthew Barley:I mean, one of the biggest projects I did was to celebrate Benjamin Britten's centenary, and Britten wrote three gorgeous solo cello suites. He wrote fabulously for the cello and I can remember the centenaries 2013. In 2009, somebody mentioned, oh, there's a centenary, and I remember just thinking, oh, what shall I do for the centenary is 2013. In 2009, somebody mentioned, oh, there's a centenary, and I remember just thinking, oh, what should I do for the centenary? Oh, maybe I'll just do a tour around the country with 100 events. That would make sense for a centenary. So you know, literally the idea came three seconds and then it took me so long to set up that project. I did 65 concerts and 35 educational events all around the UK and you can imagine the amount of work both me and my manager setting all that up was just extraordinary. So that was an example of where the seed comes in one second With Light Stories.
Matthew Barley:I think that grew over time because it had so many resonances back in my life, and the way it's grown artistically has also been something that I couldn't have imagined at the beginning as well, with all the composition right and the way the way you know I've had composing lessons along the way and the whole kind of learning process of how to write music as opposed to arranging and improvising, which I've always done a lot of sure um has been a fascinating journey. It's been almost like a fractal thing just growing right along along the months throughout your website.
Nick Petrella:You mentioned the phrase the role of a classical musician in society. What is the role of a classical musician in society through the lens of an entrepreneurial musician? And by that I mean someone, not a member of a large ensemble.
Matthew Barley:Right? Well, I would definitely go back to one of my previous points, which is about the healing capacity of music, and I think that I don't know if it's really different for classical musicians or for other musicians. I don't personally really make much of a distinction these days, but I think there's a tendency in the classical music world to be a little bit cut off. You know concert halls and ivory towers and that sort of thing. Um, what I got from that course in the guilt hall that I mentioned earlier, the performance communication skills course, was trying to foster the type of musician that goes out into society and takes the music out to people, rather than waiting in the concert hall and expecting people to come to you. And I've had really magical experiences doing that, and I can't tell you the number of different places all around the world that I've ended up playing the cello. But it's so different when you go to people where they live and you play music to them. I'll give you an example.
Matthew Barley:So my wife is a wonderful Russian violinist, one of the greatest Russian violinists around. Victoria Mulova and my stepson, our son, together. Misha Mulova-Bardo is a really, really crack jazz double bass player and his wife is also a great violinist. So the four of us, we put together this little program and the program had some Bach, it had a lot of Brazilian jazz, it had a bit of Schumann, it had all sorts of different things. We played some solos, duos, quartets, trios.
Matthew Barley:We put together about a sort of hour and 20-minute concert and we were invited through a friend of a friend to go and play in a small village in Oxfordshire called Charlebury. So we rocked up to this village and I can't speak for myself, but you know, my wife is a very big name, misha, my stepson also has a pretty big name as well and we played in this tiny little village hall with about I don't know, packed to the rafters with maybe 150 people or something, and I'm not kidding, people were in tears at the end. People were so moved, um, that this kind of music making was being brought to their village hall. There was a big reception afterwards. We met all the people in the audience and talked to them and it was a very, very moving occasion both for us as performers and for the audience.
Matthew Barley:If we had just played that concert in the Wigmore Hall in London or the South Bank Central or something, I mean, I'm sure it would have been a great concert because it's good musicians and good music. But going to the community and taking that music there was so resonant and meaningful for all of those people it made a great impression on us and it just reminded me yes, that's the role of music in society is to go and take your music to people.
Nick Petrella:Well, in London, these big halls, you would be one more right, exactly these other places. It's unexpected.
Matthew Barley:Yeah, yeah, absolutely, and it's lovely that people you know people will have walked sort of 25 meters to come to the concert, which I thought was just great, yeah yeah, and and to the, you know, to the london venues or whatever.
Andy Heise:Like the expectation, of course, it's going to be great right exactly whereas, exactly whereas these folks in the smaller, like their expectations were. I don't, I, I shouldn't, I don't know what their expectations were, but, uh, probably not the same as someone who pays, you know, 150 dollars to go see a symphony, right.
Matthew Barley:Yeah, yeah, absolutely right. And, and you know, in fact the concert was also a fundraiser and we were raising money for ukrainian refugees, and it was quite a community. In fact, the concert was also a fundraiser, we were raising money for Ukrainian refugees. I think it was quite a community there. In fact, I must stop calling my wife Russian. She's three quarters Ukrainian. Maybe that makes a difference these days. Yeah, sure, but that was also. And also, you know, it's funny enough for us as musicians, that's also nice to go and offer our services for free. It just changes the thing around the whole concert somehow. And you know, talking of ideas for the future, that's something I would love to do is find a little bit of sponsorship.
Matthew Barley:Yeah, um, to pay for us, this little family quartet, to just do a tour around the country two or three weeks in tiny village halls would just be such a joy yeah, that's great, all packed in a van exactly yes yeah, trundling around.
Andy Heise:Yes, put the base on top hand-printed posters. I can see it now exactly, yeah, absolutely so how do you approach the many activities that we've been talking about here, All the things that are necessary to keep that type of a career moving from practicing and recording, preparing new music for new concerts, planning these workshops and events, and all the administrative tasks that go into that. We could keep listing these things on and on. Emails bookkeeping how do you manage? All of that stuff.
Matthew Barley:With difficulty. To be honest, when my career started, I remember what it was like to get a booking in those days, 30 years ago or something. You would get a phone call Would you like to come and play, you know, at the birmingham town hall next year? Sure I'd love to. What do you want me to play? Maybe mix, have some beethoven, some brahms, lovely, great. Then a couple of weeks later you get a letter, lovely to talk, confirming the program and then the next year you turn up and you play the concert. That's it. You know.
Matthew Barley:If it's a concert abroad, an envelope will arrive with your plane ticket. In these days I mean even just sorting out the plane ticket you're going backwards and forwards with your manager looking at 37 different flights via different countries, and you have to put in your frequent flyer numbers and this, that and the other, and it's unbelievably complicated. And these days, you know, musicians, we're other, and it's unbelievably complicated. And these days, musicians, we're asked to write our own program nights, we're asked to do all our social media, we're asked to design special programs, and it's so much more complicated.
Andy Heise:And be the best at what you're supposed to be doing. Be the best at what you're supposed to be doing.
Matthew Barley:Yeah, and the administrative load on musicians I mean I guess it's everybody everywhere it's just insane. You know, I have weeks where I get I don't know a couple of hundred emails or more. Plus, you know WhatsApp messages it's just overflowing phone calls, what's. You know all the different messengers and all this sort of thing. It's very, very difficult to juggle it all, and I have to say that one of the nicest things about this light stories project was that when I began the composing process months ago now, um, I just I thought, okay, I'm gonna have to put a stop to the admin because it's just taking over my life, and so my rule was um, the phone and the computer don't go on till after lunchtime. So I would get up at six o'clock in the morning and I'll begin my work. I would do several hours composing and some practice, then have some lunch and the and the um the electronics would come around two or three in the afternoon, and that really genuinely changed my life. Um, it changed the way I three in the afternoon and that really genuinely changed my life. It changed the way I felt in the morning, changed the way the stress levels were managed through the day.
Matthew Barley:It's very difficult. I know a lot of people struggle with it and I think I'm lucky in that I'm pretty organized. You have to be very organized to get your head around all the different demands and that's sort of you know, short term, medium term, long term, as well as juggling. I mean at the moment, because I'm involved in light stories, I don't have this problem, but usually I'm juggling several different programs at the same time. You've got to look ahead. When do I need to start looking back at the Tchaikovsky Concerto? When do I need to you, you know all that sort of thing. So it's it's a lot to hold, but you know it's a it's a lovely first world problem.
Nick Petrella:I'm not complaining for sure, absolutely, yeah before we get to our final three questions, I did want to ask one follow-up question. We spoke about mental health and it's very important to you. What should professional musicians keep in mind to maintain positive mental health?
Matthew Barley:hmm, well, I'm gonna go straight back to my last answer. Keep, keep the electronics under control.
Matthew Barley:That, for me is is the number one. It's um, it's the amount of information and the amount of demand on your attention created by you know the interface of the laptop and the phone, and I'm sure um, you and everybody listening to this podcast knows that feeling of oh, you just need to check that email you got earlier on your phone. You open up your phone, lots of other messages ping in this, that and the other, and five minutes later you think, oh, what did I want to look on the phone for?
Matthew Barley:exactly you've been derailed somewhere and and this, this sort of um being pulled around in so many different directions, it's not good for our mental state? I don't think so. That's why I found that, starting the day, do not open the phone first thing in the morning. That's just a disaster. If you can keep that mental state that we have out of sleep as long as possible, that really makes a difference.
Andy Heise:I remember, during the pandemic, we, we talked a little not we, not the three of us, but, um, it was talked about a lot, uh, this notion of bandwidth, and I'm sure it's been discussed before, but this was my first real awareness of bandwidth. Yes, and how, like with the, with the pandemic, like, even though we may not have been, we may have been doing less, just the stress of the pandemic and that was on our lives took up a large bit of that bandwidth without just like background processing.
Andy Heise:We weren't actively processing it, but it just took up so much space in our lives. Yeah absolutely lives. Yeah, absolutely, um, and that's that sort of makes me think about it, even though the phone's sitting over here like it's still taking up a lot of my bandwidth, because I know it's there and I know it's accumulating all of these notifications absolutely, yeah, absolutely, yes, it's a constant presence, yeah I'm gonna text him to see if he looks no, I'm not going to okay.
Andy Heise:Well, matthew, we've reached the point of the interview where we ask all of our interviewees the same three questions, and the first question is what advice would you give to others wanting to become an art entrepreneur?
Matthew Barley:so the bit of advice that I have consistently given to so many young people over the years is, very simply, talk to people. Get on the phone, make meetings with people, go for coffees with people as many different people as you can and just have conversations with them. Find out what they're doing, tell them what you're doing and so much you know. I've had an awful lot of experience of that over the years. So much can come from those conversations that you couldn't have imagined beforehand. It's also great fun Meeting people, and talking to people is a lovely way to spend a portion of your time. So that would be my advice Get out there and chat.
Andy Heise:Or start a podcast.
Matthew Barley:Yeah, that's right or start a podcast. Lovely one, yes.
Nick Petrella:What can we do to ensure the arts are more accessible and reaching the widest possible audience?
Matthew Barley:So I mean, my answer to this one is really about concentrating on what you're doing. I'm a great believer in focusing very much on what your actual art is and obviously there are many, many clever things you can do in terms of disseminating and communicating and getting things out there. But I think, in the first instance, put as much energy and focus and attention and passion as you possibly can into the actual art that you're creating. Attention and passion as you possibly can into the actual art that you're creating. Um, which which sort of reminds me of something that an actor once said to me about how to project from the stage, which was it's not about throwing something out there to the audience, it's about illuminating something inside that shines so brightly that it reaches the audience so I think you know, in that same way, really, really focusing on the quality of what you're creating and that will naturally beam itself out there strongly.
Andy Heise:Lastly, what's the best artistic or entrepreneurial advice you've been given?
Matthew Barley:So yeah, here's the one where I've had two lovely bits of advice seemingly maybe contradictory. So yeah, here's the one where I've had two lovely bits of advice seemingly maybe contradictory. The first one it's not complicated at all, but at a particular time in my life it was absolute gold dust. It's attributed to Tibetan Rinpoche and it's simply when things get really really tough, just keep going. And at that particular time that really was a lifesaver and it saves me quite a lot of times. Since, just when things get really tough I don't know if I'm alone in this, but I tend to start thinking, start worrying. Do I have the wrong approach? Should I try this? Uh-uh, just keep going.
Matthew Barley:And the number of times that can get you through whatever crisis mode you're in has been very, very useful to me. And the other one it's sort of almost on the subject of difficulties or ease, but it's one I found really fascinating and it was something my wife said to me many, many years ago and we were discussing string playing and you know she won the Tchaikovsky competition in the early 80s as a gold medalist. She defected to America in the early 80s and had a huge career around the world. And she said to me, which I thought was fascinating. She said it's much easier to play well than it is to play badly, and I thought that was really fascinating, because what we always think is that to do something incredibly well is really difficult, but actually when you get to that level of execution she's absolutely right it's got to be easy so that you train so deeply and, by the time you can do it with ease, it's easier to play well than it is to play badly. I thought that's a really interesting direction to point myself. Yes, yeah.
Nick Petrella:Well, Matthew, it's been great having you on and really enjoyed hearing your introspective and healing approach to music.
Matthew Barley:Well, thank you both. So much, lovely to talk to you. Thanks, matthew.
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