Q and A with Greg Hearle - Lenny in OperaCocktail
Greg Hearle is a professional musician and has played the role of Lenny in OperaCocktail.
Please can you introduce yourself?
I’m a professional musician, I play the clarinet and I’ve performed in several OperaUpClose projects.
How is OperaCocktail different from some of the other productions you’ve played for?
The two musicians, Jo and Lenny, participate in the action in OperaCocktail: they are characters within the narrative. As a musician, that’s an added element to playing the score and it has definitely pushed me out of my comfort zone! Several OperaUpClose projects have involved this type of involvement: in The Flying Dutchman the small orchestra of eight players became the chorus for example. In one production we even formed part of the scenery!
What do you love about your job?
Music as a whole allows me to experience life in ways I never imagined. It’s a job that allows me to travel - OperaCocktail was performed on a cruise ship and I got to travel to New York, then return on board a ship! That was a unique experience. I’ve travelled to China, the Middle East and Europe as well as playing in towns and cities across the UK. Those tours allow you to visit places that you wouldn’t otherwise go to.
I also feel like I’ve been able to travel through different periods of time: the repertoire that I’ve played in my career has taken me through Germany, the early Soviet Union, Central Europe at the height of the Austrian Empire! The range of music allows me to explore bygone eras.
Do you have a typical day at work?
No, and that’s why I love it! I do a lot of peripatetic teaching, playing in productions, working with children and babies in singing groups: in my job I find myself interacting with lots of different parts of society. My work has varied from working in a primary school building an orchestra from scratch, to playing for OktoberFest in various beer gardens, where we played a mixture of German music and popular classics like ‘Sweet Caroline’! All of these experiences create a magically communal experience and I’m lucky enough to call this my job!
Can you explain the benefits of playing in an orchestra or ensemble?
Performing with colleagues and friends creates a wonderful collective experience. We can be fully present with each other for two hours or so: you can’t think about anything else! Society’s obsession with phones and devices can be so de-energising but playing music creates an aesthetic experience for the audience and the musicians.
I played in Saturday ensembles when I was a teenager, and this was where I found my sense of belonging: I found my people! Music provides us with so much beyond simply playing a melody on a single instrument.
We’re always told that practise is really important when playing an instrument. Why is that?!
I promise that things like scales do become second nature! As you progress to more and more difficult music, or to a professional level, we don’t always have very much rehearsal time. We are constantly playing different repertoire, from different styles and periods, which is wonderful. But the more you practice, the easier it is to adapt and respond to that different music.
Can you tell us a little bit more about your professional training?
I began playing the clarinet at primary school and progressed through secondary schools. I went to a sixth form college that took its catchment from a wide area so I was working with the county’s best musicians! I won a BBC Shropshire Young Musician competition, and went to the Royal Welsh College of Music and Drama, which is in Cardiff. I then studied at the Royal College of Music for two years and in 2018 was a Fellow of the Southbank Sinfonia (now the Sinfonia Smith Square). That’s a graduate orchestra, and was a great place to start my career. I met people from all over the world there.
