The Baton, the Suitcase, and the Metronome

Welcome to travellingconductor.com. This is the first post. It will be self-indulgent. I make no apologies.

There is a particular kind of exhaustion that comes not from being tired, but from being in the wrong city. You know the feeling — you wake up, the ceiling is unfamiliar, the light is too cold, the radiator makes a noise you've never agreed to. You reach for your phone. Not to check messages. To check which city this is.

I have been checking which city it is for the better part of my adult life.

The suitcase is always either half-packed or half-unpacked — a state of affairs that is philosophically identical but emotionally very different. The scores are in a bag that has its own passport, metaphorically speaking — it has certainly seen more countries than most people I know. Somewhere in the flat there is a metronome that I use every single day — and when it's not in the flat, there's one on my phone. It ticks with a self-righteousness I find oddly comforting.

This is the life. And this — at last, after years of meaning to — is the blog.

Why a blog? Why now?

The honest answer is: I'm not entirely sure, but it felt necessary.

Conducting is one of those professions that people find mysterious in ways that are both flattering and faintly irritating. "But what do you actually do?" is a question I have answered at dinner parties more times than I have conducted Beethoven's Fifth — which is saying something. The mystery is partly aesthetic — the tailcoat, the podium, the dramatic gestures — and partly genuine: the work is invisible in a way that playing the violin, say, is not. The violinist produces a sound you can point to. The conductor produces a relationship. An atmosphere. A direction. Try explaining that between courses.

And then there is the travel. Other musicians have homes they return to between concerts. Conductors have a series of cities that they pass through with the regularity of a postal route and the emotional investment of a love affair. You fall for an orchestra — its sound, its culture, its particular stubbornness — and then you leave. Two weeks later you are somewhere else, starting from scratch, translating the same music into a different language, a different room, a different acoustic.

It produces, over time, a certain type of person. Adaptable. Observant. Permanently slightly jet-lagged. Opinionated about hotel pillows.

I thought it might be worth writing some of it down.

What this blog will be

It will be about travel — but not in the way you might expect. Not so much the destinations, but the systems. How to get yourself and a tailcoat across Europe with nothing but carry-on luggage. Which tools and workflows make a nomadic life in classical music not just bearable but genuinely enjoyable. What you learn about packing, about technology, about the art of travelling light, when your livelihood depends on arriving with everything intact.

It will, from time to time, be about music. About conducting, about scores, about the specific terror of the first downbeat with an orchestra you've never met. But this isn't a music blog with occasional travel content — it's closer to the reverse.

It will be about coffee. I have strong feelings about coffee. Unreasonably strong feelings. This will become apparent.

And it will be about the small things that make a life on the road work — the gear, the routines, the hard-won lessons from too many airports and not enough sleep.

What this blog will not be

It will not be a masterclass. There are enough of those online, and most of them are delivered by people with considerably more authority than I can claim.

It will not be a comprehensive guide to anything. Comprehensiveness is the enemy of a good read.

It will not be entirely serious. Music — including the most serious music ever written — is a human endeavour. Human endeavours are frequently ridiculous. Pointing this out is not disrespectful. It is, I would argue, the most honest form of respect.

A word about the title

Travelling Conductor is not a particularly elegant name. I considered alternatives. The Itinerant Baton sounded like a Victorian pamphlet. Podium Wanderer sounded like a medical condition. Notes from the Road was taken, obviously, in fourteen different forms.

Travelling Conductor is at least accurate. I travel. I conduct. Occasionally, if the schedule is kind and the coffee is good, I do both with something approaching grace.

That will have to do.

Welcome. I hope you find something here worth reading — whether you're a fellow conductor, a musician, a curious listener, or someone who simply clicked the wrong link and has made it this far through sheer politeness.

The suitcase is already half-packed.

— The Travelling Conductor