We are nothing without you, the audience.

The opinions expressed in my blogs are only my personal opinions and don’t represent the opinion of the International Composers Festival and all its associates

Let’s talk about food. There are certain dishes we can all relate to, so let’s just randomly focus on say, Steak and chips! Now then, chips need to be cooked just right don’t they? Not soggy, but crispy on the outside and well cooked on the inside. But we wouldn’t want chips on our plate without sauce would we?

The steak, needs to be a nice chunky slab of steak cooked just right. Nicely grilled on the outside and perhaps rare or medium rare in the inside. Yum! What about some kind of sauce? Oh yes, must’n forget sauce. Let’s see….how about creamed mushroom sauce with pepper and seasoned just right to match the steak. Now we have perfectly cooked steak, chips and a sauce. What else could we possibly need? Vegetables? Yes! Lets see, perhaps some carrots, peas, or even a nice green salad. Now we have all the elements of a perfect meal….well for some of us anyway.

Now if for some reason, the more experimental amongst us decided to add strawberries to our plate of steak, chips, creamed mushroom sauce with salad….it wouldn’t work would it? Or if we changed the chips for crackers, or if we replaced the steak with a slab of chocolate. On that note, if someone decided to cayenne pepper to the creamed mushroom sauce, it would dominate the dish and perhaps even ruin it.

Thus the chef has a huge responsibility to ensure that the food on the plate meets or excels the expectation of the consumer. Composers are no different in that regard to chefs. We write music in the hope you enjoy it, otherwise what’s the point? We are nothing without you, the audience. No composer writes music for their own needs and we try as hard as possible to avoid the use of strawberries with our steak and chips!