Will's Artist Spotlight
I come from a fairly small state in Australia, called Tasmania and coming of out of Tasmania, doing something like classical music, while there's an incredible orchestra there, it's a very small population.
And yeah, I was very fortunate as a teenager at school, and even when I was 10 or 11, that at my school, out of every school in Hobart and in Tasmania, I had 3 others; one, my brother, and two other incredible musicians, who at that young age, were obsessed by and excited by music at a young age, and I think, without the driving force of those three other young kids at that age it would have been harder to be doing music now.
I mean, all the other three are doing music across the world as their profession, which is quite amazing to think of. Four 11 to 12-year olds meeting at school, and then all kind of going off across the world and doing music as their career. It doesn't happen.
So yeah, I think every time you have an opportunity, when you're young and learning to do something, I mean, we were teased as kids. You can imagine four young kids at a school, going off and practicing string quartets in their lunch hours, and, you know, this wasn't normal.
So, we were teased. But it's just, we kind of stuck together as four kids. And anytime you can band together with people that love the same things you do, regardless of whether it's the normal, I think, stick with people who know you like you know yourself.
It's a very long journey from that time, as a young child to learning at school, learning at university, learning beyond that. And then, after that time, I then was freelancing for over a decade, which was incredible, especially in Melbourne which is such a culturally vibrant, rich city with so much going on as a freelancer.
It's probably my favorite place in Australia that I could possibly have lived doing what I did; so much going on, so many opportunities, so much chamber music.
Anytime I was at a symphony orchestra with the Melbourne Symphony, it was incredible as a young freelancer; or doing opera ballet work, or performing in festivals. It was really incredible as a young musician.
And yeah, that lasted for a long time. Through that time you just, I guess eventually you want some kind of stability. You see your friends who you've grown up with, and who have also studied different things, and they're settling down with families and pets and houses, and suddenly touring and going around the world constantly is fun, but it's good to put some roots up somewhere.
So, I hung up the touring garb and joined the Melbourne Symphony, which I was very, very fortunate to do. A job came up. Actually, two jobs came up at the same time in the orchestra which is really quite rare in the same section because the Melbourne Symphony, for instance, I think our full section is 11 violas, which, when you think about the population of Victoria and Melbourne, it's a very, very small chance of getting a job in that orchestra.
But one of my close friends and I both auditioned on the same day along with many other people auditioning for these two jobs. We got those jobs on the same day, which was amazing for us.
But yeah, basically to get a job in an orchestra like that, it's a matter of waiting for someone to retire which can take decades and decades. And I was really fortunate to get the job, and I did.
It's still surreal. Freelancing is incredible; freelancing and doing a different thing every week. There's things about freelancing I love and still miss.
Back when I was just freelancing, I could prioritize and be like, I just want to do this for this week, or I just want to do this for this week and that freedom to do exactly what you want is amazing.
But, at the same time, the opportunity to perform with a organization like MSO and go to work and perform to thousands of people; I remember sometimes as a freelancer, there's good days. There's bad days. Sometimes as a freelancer, I'd be in the middle of a country town who'd never seen a viola before, and I'll be performing for 8 people in a room.
And with a kind of a full-time job like MSO, you know you're going to have an audience, and people are going to love what you're doing. And yeah, there's there's definitely 2 sides to that kind of world. It's just like there's good and bad to everything.
But at the same time I still manage to fit in so much stuff around the orchestra. They're so supportive of us doing other work; lots of chamber music and lots of kind of festivals. If we can fit it around the MSO, they're so happy for us to do it and that's really important I think that we keep doing what we love as well as you know, our weekly concerts, the orchestra. I mean, I'd hate to give up chamber music, for instance.
It's something I did for so long. I'd be sad to ever give up completely. So yeah, things like this upcoming concert are really exciting to put back in the diary and think, "I've got that really exciting thing coming up." And yeah, something to look forward to.
—William Clark