Jocelyn Lightfoot recently took the helm of the London Chamber Orchestra, the UK’s oldest chamber orchestra. We spoke about her route into management, plans for the orchestra's 100th anniversary season, and her commitment to equality, inclusivity and diversity within the orchestra.

Classical Post: Congratulations on your new position with London Chamber Orchestra! What’s your background? I believe you are also a horn player?  

Jocelyn Lightfoot: Thank you so much! I’ve spent time recently, thinking about how my life has completely transformed over the last 4 years. As you say, my beginnings in the music industry were as a horn player. I followed a standard route starting with free brass lessons in my primary school. I then moved on to lessons with a more specialist horn teacher. It just so happened that the specialist horn teacher was Timothy Jackson (current principal of the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra).  He really ignited my love for music and my motivation to be a horn player. I then went to Chetham’s School of Music in Manchester. There I studied with Lizzie Davis and participated in the National Youth Orchestra. Then, a dream realised, I studied with Richard Watkins and Michael Thompson at the Royal Academy of Music. I had listened to tapes of them when I was a tiny sprog and all I wanted was to learn how to play like them.

 On leaving RAM in 2007 I was fortunate to have opportunities working in different settings. I performed for the first time as principal Horn of the Wexford Opera Festival Orchestra and did a few film sessions in London. In 2010 I went out to Norway to do a year-long contract as Solo Horn in the Stavanger Symphony Orchestra. That was where my interest in people and performance management started. It was my first experience of managing a horn section and working with them to maximise our group potential. I loved it and have some wonderful friends from that time.

 From then on I enjoyed a freelance career back home until I decided to break away from playing. This enabled me to study and gain experience working in other industries. The plan was to come back to music management a few years later to apply my experience to the classical music setting. The opportunity came a little sooner than expected but I couldn’t turn it down!

CP: Martin Childs remains the owner of the LCO. Will you be working together going forward? Do your visions align?

JL: Martin and I met in August 2019. We had a conversation about me doing some work for him on two projects, Three Worlds Records and the Guild of Hornplayers. It became clear after roughly 30 seconds that we felt the same way about how we wanted to influence the music industry. We are both passionate about promoting classical music in-line with wider society. We talk about what classical music would be like if it was conceived today. How would we interact with the public and get people involved?

Martin is an astonishingly good amateur horn player himself. His journey which led him to this point started with getting back into playing. He'd had a break but started having lessons with Anthony Halstead and playing in local groups. He then spent 15 years cultivating concerts and commissioning new works for horn ensemble. Gradually, he started getting more and more professional horn players involved and launched Three Worlds Records. This was to enable recordings of the projects to be released to the public. 

The London Chamber Orchestra was a natural progression as the projects started becoming more orchestral. The only hiccup being that he officially began his involvement with LCO in December 2019 and I started mine in March 2020, just in time for the start of the Pandemic!

Martin has a very successful business in manufacturing structures mainly for waterways and it keeps him pretty busy. We are in contact most days to chat through strategy and thoughts about the music projects we run together. I am, however, very accepting that when it is a choice between preventing a city flooding or ensuring the safety surrounding a 30 tonne crane, we take second place!

CP: On the opening night of the new season, it was announced that the orchestra has removed its dress code entirely. Do you plan to keep some light guidelines on how formal an occasion might be? Or will there be complete freedom for musicians to dress as they deem appropriate for each event?  

JL: We spent months discussing within the team how to approach it! When the standard orchestra was established in the 18th century they would perform in peoples' houses. The all male performers would dress as servants but since then the way we perform has evolved in many ways, not least by including other genders. Dress code was established at a point in history and, in my opinion, is not an integral part of what music is today.

Formality is an interesting one. I am very aware that we all look at life through our own lens. My idea of ‘formal’ is different to someone else’s based on my experience, culture, identity and taste. There is a theory that musicians should all look uniform so as to not ‘distract’ the audience from the music. This creates an anonymity within the orchestra and means that the musicians on stage all look like they identify the same way. It removes all individuality and cultural variety which is the exact opposite of what we want to promote in the London Chamber Orchestra.

In the end, the only solution to be completely inclusive and equal was to remove the dress code entirely.

CP: Do you see this changing the general morale of the orchestra, perhaps bringing the members closer?

JL: During the rehearsals for the first concert of the season there was a particular excitement about the concept. A few people still wanted us to clarify what we were expecting them to wear. It is so unusual for musicians to be given no instruction! 

One of our biggest priorities is to create a culture of trust and respect throughout LCO and the dress code is only a small part of that. Our tradition is to capture the individual brilliance and collective energy of these wonderful musicians. We want every person on stage and in the audience to feel comfortable being their authentic selves and to experience the music mutually.

Will this bring them closer? Acceptance, respect, inclusion, authenticity, mutuality. These are all things that help humans connect.

CP: You are also encouraging audience members to feel equally free to dress as they wish. How do you plan to get this message across to them? 

JL: Christopher Warren-Green, our Music Director and Principal Conductor, is passionate about helping the audience feel welcome in the concert hall. He always says to me, “But Jossy, this might be their first experience of a classical music concert. We want them to come back!”. A few people have asked me, “What if someone in the orchestra turns up in tracksuit bottoms and a t-shirt?”. I reply “Then the audience member in the fourth row wearing tracksuit bottoms and a t-shirt will feel welcome!”.

We’re prioritising acting on our principles and showing the world we are serious about them. How are inclusivity, equality and diversity the fundamentals of our organisation if they're not the foundation of everything we do? Our marketing, social media platforms and online content will be full of images and videos of us promoting those three pillars of our culture. It will show the public that they belong here, in the concert hall, experiencing music with us.

CP: Do you imagine other orchestras will follow your lead? How have the players responded? 

JL: On the whole the players have been very happy. There is an amazing feeling in LCO which, in my experience, is unique. I was lucky enough to play with LCO quite early on in my career. Christopher’s conducting style of energy, trust and freedom is utterly addictive and is at the core of all LCO performances. It is unusual for any orchestral musician to feel like they can be completely themselves on stage. So far, many musicians have told me they feel we are valuing them as an individual and they are relieved to be fully expressing themselves.

The move is so much based on the LCO principles that I wouldn't like to guess if anyone else will follow. All orchestras have to make decisions based on their brand. I respect that.

CP: You are also relaunching LCO New, the scheme for new composers of all ages. What are your hopes for this scheme?  

JL: LCO New is such a brilliant project! I was so happy when I discovered it had happened 10 years ago. I was listening to Graham Fitkin and Christopher Warren-Green discuss Graham’s time as Composer in Residence. They started talking about it and I thought, we have to do this again with Freya Waley-Cohen who is our 21/22 Composer in Residence!

The scheme comprises numerous workshops with Freya, individual musicians, then the full orchestra.

Fundamentally, we are working to make the scheme as accessible and inclusive as possible. We want to reach areas of society who wouldn’t normally feel something like this would be available for them. Hattie Rayfield-Williams, who runs all our outreach programmes, is working to ensure there are no barriers preventing promising composers applying for the scheme.

To work closely with such an inspiring composer as Freya and to try out compositional ideas with musicians is a unique opportunity. All the successful applicants will have the fruits of their labour performed by LCO in the opening concert of the 22/23 season. Essentially, once they are on the scheme there is no further selection and then no risk of failure. Again, trust and confidence will help them to be free to fully maximise the impact of the opportunity.

CP: Freya Waley-Cohen has been announced as Composer in Residence for the season. Are you excited to be working with her, and what are your hopes for the collaboration? 

JL: I couldn’t have wished for a better person to be taking on this title. Freya’s music is a perfect balance of expressiveness, beauty and imagination. We performed ‘Saffron’  in the opening concert of our season and it went down so well with the audience. 

A huge priority for LCO is to nurture relationships with collaborators and so the year will hopefully only be the start of our close friendship with Freya. By the end of the season we will have performed two of Freya’s compositions and two world premieres written for the orchestra. That combined with Freya leading LCO New I am looking forward to a super fruitful year and an unusually intimate relationship between the orchestra and a living composer’s music.

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