Julian West, oboist, researcher, and Head of Open Academy at the Royal Academy of Music, catches up with us to talk about his career and life as a musician bringing together performance, community engagement, and research into music and wellbeing.

What does your career currently look like?

I work full time at the Royal Academy of Music, as Head of Open Academy, which is our community and participation department. This means that I oversee the community and participatory work that happens at the Royal Academy of Music, and I teach and lecture undergraduate and postgraduate students who are taking elective modules in community and participation as part of our degree courses. I'm also a researcher: I’ve done and continue to do quite a bit of research thinking about the role that music and the arts - particularly creativity through the arts - can have for wellbeing, and specifically within that, wellbeing amongst people living with dementia.

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How did it all start for you?

My parents were not musicians, but they loved music, so there was lots of music going on at home. I’d get taken to concerts every now and then through school, but I got into playing through piano, originally. When I started secondary school, I knew I wanted to play a wind instrument, and there was an oboe that was around, so I started off on the oboe, and that became my first study instrument. So I learnt through the local authority and youth orchestras - all of that kind of thing. I then went to Birmingham Conservatoire for four years and did a postgraduate in Cologne, which was a really different experience to studying in the UK: all your lessons were open so anyone could come in and listen - it was very different from the model in the UK where your lessons were a private space with your teacher. It was actually really nice! You know, everyone has great lessons where everything goes really well, and everyone also has lessons where it all falls apart as well. It meant we all grew to understand and appreciate that everybody's in a process of learning.

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How did you go from being an oboe graduate to doing what you do now in research and community music? Was it a conscious decision?

No, it wasn’t a conscious decision! It definitely evolved from other work I was doing. I came back to the UK and worked as a freelance player: teaching oboe and piano and doing quite a lot of contemporary playing and working alongside composers. I was in an oboe trio called Pipers Three and we were on the Live Music Now scheme, doing lots of work in a huge range of different settings. That was probably my first experience of that kind of community based playing, and I loved it! There are probably two things that took me towards what I do now… Firstly, one of the composers I worked with, David Knotts, was then Musical Director of Glyndebourne Youth Opera, and he invited me to play oboe for an opera he had written for them. I remember thinking “This is great - I'm still really being who I am, as a musician, an artist and a player, but this is in a completely different context - working with these young people who are in it for a different reason.” From there I worked as musical lead on a primary-aged opera group at Glyndebourne. Secondly, I was invited by a friend to go and observe a session with an organisation called Music for Life, a music programme for people living with dementia and their friends, family and carers. The session was held at a care home and it blew my mind to see musicians improvising and creating music alongside the residents and staff - unlike the “performance” I had expected. The research came later: I was invited to be part of a research group, funded by Wellcome, and between 2016 and 2018 we were investigating what we can learn from people with dementia about the way that the arts support wellbeing, as well as finding out more about what it’s like to live with dementia. The research was almost like the missing piece, for me, as it helped me develop a clearer understanding of what my work is all about.

So how did your training as an oboist help you do what you do now?

I think the training helped hugely in terms of having the technical facility to be able to improvise and express what I want to express. You need a certain level of technique to be able to generate something expressive, so having that technical facility is really important. Artistic quality is something that really matters, and it does make a difference. All the ensemble training that I had helps me to work with other people: if you're improvising together, then you're drawing on your listening skills and musical understanding. I think I use that training all the time in ways that are not even conscious. I see that in the Royal Academy students that I work with as well: they have all of this knowledge that they’ve been building for years and years. Often they’ll come with me to these projects and think they don’t know what to do, but they do! If they trust their musical knowledge and instincts, they know what to do.

Did you ever consider doing anything else?

I had a moment where I was thinking about social work. In my teens I was particularly interested in working with disabled people, but then I trained as a musician. But now, working with disabled people is part of my life so maybe that interest resurfaced, and music is my way of working in that area instead.

What was the best piece of advice you ever received?

It was from my oboe teacher in Germany, Christian Schneider. In one of my lessons we were doing the Mozart concerto, because you have to do that for auditions. I played it to him and he said “You know, I know this piece really well. I'm not really interested in hearing this piece again, but I am interested in who you are.” And that was a complete game changer in what I thought playing the oboe was all about. I've never forgotten that… it's not exactly a piece of advice, but it was a moment that really shifted things for me.

What was the worst piece of advice you ever received?

I was part of a whole group of students and some guest speaker stood up and said, “None of you will be successful in a career in music, and you should give up and make some other plans.” That was not particularly helpful...

And probably not true either!

Obviously not true. I know of lots of people who I studied with who are making careers in music.

Including yourself!

I don't think anyone would do that these days. There’s much better understanding about what the breadth of a fulfilling music career can be.

If you were to give advice to somebody hoping to go into a career like yours in the future, what advice would you give?

Say yes to things that interest you, and don’t worry about whether that's going to detract from this kind of “ideal career.” You can have the playing that you want, and exploring other parts of yourself is not going to mean that you can't do the things that you want to do. There are ways to enrich your understanding of yourself and your musicianship. At least try things, and if it's not for you, then that's fine too. You don't have to want to do everything. You don't have to enjoy everything either, but at least try and see, and if it's not the right thing, then that's then that's fine too. We're not all brilliant at everything.

Find out more about Julian on his website

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