“It’s amazing what Disney has done for culture and inventing new things. The whole animated world is because of Disney,” says Benjamin Northey, the conductor who’ll guide the orchestra through the pieces on Saturday night. “That combination of music and animation goes back to those first days when Mickey Mouse was brought to life on screen [in Steamboat Willie (1928)]. What we see in these new films, like Frozen, is the culmination of 75 years of people trying stuff out and getting better at it.”
It’s a Tuesday morning and the virtuoso is busy “slaving away studying” new scores while his wife, accomplished horn player Joanne Montesano, and kids are at the zoo. “It gave me a chance to do a bit of work, because it’s just mad with the end of the year coming up,” says Northey. “Basically I’m straight through to December [with a performance] every week, and I’ve got so many scores in front of me to learn. I’m a bit smashed to pieces, but that’s OK. That’s what I do.”
Northey has been conducting since 1999 after being infected with a passion for the art-form. He was completing his last year of a Music Performance degree at the University of Melbourne, as a classical saxophonist, when a mentor saw the ‘conductor spark’ within him.
“I hadn’t thought about it until a teacher [British-born Australian conductor John Hopkins] suggested that I study with him. He saw something in me that would work well for a career as a conductor,” says Northey, who finished his undergraduate with First Class Honours in Performance, then moved on to complete a Master of Music in conducting under Hopkins.
“When I started I didn’t really know how it would turn out, but that’s the same with everybody when they start something new or go in a different direction in their life. Sometimes you just have to jump in and see what happens and see what doors open and how things progress.”
For the Ballarat-born conductor, this tangent was auspicious. Northey studied intensively under the Sydney Australia Conductor Development Program in 2001 and when he completed his Masters in 2002, he was the highest-placed applicant to the prestigious Sibelius Academy Orchestral Conducting Course in Helsinki, Finland.
“I’m constantly inspired by all the different musical experiences I’ve had,” says Northey. “My time working has coincided with a period where orchestras have diversified their activities a lot more.” For instance, MSO has collaborated with KISS, Ben Folds and The Whitlams in the past few years. “They’re offering different kinds of concerts and performing music of different styles and genres, and that really suits me too because I’m a bit of a musical all-rounder.”
Now, back to Disney – what is Northey’s favourite character? “I love the Genie from Aladdin,” he says. “I think that’s hard to beat: Robin Williams at his most inspired. I feel like that’s a very difficult character to top because they just let him go crazy in the studio and then animated around his improvisations, so there was really no script. As such, he was just free-forming and going off on tangents and I really love the fact that they were able to do that.
“I suppose Elsa in Frozen has become a kind of great strong female character. That kind of feminine hero as someone who is really, really strong. Those are the two that stand out for me in the more recent animated films. There’s so many older films that aren’t represented in this concert; it’s just unbelievable how many movies [Disney has] actually made.”
BY AVRILLE BYLOK-COLLARD
