Violinist Benjamin Baker and the birth of a chamber music festival
Violinist Benjamin Baker
Photo credit: Kaupo Kikkas
Fairytales are part of childhood, but for Benjamin Baker, his own stories have had life-changing happy endings. He began playing the violin aged three, in spite of his mother’s attempts to get him to piano lessons. He thought his piano teacher was a witch, he says, and wanted to play “that guitar thing” he’d heard in a concert. Suzuki violin lessons began and his talent was evident at an early age.
One of his first violin heroes was Nigel Kennedy, whose disc of Vivaldi’s Four Seasons was often played in Baker’s parents’ living room. When the charismatic violinist came to New Zealand in 1997, the Auckland Philharmonia Orchestra brought him to play in Wellington’s Michael Fowler Centre. Baker’s father used his contacts to arrange a meeting between his young son and his idol.
“After Kennedy had played Elgar’s Violin Concerto,” Baker recalls now, “I went backstage with my violin case. I was playing Bach’s double violin concerto at the time, so when I met him, I started playing that and he naturally joined in, and we played the rest of the first movement together. I was seven – and it was the highlight of my life so far.”
Kennedy praised his playing – “oh, man, you’ve got fucking good rhythm!” – and recommended the Yehudi Menuhin School on the outskirts of London that had been his own training ground. A seed was sown, Baker applied and won a scholarship to the School, and well before his ninth birthday he and his whole family moved to the UK for the next stage of his training.
For his parents, their belief in and commitment to Baker’s talent has been more than vindicated. This month, he makes the journey back to New Zealand, as he has done several times in recent years, as an internationally acclaimed performer and as artistic director of this country’s newest chamber music festival, At the World’s Edge in Queenstown Lakes. His bond with New Zealand has remained strong. “I’ve always been aware that as a Kiwi I was so lucky to have the support to move to the UK. And it’s been a long-held dream of mine to be able to be in New Zealand every year and be part of the thriving musical life here.”
Baker, who’s now 33, can’t remember a time when he hasn’t had a violin in his life. After his years at the Menuhin School, where musical training is provided daily alongside academic studies, he entered the Royal College of Music in London. On graduation day, he was away on tour performing in Spain, and was puzzled to receive many congratulatory messages from London. He was honoured to discover that, completing his Masters degree, he’d been awarded the College’s top graduation prize, the Queen Elizabeth the Queen Mother Rose Bowl.
A string of international prizes and awards followed - 1st Prize at the Windsor International Competition in 2013, a prize-winner at the YCAT International Auditions in London, 1st Prize at the Young Concert Artists International Auditions in 2016 in New York, and 3rd Prize at the 2017 Michael Hill Competition in New Zealand. He was also a Fellow at the Ravinia Festival’s Steans Music Institute in Chicago in 2016 and 2017.
Alongside the awards have been many performances in chamber music and as a concerto soloist in the UK, the US and Europe. Sought after internationally, Baker has taken part in music festivals across Europe and the USA including East Neuk in Scotland, the renowned UK Cheltenham Festival, Steirisches Kammermusik in Austria, the Bridgehampton Chamber Music Festival with Anthony Marwood and Caramoor‘s ‘Rising Stars’ series with New York violinist Pamela Frank.
He names Frank, alongside Donald Weilerstein, former 1st violinist of the Cleveland Quartet, and Israeli Miriam Fried, as some of the very well-known and inspiring musicians responsible for his musical development since leaving the Royal College. “This third stage,” he says, “is perhaps the most important – finding people who can guide me to that most open-ended stage of becoming a musician, that sets you up to keep asking yourself the right questions for the rest of your life.”
He feels lucky that he found these musicians in the USA and some equally influential ones in Europe. “I played with Alexander Janiczek at East Neuk. He teaches at the Guildhall and is a unique violinist; working alongside him I’ve developed new possibilities for how I use my right arm. And cellist David Watkin, one of those polymath minds that enable to you draw out connections. These musicians have enabled me to see that wider array of possibilities in how we do what we do.”
The birth of the AWE Festival
Benjamin Baker and Justine Cormack
…an annual chamber music festival in an awe-inspiring landscape
It was through the Michael Hill Violin Competition that Baker met New Zealand violinist Justine Cormack in 2017. Cormack had reached a personal and professional watershed after 17 years as violinist with the NZ Trio and that year she played in the chamber music round with Competition finalists. The two enjoyed performing together and discovered in conversation a shared vision of a chamber music festival in the Queenstown Lakes area. A few years of dreaming, planning and organising followed and in 2021 the first At the World’s Edge Festival was launched in the middle of the COVID pandemic. [Read a profile of Cormack and a preview of AWE 2021 here.]
The third AWE Festival will be held in October this year. It’s a recent arrival on New Zealand’s chamber music calendar but already acknowledged as an artistic and organisational success. [AWE 2022 is reviewed here.]
Violinists Benjamin Baker and Justine Cormack
…celebrating the success of AWE 2022
Connecting New Zealand with international artists and audiences is part of the Festival’s vision. “We’ve done two events in London and two in New York City so far,” Baker tells me. “I’ve been performing in both Europe and the US for five or six years now so I’ve used my connections to encourage people to come to Queenstown Lakes for music and then explore New Zealand. And even though we’ve barely started sharing that message, there’s already some uptake this year.”
He's also keen to support New Zealand musicians and composers to make those international connections, building pathways and supportive communities on both sides of that “big leap”. “Making introductions, planting seeds, and making them grow as well as possible. And bringing international musicians to New Zealand so they can take our music back with them.”
AWE Festival 2023
Benjamin Baker
…using his international connections to provide opportunities for New Zealand artists
Photo credit: Kaupo Kikkas
International connections are also a programming theme for AWE 2023. “We’re exploring identity through chamber music, a theme close to my heart as a New Zealander who’s spent most of his life overseas. We’re focusing on the personal and cultural dimension of identity, through composers who loved their home or who were uncomfortable with it, and sought out others. We’ve programmed Samuel Barber, who was desperate to get away from the US to the new horizons of Europe, and York Bowen, a ‘good Brit’ who didn’t travel much. Then there’s Ligeti – it’s his centenary this year and we’re playing his incredible Horn Trio with fantastic UK horn player Ben Goldscheider, who’s a guest this year.” Baker is also excited about a string quartet by Chinese composer Tan Dun, Eight Colours. “He wrote this exquisite piece just after he moved to the US, and describes himself as swinging and swimming in different cultures.”
Baker is looking forward to performing himself in two much-loved chamber works in the final concerts, Smetana’s From my Life and Janáček’s Intimate Letters. “The role Czech music played in forming a national identity, a collective identity for those nations, is another pillar of our programme,” he explains. “It was a long process, through many geopolitical changes.”
From the beginning, AWE has been committed to including New Zealand composers in their programmes, including a composer-in-residence role. This year it’s Auckland composer Victoria Kelly, whose music will be threaded through the concerts, ending with the world premiere of her specially commissioned Horn Trio. Like Salina Fisher and Gareth Farr, resident composers in 2021 and 2022, she’ll offer talks about her music and play a key role in the event.
AWE composer-in-residence Victoria Kelly
Baker has played Kelly’s piano trio Sono, featured in the first concert at AWE 2023, in Europe and elsewhere and is very excited about her upcoming role. “I’ve loved Victoria Kelly and her music for such a long time - the way she writes music, the way she thinks and the person she is. She’s very thoughtful, exploring ideas so fully,” he says.
AWE also has a significant commitment to the development of young artists, including an Emerging Composer-in-residence role, this year filled by Georgina Palmer, who will be mentored by Fisher and whose Horn Trio will be premiered. As another part of AWE’s “mentoring pathway”, a group of three outstanding young musicians will join the Festival as Emerging Artists,. After the main Festival concerts are over, these rising stars, Lorna Zhang, violinist, Damon Herlihy-O’Brien, cellist and pianist Madeleine Xiao, will travel to schools in the Queenstown Lakes district for performances to 2,000-plus students.
Baker arrives in New Zealand soon and will perform for the first time in the Martinborough Music Festival in late September. “I’m really looking forward to connecting with and playing with that absolutely wonderful group,” he says. “And, of course, Martinborough has been such a wonderful success story as a new chamber music festival and an inspiration for me and Justine. Can’t wait to witness it firsthand.”
At the World’s Edge Festival, Queenstown Lakes, 7-20 October, 2023 More information and bookings here
Martinborough Music Festival, 22-24 September, 2023 More information and bookings here
You can read a review of Benjamin Baker’s most recent album, 1919 CODA, Janacek, Boulanger, Debussy and Elgar with pianist Daniel Lebhardt here