Chief Executive
Britten Sinfonia

David B

00:00:01 My name is David B, I’m the Chief Executive of Britten Sinfonia, and my role is a large role but it’s essentially running the business, because after all whilst this is an orchestra, it is a business. But it’s also looking after the artistic priorities of the orchestra, and planning artistic things into the future. So it’s a nice mixture of the artistic and the business side. That’s what I do.

00:00:26 I think I’m one f those people that didn’t really – at school at least – I didn’t know what I wanted to do. I think I was finding my feet in terms of what I was interested in, and it was a huge variety of things. Academically I knew that I loved History and English and Music, you know, I kind of played the piano, particularly badly, struggled though my grades. Was a bit of singer, as well. So there was that side that I did. But equally I was – I played tennis, that’s another thing I did outside, I played tennis and sport. So I think I was having fun really, and just doing things that interested me. There was no question that, you know – I was not, you know, going to win Wimbledon, I was not going to be a concert pianist, and my mediocre skills in terms of composition were not going to lead to a career along those lines.

00:01:19 Someone I greatly admired at my village school was my teacher. And so I remember thinking, actually I’d quite like to be a teacher. I could quite imagine teaching kind of junior school children, and I think as in life generally, you kind of come across these people who influence you, who you admire, and I think he was one of the kind of early inspirations, if you could put it like that.

00:01:42 I read History at University, but got very involved in the music areas. I actually got a lot of pleasure at University from organising some concerts that happened, or a short concert tour that a choir may have done. So almost being at that stage the backroom boy, and thinking that was interesting, I quite enjoyed that. And then realising that of course that orchestras, arts companies, drama theatre companies, it didn’t happen by magic, they were organised by a group of people who made it work. And when it got to the state of thinking what I would do professionally, I was aware that in terms of the music management side, it was then dawning on me that that was a possible career option.

00:02:29 My parents were not pushy in any way, they would listen and offer advice, but in terms of the type of parents who would say, you know, we’d really love you to be a lawyer and earn lots of money, or we’d love you to be a kind of you know whatever, they were never at all pushy like that. It was very much left to my own devices. Which was great, it gave me real freedom. Influences certainly during A level time, there were two particular ones. One was my music teacher Joyce Backhouse was a huge influence on me. And the second was my history teacher, Francis David. And so they were influential, both in the way they taught and their subjects, but also personally in terms of listening to what I might or might not do.

00:03:11 I personally have very little regrets in terms of the career path that I’ve taken. They’d be – ’cause in a way it’s been straightforward, in that there’s been three key jobs for me. Working at the Academy of St Martin in the Fields; running a theatre – music theatre company, the National Youth Music Theatre; and then Britten Sinfonia, which I’ve been doing, believe it or not, for the past fifteen years. I never plan too far ahead. Even looking at me now, at the ripe old age of forty something, I’m not necessarily one of those people who is absolutely planning the career strategy. I’m just not one of those people. And I know many people who do, it’s kind of like well I’m taking this job on, I’m going to do it for three and a half years, and then I’m going to do that. I’m a little more fluid in terms of the way I look at things.

00:03:56 ENDS