The future of classical music – Tahlia Petrosian

While Tahlia is very well known in the classical music world, fewer would know that she has a legal background having completed degrees in Arts and Law at the University of New South Wales and studied German Law and International Law at Humboldt University in Berlin. She completed her graduate year with Blake Dawson in the Sydney office in 2007.

Combining these dual music/law experiences and interests, Tahlia is reinventing the classical music space and even a global pandemic can't slow her down.

You have had an amazing career as a musician – what are some of your personal highlights?

I am a member of the Gewandhaus Orchestra in Germany which is one of the best orchestras in Germany and in the world. As a performer with that orchestra, I've had so many opportunities and enjoyed so many concerts. I have gone on tour, played in famous concert halls to sold-out audiences and played at the most prestigious festivals around the world. As an Australian playing at these major concert halls and festivals, in an orchestra that came into existence before Australia was even on many maps, means there are a lot of highlights and it's a particularly treasured experience.

From the creative producer side, I would have to say my major highlight was working as producer on Harrison Parrott's 50th anniversary celebration at the Southbank Centre in London in October 2019. The celebration involved a massive day of concerts with 21 major solo artists, 4 well known conductors, the Philharmonia Orchestra, 2000 invited guests, the general public and all of the media surrounding the day. It was a great day!

As well as playing with the Gewandhaus Orchestra and the work you do as a creative producer, you also founded KLASSIK Underground. Can you tell us more about this?

KLASSIK Underground is a concert series I started in 2016. The Gewandhaus Orchestra is extremely traditional and we don't really move out of the traditional conservative classical music vein. It just so happens, however, that our concert hall is located next door to an underground venue. It is a really cool space and historically and architecturally extremely interesting as it is the last remaining part of the old city walls of Leipzig. The venue is used for many different performances but had never been used, or thought of, as a venue for classical music concerts, so I enquired whether they might be interested in a collaboration of some kind. After this suggestion was positively received, I began approaching solo artists who were coming to perform with the Gewandhaus Orchestra to ask whether they might like to come next door after the formal concert to perform an "aftershow" in this venue. And so began KLASSIK Underground.

Part of what helped the series grow, and what encouraged high level solo artists to be involved, was our use of videos and social media. At the time, there was a real demand for these solo artists to show that they were doing interesting things and to create material for their social media channels. One aspect to the arrangement with the guest artists performing at KLASSIK Underground was that we would produce short video clips of their performances specifically for use on their social media channels. That became a big draw card for them and also got the name of the series out there.

The series was met with a lot of interest and curiosity and really took off – the shows sold out and it became well known worldwide.

In addition to these aftershows with guest solo artists, KLASSIK Underground also experiments with combining classical music with different art forms. For example, I started presenting shows bringing classical music and live street art together, or combining classical music with modern video installation – combinations that you wouldn't necessarily expect would go together. KLASSIK Underground started as an experiment which then became a way of rethinking new concert formats. The series was really the beginning of where I am now because other orchestras started asking me to develop new concert formats and to advise them on how to develop new projects.

I think these days people want access to really high quality classical music concerts which are not necessarily two hours long and not necessarily where they have to be stuck in their seats. The debate on how to make classical music more appealing to young people is one which has been going on for ages but I think that it's not even just young people anymore. Classical music needs to become more accessible for a 21st century audience whether that person is 80 or 8 because I think that the demands at both ends of the age spectrum have actually changed. We have become much more interested in having visual activity and stimuli, mainly due to technology and screens pervading many aspects of our lives. Perhaps many people might not be interested in going to a traditional orchestra concert because of a perceived lack of visual stimulus that this may entail. Our lives have changed so much and while I recognise and respect the tradition of the classical music concert, I think that there still needs to be greater experimentation and risk-taking with new concert formats.

Did you enjoy your time as a lawyer, or did you always feel that your future lay elsewhere?

I really enjoyed my time working as a lawyer and seeing what life as a lawyer in a big firm was like. I was always 50/50 law and music and in the end I chose music because the opportunity to live overseas and continue studying music was too great to pass up. At the same time, I was very sad to leave Blakes because I met a lot of very interesting people and I really did enjoy my time there.

I still see myself as a lawyer and have not ruled out perhaps returning to the law later on in life.

How did you find the time to keep your music up while studying law and working as a law graduate?

I had an advantage because I played the viola and not the violin. While there were hundreds of violinists, there were not many viola players and, as a result, there were many chamber ensembles in need of a viola player. So, while I was at law school, I was playing a lot of chamber music with people who were studying music degrees and I always found myself racing backwards and forwards from law school to chamber music rehearsals. That is how I kept playing while I was at law school. When I was at Blakes, I practised every evening when I got home.

(Image by Kiss & Tell Communications)

I learnt a great deal which has been very advantageous in my career. Especially recently, as I have moved into consulting and the role of creative producer, the impact of studying law and the opportunities that were granted to me by Blakes are becoming more and more apparent. While consulting has always existed in the business and legal world, in the arts world and especially in classical music, it is relatively new and a real area of growth. My experience as a lawyer is a big advantage to my work in this developing area. Obviously there are not many musicians who have had experience in the legal world!

Last year, along with performing with the Gewandhaus Orchestra in Germany and working in London, I consulted on a major project with a Norwegian arts organisation. The project involved setting up a whole programme of international partnerships with other arts organisations. That was actually a really interesting project for me as it was the first time I actually returned to business writing on a significant scale. The last time I did anything similar to this was while working at Blakes and I was so glad to have had some experience doing this.

Working in a highly professional office environment is, on its own, also a significant advantage. Having experience working in top tier law firms like Blakes and Ashurst is a big advantage no matter what you end up doing.

The global pandemic has had a massive impact on the entertainment industry – how has your life changed in the last year?

Before the pandemic hit, I had already organised to be in Sydney for a year starting in October 2019 but the current situation means that there has been a major change in the nature of the projects that I am working on. For example, I am currently working on a number of projects that will be presented in Germany in 2021 that explore new kinds of online concert formats, as well as live concert formats where the social distancing elements are built-in. At the moment, we are seeing a lot of concert halls where the audience is significantly reduced, there are many empty seats and everybody is 1.5 metres apart. This significantly impacts the atmosphere. I am working with theatres to look at how we can rethink our use of the concert space to create immersive experiences for the audience where we are observing the 1.5 metre distance rule but this does not necessarily disturb the atmosphere. In other words, instead of adapting the old set-ups and formats to the new rules I am actually taking these new rules and utilising them as the basis for creating something new.

As much as this is a crisis, it's also a big opportunity to rethink a lot of things. There are so many bridges that we've crossed in so many aspects of our lives that there is no going back even if there were to be a vaccine tomorrow.

I really don't know how COVID is going to impact my industry in the long term. There may well be a need to take more risks and to experiment more broadly in classical music, but at the moment many arts organisations are just looking at how they are going to survive.

What does the future hold of you – if we spoke again in a year, what would you like to have achieved?

COVID has basically accelerated things 25-30 years – the future is suddenly here. A very large and critical area now for arts and culture is going to be how to fully exploit the capabilities of the internet. The live event, of course, remains irreplaceable, but I think we have a way to go in exploring the potential of the internet as a forum for artistic performance, particularly seeing as both the medium itself and the manner in which it is utilised are constantly evolving. This is something I would like to examine further in the next year, in addition to continuing to explore collaborations bring classical music together with diverse art forms.

What is your favourite Ashurst/Blake Dawson memory

I really enjoyed my time at Blakes. I had a lovely cohort and we were a very diverse group. I also enjoyed doing the College of Law course at Blakes and of course the view from Level 36 of the old Sydney office in Grosvenor Place!

Visit Tahlia's website for videos of KLASSIK underground performances.