Jukka-Pekka Saraste conducting

New Partnership with the Aurora Festival in Stockholm

LEAD! is excited to announce its first collaboration with the Aurora Festival, which will take place in Stockholm this summer.
In tandem with the Aurora Festival’s well-established training programme for young musicians, LEAD!’s mentor team will be hosting rehearsal-based workshops and masterclasses throughout the festival period, focusing on musical leadership, personal initiative and communication. The goal is to encourage students to develop and reveal their personality and to cultivate the confidence to best make use of it in an orchestral context. Our mentors will further build on these principles with special complementary masterclasses.

The rehearsal sessions will also offer a practical training opportunity for young conductors, allowing them to gain further insight into the complex internal dynamics of an orchestra.

The LEAD! team takes a holistic approach to preparing for a professional life in music and aims to help students to get to know their industry better at an early stage in their careers. For this purpose, the LEAD! team will also offer a series of discussion workshops dealing with topics relating to a musician’s life beyond music and performance. These targeted student support sessions will encompass many of the issues that a musician will face as a part of orchestral life as well as those related to preparing for life as a soloist and freelance musician. The themes covered will include managing relationships, negotiation, understanding an orchestra’s internal workings and external relationships, networking, politics, programming, understanding the role of agents, fee structures, handling contracts, as well as wider issues pertaining to the emotional and psychological life of an artist.

LEAD!’s work with the Aurora Festival will take place in Stockholm from August 18-26, with two public concerts on the 25th and 26th.