Star conductor Jessica Gethin on playing Carnegie Hall with Harry Connick Jr, leadership and living in Perth

Ten years ago, Jessica Gethin found herself at a loose end in New York City. On a whim, the Perth conductor picked up some last-minute tickets to see a concert at the famous Carnegie Hall in Midtown. She ended up high in the nosebleed section, knees sandwiched against the seat in front, so close to the back wall her head knocked against it. This weekend, Gethin will see that hallowed stage from a very different angle, as she performs with acclaimed composer and musician Harry Connick Jr, who handpicked her to conduct his new orchestral piece, written to honour his late mother, Anita. Anita, who died when her son was 13, had always dreamed that her boy would one day play Carnegie Hall. Now a Grammy and Emmy-winning artist, who has sold more than 30 million albums, Connick secured the venue seven years ago for a show that would fall on what would have been his mother’s 100th birthday. The American musician spends a lot of time in Australia, and last year asked Orchestra Victoria, and its artistic adviser Gethin, to record the piece for a documentary. Afterwards, he pulled her into a hug. “He said something like, ‘I don’t think I can do that without you. You have to be there with me. We have to do this together’,” remembers Gethin, who first met Connick 15 years ago. “And so that started this journey.” Connick is adamant he won’t set foot inside Carnegie Hall until he sits at his piano on the night of the performance, to preserve the raw emotion of the moment. Gethin, on the other hand, flew in with the orchestra this week to rehearse, testing the acoustics of the space, recalibrating to the conditions, and reading through the notes she has made in the margins of the score, from the book Connick wrote to accompany the music. The world-renowned conductor — who was born in Perth and still lives here, despite her jetsetting career — laughs a little when she thinks about how far she’s come in those 10 years since she first walked into the New York landmark. She doesn’t get nervous, exactly, but there is anticipation for this moment. “In one sense, I’m so focused, wherever I am, whoever I’m working with, that it shouldn’t matter,” Gethin explains. “And so in some ways, (playing Carnegie Hall) is no different to anything else . . . My own body knows its ritual, its way of emptying my head so I can just really be in the present. “But there certainly is an air of something special. I mean, this is a stage that Tchaikovsky conducted on. This is a stage where all the greats, past and present, especially from a conductor point of view, have worked. There’s been only a few Australian women ever in history to conduct on that stage. So to be part of that is certainly something that I will be holding as special.” Gethin, also principal conductor at WA Ballet and head of orchestral studies and conducting at the Western Australian Academy for Performing Arts, is thrilled by a challenge — and Connick’s composition is certainly that. The free-movement, 50-minute classical symphony, which will also feature a 15-piece big band, follows his interpretation of Anita’s life, from her childhood in New York, to meeting his father, their life in Morocco and then to New Orleans, where Harry was born. It conjures his memory from sound, using everything from rhythmic time signatures woven throughout to percussion that represents the distant echoes of arriving in north Africa. To help him weave this unique, emotional piece, Connick knew who he needed. “I usually don’t think of artists in terms of ticking boxes, but I need to make an exception in Jessica’s case,” he tells STM. “She possesses immaculate musicianship. She is a powerful and diplomatic leader. I find her deeply soulful, transforming written notes into deeply personal art. And most importantly to me, she’s a woman, giving my mother’s story shape and perspective as only a brilliant woman can.” In her long career, Gethin has conducted everything from Swan Lake and Beethoven to Star Wars and David Bowie, but never anything quite like this. The rapport between she and Connick deepened as he poured out his hopes for this most heartfelt of pieces. “He and I have spoken a lot about it; his mum was such an incredibly strong and capable woman, and he is so proud of his three daughters and his wife. So working with someone who also is a mother and is a daughter, he’s found a certain comfort, I think,” she says. “That trust and musical foundation is there, so that we can leave a little bit of spontaneity . . . to bring a little bit of magic on the night.” Knowing when to take charge and when to yield is just one of the complex layers of conducting that keeps Gethin enamoured with her art form after all these years. The creative powerhouse has been featured on the cover of STM twice, in 2013 and 2018, as she became known for her vibrant, energetic style, for championing women and for a Pete Townshend-style jump at a Perth Symphony Orchestra gig, wearing Converse no less. But you can only break the mould if you’re the best, and Gethin has spent her life in pursuit of musical excellence. Now in leadership roles across the country, she also finds herself taking a wider view. “You’re seeing things from the other side, and you’re really having to look at long-term vision, you’re having to be involved in the sustainability of a company, and make decisions that sometimes the musicians won’t like,” she says. “I don’t think it has changed how I work, but it has certainly given me a more holistic, global view . . . I think it’s been a real period of growth, because you have to be comfortable saying no or thinking outside the box or taking risks.” Gethin has been involved in plenty of the latter, including years as the founding conductor of the Perth Symphony Orchestra, established by musician and entrepreneur Bourby Webster to make orchestral music more accessible. Its Reimagined series has featured music from Taylor Swift to INXS. Gethin argues that art forms including live music, ballet and opera have never been more important than in this age of online connection, but human disconnection. “As artists, while sometimes technology can replicate it, it is in the way that we do (art), in its flaws and its non-perfection, that actually causes the true response from people,” she says. “I don’t think that there’s a problem with the content. Sometimes we just need to make it more accessible and affordable and relevant . . . I always say to people that it’s OK if you go to the opera and you don’t like it. That doesn’t mean you don’t like opera; it just means that that particular story didn’t resonate with you. But you’ll take something from it, whether it was the mastery of the sets, or the incredible costumes, or just the fact that you didn’t look at your phone for two hours. “And it’s really important that the people producing and funding the arts recognise that there is massive impact for what we can do across societies. That shouldn’t be just for people who can afford to buy season tickets.” Last year, Gethin took her teenaged son Finn and his friends to see Alice Topp’s contemporary ballet Butterfly Effect. It was “magic to see them experience it for the first time”. “They could relate to the story. They were fascinated by the athleticism of the dancers, and the fact that they could understand a story without words or libretto, just through movement,” she remembers. “They were completely moved by the emotional content. They were fascinated by the way that the score fit in the dances and the staging and the props . . . “It’s the little things like that that really keep us motivated, because you remember that people are seeing this for the first time, and just how impactful that can be.” Gethin’s family is the centre of her world: Finn is in Year 12, and her daughter Olivia, Year 8. She has been married to Patrick, who works in port development, for 22 years. Her childhood was also spent in Perth, in a musical family with three sisters, her father Ray Walker, a well-known guitarist, and mother Teresa, a choral singer. “Everyone has always asked me, have I considered moving because most of my work is outside of Perth? And I’ve seriously never, ever considered leaving,” Gethin says. “I love Perth. I love our State. I feel so lucky to live here, I feel quite protective of it. I’m the biggest ambassador whenever I travel . . . “I think we have incredible artists and companies here and as a conductor, you need to be able to travel anyway. I’ve never questioned it.” Although they joke about Gethin’s “FIFO” job, the whole family gets a say when she is considering a project. “(The kids) have had some really wonderful travel opportunities because of it but it also costs them, because I’m not there for every school pick-up,” she says. “The unit, the four of us, has been incredibly important . . . “I fly in and we go straight out to dinner now that they’re a bit older. We are all so present when we are together. And I cherish that . . . We still talk four times a day.” Her role model status also extends to her students at WAAPA, where she sees her job as not only teaching technical skills, but also embodying the realities of a job in the performing arts. “My responsibility is to bring in all of my experience, which means the good and the negative, and what has shaped my career, into the classroom,” she says. “The reality of our industry is that sometimes you need to wear many hats. You need to be a fully developed musician. Sometimes you need to also be able to promote yourself and you need to travel, to do lots of different auditions, you need to be extremely resilient. It’s important for the students to see the full picture.” Underpinning it all is Gethin’s formidable energy and intellect. It gives her the stamina to meet all the challenges of her vocation — mastering the intricacy of the music, melding disparate elements, interpreting and channelling each part’s intention, its colour, its weight — but the challenge, in turn, sustains her. “When you distil it down, it’s the sheer complexity and nuance and variety that is needed for me to do my job,” she says. “Forget about audiences and ticket sales and promotion and marketing; what I actually do to bring music together is such a challenge every single day that it keeps me inspired and engaged and going.”