When eight year old James Eccles started violin lessons, a career as a musician was the last thing on his mind.
As the youngest in an “arts-inclined” household, he grew up with music as part of the fabric of family life, encompassing everything from his parents’ love of music and theatre, his dad’s extensive record collection and singalong holiday road trips in the family car. But it was hearing the Star Wars soundtrack with his elder brother one Saturday morning that James credits with awakening him to the “awesome power of an orchestra” for the very first time.
Soon after that, James saw the film Amadeus and was again captivated by the figure of Mozart, “particularly the young boy-genius”. The words “Mozart tape” started appearing on birthday and Christmas wish-lists, and his parents finally obliged with a double cassette of the Amadeus soundtrack, notably recorded by the orchestra of St Martin in the Fields. James was hooked, and even if he didn’t know it then, vocational guidance was rendered redundant.
Like many professional musicians, James was blessed throughout his school years with a progression of inspiring and influential instrumental and classroom music teachers, many of whom still occupy a respected place in his memory. One of his early tutors, Loretta Finn, still rates a mention for teaching him “to subdivide rhythms in my head when I was nine”, a skill that proved essential in tackling “fiendishly difficult modern music” in years to come.
At thirteen, James made the transition from violin to viola. Call it supply and demand, but with a surfeit of budding violinists vying for positions, a viola player was almost guaranteed a spot in school and youth orchestras, so James made a strategic switch.
The experience of playing “some great orchestral repertoire” with renowned conductor Henryk Pisarek in the Sydney Youth Orchestra (SYO) also helped to shape James’ future. He regards playing “lots of great Russian music” such as Tchaikovsky, Prokofiev, Stravinsky, and Shostakovich as an important early experience, as was playing Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony in the school orchestra:
“I still remember catching the train home after rehearsing Beethoven’s Fifth, with an ear worm from the slow movement and the emotions of the music coursing through me.”
As a child of the 1980s, the golden age of Countdown in Australia, James was also “pretty obsessed” with pop music and says his brother was a big influence. “He was older and cooler than me… when his musical tastes changed, mine usually followed shortly after, and he introduced me to a lot of different musical genres.”
Drifting inevitably towards music as a career, although still unsure of his direction, James recalls his audition in year 12 for the Sydney Conservatorium as “the clinching moment”, not because it went well, but rather for its mediocrity. “As is often the case, you get the most clarity about the things you want in life, when you realise how it would feel miss out on them. As soon as I walked out of that audition, I knew that music was what I wanted to do.” Happily, he was accepted in the second round of offers, and his future was set.
An Australian Youth Orchestra tour to Europe halfway through first year turned out to be another watershed moment… “an incredible and euphoric experience for a kid who never imagined they’d be good enough to make it into something like AYO." Highlights included performing at the Concertgebouw and the Proms, experiences that only increased James’ desire to be a musician.
It was during that tour in his first year at the Conservatorium that James fell in with the “new-music crowd” and a whole new scene that felt “a little rebellious”, embracing music that was outside the mainstream. Thanks to this new enthusiasm and skill set, he became one of the founding performers in Matthew Shlomowitz and Damien Ricketson’s Ensemble Offspring, which brought opportunities to play “some fantastic repertoire and do some relatively high profile things along the way” such as Sydney Spring Festival of New Music, Brisbane Festival, New Music Tasmania, Sydney Festival and Next Wave Festival in Melbourne, along with live ABC broadcasts, and an ABC Classics CD release.
Despite these new-music successes, a poor exam result back in the world of mainstream viola resulted in James being dropped by his teacher Deborah Lander. Looking back, he says it was the “kick up the pants” he needed to knuckle down hard. Six months with violin teacher Professor Peter Zhang followed, instilling “a good solid instrumental fitness regime”. He then went to Esther van Stralen, citing his time with her as the period when he improved the most and worked the hardest, despite her “curiously hands-off” approach to teaching. During this time he made a rule that whatever he played, regardless of whether it was solo, chamber or orchestral repertoire, he would try to practise it up to the highest possible standard he could, rather than overly weighting his practice time in favour of solo repertoire.
With increasing experience now under his belt, James travelled south to participate in a series of short courses with the newly established ANAM, a move that led to performances over the next couple of years with New Music Tasmania, a chamber music program and new music courses with The Next Wave and Brisbane Festivals. He remembers them all as “amazing, challenging, fun and great learning experiences."
With the benefit of hindsight, James observes that tertiary students are often blessed with opportunities to tackle music that’s rarely performed on the professional circuit, and in this regard, ANAM played an important role. When it became a full-time academy in 1999, he was accepted into the inaugural year’s cohort of students. He still feels incredibly lucky to have experienced “the facilities, the parade of eminent teachers that came through the door, the performance opportunities, and being surrounded by such a hard-working, interesting, and passionate bunch of fellow students."
Despite revelling in “all of these ideas… many of which have stayed with me and influenced me over the years…” James felt there was a gap between what he wanted to achieve on the viola, and what he was capable of producing, due to some technical issues he needed to address.
“I was probably being treated as if I was closer to ‘the finished product’ than I actually was. I knew that I still needed to have some more rigorous teaching with a longer-term approach.”
After a “fantastic year” at ANAM that would be hard to top, James was facing what was going to be his biggest challenge on viola: some long-term issues with tendinitis in his left hand, which meant he couldn’t execute certain finger patterns at fast speeds. Having worked around the problem with alternative fingerings and avoiding certain repertoire, he knew it was something he would be unable to hide over the long term as a professional, so a remedy was required.
One of the highlights of the ANAM year had been working with the Italian viola pedagogue, Bruno Giuranna, who had talked through his entire philosophy of teaching viola technique. James was “blown away” by his well thought-out and ordered system of technique and, wondering if Bruno might have the answers to his technical problems, packed his bags for Europe to find out.
Despite a year with Bruno and a Masters degree later, the problem persisted, so James took off again to find a solution. He spent the summer attending courses with different teachers, followed by nine months of intense lessons with a former violist from the Berlin Philharmonic with no relief, before deciding on a last ditch effort. He went to Krakow and commissioned a new viola from a Polish maker there. The viola would have a shorter than normal string length to make it easier for the left hand to stretch, and the neck would have a different ‘feel’ to his previous viola so his muscle memory wouldn’t be triggered in the usual way. Convinced that a part of the problem had become psychosomatic, he also took a complete break from performing, so he could concentrate on his technique. Back in Berlin, teaching English on the side to help make ends meet, James locked himself away and began the arduous work of retraining his left hand fingers, playing slow scales and finger exercises.
After a few months, a particular Sevcik exercise provided “a real eureka moment” but, determined to not get carried away, he persevered with his methodical approach, building slowly on this success and gradually increasing the metronome speeds. Finally it began to dawn on him that his fingers “were once again doing what they were previously able to do… the problem had gone. I had done it. I had re-wired my brain and retrained my fingers."
James doesn’t doubt that overcoming this issue has been the hardest part of his playing career. “Not only was it torturous to fix, but over this long period, I lost some of my joy and connection to music. I think I also felt somehow ashamed about the fact that I had had this technical problem. In the hyper-perfectionist world of classical music, one doesn’t readily admit one’s weaknesses as a player, and it’s easy to feel like a failure if you can’t ‘do it all’. So even after overcoming the problem, it was hard to shake the feeling of ‘not being good enough’, as I eased myself back into the classical world.”
Spending the next few years in Germany, James began playing amplified viola in a Berlin prog rock band on the side and I did a lot of classical freelancing. This delivered some great experiences, such as performing Beethoven’s Ninth on German Reunification Day. “It was amazing to be a part of this and really feel the importance of classical music in Germany, how embedded it is in the country’s culture, how people have absorbed its meanings, how they enjoy the cultural ritual of attending a live concert and really celebrate the human achievement aspect of a performance.”
Despite living in a country where classical music was so appreciated, James never felt completely at home in Germany, and in 2007 he returned home to Australia, where he began to regain “that connection and excitement” with music. Whether the catalyst was making make music with his fellow Aussies, or possibly being “a slightly bigger fish in a smaller pond”, James felt there were opportunities to make a difference and set about exploring his new musical horizons.
Those new horizons have been many and varied, encompassing a variety of musical genres from improvisation and jazz to sound installations and Historically Informed Performance (HIP). Along the way, James has also found time to take on the artistic directorship of the 2014 Aurora Festival of Living Music, record a number of studio albums, marry fellow musician and violinist Skye McIntosh, and become a father.
Like most of the arts community, the last pandemic has presented challenges that James never expected, and is unlikely to want to live through again. On the other hand however, while he looks forward to live concerts again, he feels the trend towards digital media is here to stay and expects it will be “very interesting to see where it all ends up.”
Asked what advice he might give to the current crop of ANAM students, James has some wisdom to impart, regardless of the restrictions imposed by global events: be patient; be disciplined, and be happy with micro-improvements; find a balance between pushing yourself and being kind to yourself; follow your own path and finally, repetition, repetition, repetition.
It’s advice that bears repeating.
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