Jeremy Watt
Sub-Principal Double Bass, City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra; Director, Luminate Records
ANAM Alum (Double bass, 1998-2000)
In my final years of studying at the Queensland Conservatorium (1996-1999) I began looking at what further study might be available to me after my degree. I definitely couldn’t afford postgraduate study anywhere, so I began to look for opportunities that offered full scholarships to their participants.
As it happened, I was fortunate enough to be accepted onto two such schemes - the Pacific Music Festival in Japan, and the Australian National Academy of Music at the newly refurbished South Melbourne Town Hall. In many ways they offered very similar things – short, intensive periods of study for young musicians who were searching for intensive artistic experiences, guided and mentored by internationally acclaimed artists.
That year in the ANAM Sonata Course we were tutored on a variety of chamber music repertoire by Dean Olding and Vladimir Ashkenazy, and on Hindemith’s Sonata for Double Bass and Detlev Glanert’s Double Bass Quartet by Rudolf Watzel, at that time a revered member of the Berlin Philharmonic’s double bass section. Even though I was a French bow player (something Rudolf constantly and despairingly commented on during our lessons), I was hugely influenced by so much of what he covered in my lessons including basic sound production, creating long musical lines, and having the conviction to own your personal interpretation of a piece.
My co-participant on the double bass course that year was Matthew McDonald (double bass 1998), now the Principal Double Bass of the Berlin Philharmonic. I remember it being very clear, even from those early days, the direction Matthew’s career was headed. His musical maturity and technical ability on the instrument was something I’d never experienced anywhere before, let alone from a player my own age. It left such a deep, long-lasting impression on me, and looking back I realise how much I was influenced by all my fellow participants on those courses. It was an atmosphere of learning from each other as much as from the mentors. So many of my cohort from my ANAM days have gone on to achieve wonderful things in music, firmly establishing themselves nationally and internationally. 
ANAM Sonata Program musicians, January 1998. Photo credit: Brad Hick, Six 6 Photography.
In those early days of ANAM we were only offered short courses – a few weeks at most each time, but I remember thinking how wonderful it would be for it to develop into something more substantial. Something very much like what it is now. In truth, I’m quite envious of the wonderful opportunity that ANAM offers the aspiring young musicians of today. If the few weeks a year that I was involved could have as lasting an influence on me as it did, I can only imagine what spending much longer periods of time there could achieve in the development of a young artist.
Jeremy Watt headshot supplied