When music comes FIRST

by ELIZABETH DELANEY

CHOOSING to pursue a career in music was not an easy decision for clarinetist Nick Harmsen.

The 23-year-old, originally from Tinderbox, who will perform his first concerto with the Tasmanian Symphony Orchestra in Stage III of the Young Performers Awards on Saturday night, says he had many passions and didn't really know which way to go.

``I was interested in molecular biology, geology and chemistry, I was interested in them all the way through school,'' he says. ``I'd have liked to have gone into sport as well.

``In the end, a lot of people said to me that with music you have to do it earlier.

``I have in mind that I can come back to the other things, that I can come back and do another degree.''

The only thing he feels he can't really come back to is high level sport.

However, he's managed to keep up long distance running, participating in half marathons and 10km races whenever he can.

``It's good for lung fitness,'' he says. ``It helps give me the feeling that I can go out there on stage and feel like I have the stamina, I know I can get through it and won't have trouble getting through the passages.''

The amount of running he gets to do depends on his schedule and varies as much as 20km to 100km each week, but he says it has been difficult of late with him having no fixed home.

Since finishing his bachelor of music with honours degree at the Canberra School of Music last year, Harmsen has been living out of a suitcase, following the work.

During his degree, he gained orchestral experience firstly with the Sydney Sinfonia and then with the Sydney Symphony Orchestra.

Once he made the casual list at the SSO, doors into other orchestras opened and last year he played with the Australian Opera and Ballet Orchestra, the Australian Chamber Orchestra, and in OzOpera's production of La boheme.

He's just auditioned for the Adelaide and Melbourne symphony orchestras and hopes he will be settled into an orchestral position by next year.

Then he would like to spend some time focusing on that, undertaking the occasional solo and some chamber music.

The clarinet was not Harmsen's first choice of instrument -- he was attracted to the saxophone.

``I was told I was too small, I should start on clarinet then move on,'' he says.

He had already ``mucked around with an old cornet that was in the house'' as well as ``tinkered on the piano'' and had developed an interest in singing, performing Oliver Twist in an Albuera St Primary School production.

Sadly, he says, while he had a fine boy soprano voice, he didn't like his voice when it broke.

Harmsen says he often found the clarinet an ``awful, shrilly, disgusting thing'' and, while he regularly pondered changing instruments, he took to the clarinet and it held his interest.

Saturday's performance might be his first solo with the TSO, but he is familiar with the orchestra.

His father Frits is one of the orchestra's french horn players and two of his teachers, Chris Waller and Duncan Abercromby, are also orchestra members.

He says it will be ``nice'', like being among friends, especially since he's played in the TSO a number of times in the past year.

Harmsen says despite his father's own interest in music, he never pushed him.

``He didn't even play a lot of classical favourites at home, he was more likely to play folk tunes''.

He says his passion for classical music grew when he was at The Friends School. He remembers the first time music teacher Peter Davies played the Disney version of The Sorcerer's Apprentice: ``It was the first thing that was classical that I thought was fantastic. Then he had us playing ambitious works for small orchestra; he instilled a love of music in me.''

Harmsen will perform Copland's Clarinet Concerto in the Young Performers Award Stage III on Saturday night.

The other finalists are Shefall Pryor, from New South Wales, performing Martinu's Oboe Concerto, Queensland clarinetist Richard Haynes playing Rankine's Time and the Bell and Victorian flautist Christine Morris offering Foss's Renaissance Concerto. The performances are in the Federation Concert Hall at 7pm. Bookings 1800 001 190.

NOT TO BE MISSED

Music: Debussy and Mozart works feature in today's Sunday Live concert with Tasmanian Symphony Orchestra players Dinah Woods (oboe), Genevieve Lang, (harp), Lucy Carrig and Christopher Nicholas (violin), Owen Davies (viola) and Stephen Martin (double bass), Federation Concert Hall. Entry free, 2.45pm.Next Sunday, catch Maria Lurighi, Sumi Fleming and Barry Hall with the Hobart Orpheus Choir performing classical works and a selection of Negro Spirituals, Salvation Army Citadel, 180 Elizabeth St, 2pm. Details 6243 7457 or 6223 1483.

Article from The Sunday Tasmanian
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