The “Wild Beasts”, or Les Fauves, were a group of early 20th century artists who revolutionized painting with their intense, non-naturalistic colour and energetic brushstrokes. Led by Henri Matisse, the group shocked the 1905 Salon d’Automne with a radical, emotional style that prioritised vibrant individual expression over academic, realistic depiction. Their shared vision – their dream – of what they wanted to create powered history in a new direction.
In the turmoil of the present day, with so much uncertainty, financial stress and political upheaval, the need for “Wild Beasts” – the dreamers of today – has never felt more vital. Their search for a shared vision for the future is critical to the continuation of classical music.
Clucking chickens, giant spiders and hissing snakes (both the animal and the human kind) were the backdrop of my musical upbringing in Tasmania, Australia. Music was – and is – a visceral expulsion of my soul through sound; it was my voice when I didn’t have one. The notion of composers, of phrasing, of adhering to dynamics, were all secondary to me. I wanted, nay, needed to create something of my own, even if it, at times, contradicted what was written in the score. As you can imagine, this naive enthusiasm for creation was not taken well by many of the professors I encountered over the years.
I remember vividly as a teenager being harangued by an extremely prominent Australian jury member at a competition, in front of the entire audience, about my interpretation of Chopin. They told me “I should go to jail” for playing in such a self-indulgent manner. My first professor in London said I was “too creative”, framing it as a “problem”. After that, multiple teachers called me – in no uncertain terms – “crazy”, “uneducated”, and “too egotistical to put myself into the music”. “You are here in service of the composer, and that’s it. Nobody wants to hear you!”, is a phrase that still rings in my ears today. Thankfully, I have received equally passionate words of praise over the years, but always with a warning spliced on the end of them.
Recently, a prominent musician took me under his wing, and offered reassurance that “when a light is shone in a very dark place, people are sometimes afraid of it, because their minds can’t expand beyond the limits they are used to.” While flattering, it came with a warning: that I should be prepared to face a lot of push-back if I am uncompromising in my creativity.
Inspired by what seemed to me to be a perplexing musical world, I embarked on a PhD at London’s Royal College of Music (RCM) in 2024. My research is exploring the career trajectory of a concert pianist from the conservatoire ecosystem to the international concert circuit. It is a study on the systems and networks that underpin this career trajectory, with the aim that a greater and more accurate understanding of it will enable us to work together to build a more advanced, equitable infrastructure to bridge the gap between study and a performance career on the international stage. Having presented my research recently at an international conference, I know there is resounding consensus within academic circles about the issue at hand. Yet the performance sector has yet to catch up with science.
My supervisor at the RCM, George Waddell, did one of the most fascinating and pertinent doctoral studies I have encountered: “Time to Decide: A Study on Evaluative Decision Making in Music Performance.” The findings of his research present the sheer absurdity of a “subjective evaluation of a performance.” I would encourage everybody to read it. One of the key pieces of research underpinning his PhD is a study by Duerksen in 1972, in which Duerksen played two recordings of the same piece to a group of highly skilled musicians and teachers. Everybody reviewed both recordings differently, some claiming one was more out of pitch than the other, others firmly believing one to be more musical than the other. None of them picked up that the recordings were completely identical. The same recording played twice delivered vastly different assessments. Did we see vast changes to assessment in classical music due to such research? No.
To say this industry is a flawed one is an understatement. The presence of toxicity in the one-to-one teaching studio has resulted in numerous articles, books and studies being published. Authors like Blackstone (2019), Gaunt (2008), Kingsbury (1988), Leech-Wilkinson (2020), Latukefu and Pollard (2022), Perkins (2013), and Guillaumier, Lester and Salazar (2025) identify how the one-to-one teaching model can foster high levels of dependency, with students orienting their artistic decision-making around the approval of their teacher, rather than developing their own interpretive ideas. The literature identifies power structures that normalise physical and emotional abuse, and also highlights a persistent failure to prepare students for the autonomy, self-management and entrepreneurial demands of professional musical life — skills that the one-to-one model, by its very nature, does little to cultivate. The result is a graduate who may be technically accomplished, but who lacks artistic independence, and is unprepared for the realities of the profession that awaits them.
Competitions have just as much shaky ground to defend them. Winning provides visibility and a platform to leverage for more concerts and connections, but the financial privilege and connection-based systems that surrounds them is in need of serious reflection.
But despite this rather nihilistic landscape, I have cultivated and protected a deep sense of idealism that I have had since I was a child. To be artistic you need a vision that comes to you, and it comes to you in moments when you transcend the practical world around you. This ever-present desire to, as Van Gogh puts it in his letters to Theo, “look up at the sight of the stars and dream”. This ethos was my internal compass from the chickens on the island of Tasmania to the RCM in London, and it still guides me today, by reaffirming my deep belief that if we spread warmth, love, vision, creativity and passion into the world, we can melt cold hearts and change rigid minds.
I am blessed to have been selected as one of ten who apply every year to conduct research at the RCM, the number one conservatoire in the world according to the QS ratings. Nonetheless, I have been shocked to my core at a great many of my colleagues’ and friends’ blasé, and at times dismissive, responses to my desire to better the music industry through my research. From comments like “corruption happens everywhere, what do you expect?”, to one specific scene in which a prominent violinist shamed me in front of a table of peers by exclaiming, “you really think you’re going to change anything? It’s not possible. It’s stupid!” The same person later asked in a sneering tone, “but why would you do a PhD if you’re good enough to perform?” Turning to his friend, he revealed himself by muttering “I mean, I couldn’t write that many words anyway.” The cynicism and lack of vision by people I had greatly admired surprised me. Doesn’t everyone want to change the world for the better? Isn’t that a core value shared by the majority? It appears not. Not when self-interest enters the picture, at least. To look down on someone and dismiss a person’s belief that change is possible as “naive” is a truly depressing notion.
In my view, it is an undisputed fact that change must happen to the systems that are in place, as they are no longer working. Zenezen is a beacon of light in this direction, and while conservatoires are adding additional modules into their curriculum, and alternative agencies and organisations are sprouting up, more needs to be done. In the words of the current Director of the RCM, James Williams: “The responsibility for unlocking this potential lies squarely with both the conservatoires and the profession, and the need for greater partnership has never felt more urgent or more vital”.
With this article comes a plea to my fellow artists. Be outrageous, be colourful and strange, be uncompromising in your art and in your life. Now more than ever, we need the visionaries and the dreamers to lead the way through the turmoil that surrounds us. Only together, can we change this world for the better.
