November Recap “The White Star:” Sitting Down with Bernard Kane

November was an exciting month from Allegro! From ExtraGive to our first concert at the Lancaster Art Vault, this month was full of things to be grateful for. As we enter the holiday season, we’re releasing this exclusive interview with composer and violist Bernard Kane to give a behind the scenes look at his journey and inspirations as an artist. 

Bernard Kane is a highly accomplished composer and violist, celebrated for music that is both "intensely moving, graphic, haunting" (The Wiltshire Gazette and Herald) and "timeless" (James Dean Bradfield). As a composer, his diverse body of work—including the tone poem Sargasso and commissions for the Dylan Thomas in Fitzrovia Festival—has been performed and broadcast internationally. A native of South Wales, he is academically distinguished, holding a doctorate and multiple scholarships from institutions including Yale University and the Royal College of Music, where he focused on the viola. Beyond his solo and ensemble work with The Kane Players, Bernard has performed alongside a wide array of renowned artists, such as Quincy Jones, Natalie Cole, and the Manic Street Preachers.

CB: So, the first question I really wanted to ask was, what inspired you to follow this journey, to become a composer and performer? Just give us a glimpse into what brought you here. Starting with an easy one. 

BK: An easy one. -chuckle- My family, I'm one of six children.. I'm number five, we all get on fantastic. 
My mum and dad provided the most amazing childhood growing up in the 80s in Wales. Every summer we'd go to St. Ives in Cornwall for our summer holidays. There were two big times of the year that we loved, and that was Christmas and Cornwall, St. Ives. It was always the last two weeks of August. 

It's a peninsula on a peninsula: in the British Isles you have Great Britain, and on the bottom, Cornwall sticks out, and then the Penwith peninsula sticks out of that peninsula. The light you get in the summertime, it's exquisite, and it has inspired many artists and painters’ work for years and in fact, a lot of writers as well: Virginia Wolf, Daphne du Maurier… (Virginia Wolf wrote “To the Lighthouse” inspired by Godrivi Lighthouse, which is across St. Ives Bay.) At times you go and you'd see it with the light shining, or the fog horn going off. It's so magical. 
There's stories of pirates and smugglers, the whole, everything about Cornwall is just magical. It's a Celtic part of Great Britain as well. It had its own language, Cornish, which was very similar to Welsh.. 
It's a Celtic language. It almost died up, but they're trying to bring it back. 

Anyway, we were staying in this house called Salubrious House. 
All the family were there, we had amazing views of the sea, the lighthouse, the Atlantic Ocean. My dad and my sisters noticed, “Oh, they’ve got Wagner here.” My dad was playing these records, and one was Ride of the Valkyries, which we all know and the flip side was The Flying Dutchman. He told me the story about the Flying Dutchman and how the legend was that the Dutchman’s ship was struck by lightning and all the crew were about to go down. The Dutchman curses God, and because he does so, there's a curse on the captain and the ship and the crew for the rest of eternity, that they're going to sail the seven seas as a ghost ship. 
But there's a caveat that every seven years they're allowed to dock and take on human guise, and if the captain, the Dutchman, finds someone who loves him enough to die for him, then that breaks the curse. Wagner fell so in love with this theme that he stopped whatever he was writing at the time to write The Flying Dutchman, one of his earlier operas. The overture has the Dutchman’s theme and all these other leitmotifs that describe the heroine, the hero, the sailors, and he throws them into this poetic sound of a storm at sea. 
It's the most amazing piece. 

I was obsessed. 
I was playing at 3 in the morning, blasting it, and my parents were thinking, “Oh, my goodness, what's that kid doing?” And I didn't look back. There was just something about listening to this music that you get to the climaxes and literally have tingles going through your soul… I was trying to search for more and more of that. I didn't know how I was going to do it, but eventually I joined a cathedral choir, St. David's Cathedral Choir, because my dad said they were looking for singers. With them, I started singing polyphonic masses of [William] Byrd and Palestrina and all the Latin stuff in this cathedral. I was with Wagner one minute, or Orlando Gibbons the next, or Jez Wilder, or whatever it was. I had this amazing sort of love of passion, and then we were playing in the school. They were handing out instruments when I was 11, and I started with violin. Then I had my dad, who, you know, biggest inspiration would take me to concerts. 
So the first concert I ever saw was with Martha Argerich, who's playing the Rachmaninoff Third Piano Concerto, with Seiji Ozawa, conducting in Cardiff.. The first opera saw was Barbara Seville. The second was the entire Ring Cycle. At the age of 13. 

CB: Oh, my goodness. 
So you really were locked in very early. 

BK: Locked in, but I remembered exactly the same idea. So all of a sudden the music I'd listened to on the record was then in the theater. 
So when you're with the long haul of trying to listen, the whole thing, because it is intense. But then when you get the peaks of it, and then you have the climax or the end of the whole thing itself, it's a journey that took him over 20 years to write. It’s absolutely amazing. But the most amazing thing was how all this transcribed to film music. 
All the films that my dad would make me watch, the golden age of Hollywood with Max Steiner, Corn Gold, and then later Jay Goldsmith, and then John Williams. So John Williams is basically the stuff that I was listening to at the time, but in a different form. 
Because of Star Wars in everything. Of course. So everything sort of, it made sense. 

CB: Everywhere that you looked in your life, there was music.

BK: It was there, my old dis siblings, they were into, like, Sex Pistols or Blondie or Madness or Brian Frey, rock music. 
So I had all that as well. And then my dad also loved Sinatra and he also loved Sarah Vaughan. There was constantly music, he had an amazing stereo system that was always a treat to listen to different things.. . 
And that was it, I knew somehow I was gonna be involved, but I didn't know in what way it would happen, but I wanted to be. 

CB: You had a powerful connection to music from a young age. Music has this incredible powerful ability to touch people, we know scientifically how listening to music can release dopamine, can cause those tingles and emotions. And it seems like it just seeped into you to the point where you couldn’t picture doing anything else. 

BK: It was a choice between that and the stage and theater, because I love drama as well, and theatre. I was in a theater company and when they switched orchestras, I got to another orchestra and they rehearsed on a Saturday, and the theatre group I was in, also was on a Saturday, so I had to make a choice between the two. Again, when I was really young, but I just, there was something about it. I knew – that idea of the dopamine levels – that I couldn't. 
It is funny because I remember hearing a performance of Sibelius’ 2nd Symphony when I was 16 and with that particular piece, the switch goes off, and you’re on another plane. And then you find out what Sellius was going through in his life, and other parts of it. But having that entire orchestra of young people feeling that same way... 

CB: Absolutely, playing in a group, feeling those emotions together is powerful, and when you perform, the power of the emotions you're feeling together transfer to the audience.

BK: Yes, it's transcendent. And it's funny how.. 
Like as a kid, again, the same ideas of singing in St. George's Chapel, Windsor we sang there as a choir. 
And I remember just being part of this instrument, which is a chapel, or Westminster Abbey, or any of these amazing spaces, or playing Messiah in Bath, which I'll be playing in a few weeks' time in Tewkesbury, when you get to the Hallelujah Chorus… 

CB: You feel it. 

BK: You feel it, and everyone stands as well. And it's something quite extraordinary. And often you forget when you're on stage and you're stressing out about everything, that everybody wants you to be part of that. And it's such an amazing thing because it's such a hard industry. Constant obstacles against you, I'm still trying to find what I'm doing, but I'm still doing it. Whatever it is, it's a magical thing. 
And I'm glad. I've never had any regrets about doing it, which is, I think, a very lucky thing, and it's lucky that I've been exposed to so much. And certainly having a parents and the family that supported you with it as well. 

CB: That’s wonderful to hear. With all these influences that you've had, and the way you were so open to receiving all different kinds of music, noticing it and seeking it out, not to mention your formal music education, when you're writing for various genres, if it's for a rock band or for a film, or an orchestra, how do you approach those different projects? 

BK: Absolutely. 
Because if you're writing a string arrangement for a band, that could be a whole storm and its ego, because there's so many different ways they'll do it as well. 
Sometimes you might map something out onto Sibelius and send them a file, which they can add to, then you might go into the studio, and they say “Actually I wanted to do this,” and then they'll sing out something and you're there trying to scribble away. Then you've got the time ticking by in the studio, and you've got to get it right. That's the stress in itself. Most of the time with the band, they’ll say, “It's amazing because you've added strings to the song.” 
They're the most appreciative, wonderful people. And it's such a buzz playing with a band on stage in front of thousands of people… 50,000 people have played with Ricky Martin. In Miami years and years ago. And seeing that undulation of people, going crazy because you're part of that. 
You're not him in the gold lamé trousers – which, he was amazing. And it was such a buzz to do. It was fantastic. So there's that way. 

With the film, it's different. 
The short film. Because you're a servant to the director. 
So, you've got to leave your ego, your ideas at the door because you're going to have a lot of different ways of thinking. I've done a few independent films and it's been so much fun doing that because when you have a blank scene and there's no – if they give you temp music, they say, “we want it to be a bit like this,” then you're married to that, which is fine and then you do something along that pastiche – But if it's like a little love scene or something or a tragic, there's so much you can pick from, that's the beauty of film, music, or how the film can change with whatever you do. So that's been a lot of fun. 
I mean, I really wanted to go and study that because of the narrative or what we've been chatting about earlier, like everything is story and tales and and rhythm, all that sort of stuff. And I always wanted to be part of that. So moving to LA was something I'd always wanted to do, and almost an homage to my dad because he loved all that stuff. 
Like the fact that I lived between where Olson Wells lived and died, and where Betty Davis lived and where, like JLo bought her place, and Carrie Grant used to come into the place I lived now. Proper Old Hollywood. 
And you're walking around and Mam Cass lived up the road, and Jim Morrison was there, and like all these other physical places..There's definitely an energy. There's all that sort of very good vibrations, very California. 

CB: Sounds like it. 


BK: It's very, you know, sound bowls, sage and palo santo, all that.. Just wafting through and the hummingbirds and other little creatures. We see coyotes running around. I mean, this is in America's second city. You know, it's remarkable, seeing lizards running around, geckos. I got the little hummingbird feeders and they're so amazing. 
And we'll see vultures flying around. I'm not sure if I’ve spotted any eagles, I'm sure I have. But red tailed hawks, Cooper's hawks. I used to be a falconer when I was little. I trained goshawks when I was about 15 with a friend of mine who bread them – Oh, that's 
a whole other story of, “okay, he's in the geek room for sure.”

CB: Not at all! You have this wealth of experiences, going to all these places to perform with all these different sorts of people. You seem to be a person who lives very mindfully. And I can only imagine how influential that's been. 

Now, could you discuss your process for when you composed Seren Wen? And what can the audience expect from this premier of your rendition for viola?

BK: 
Yes, yes. I was commissioned to write a piece about Roald Dahl – that whole experience was amazing because I ended up meeting his biographer who was friends with him, and I'm still friends with Donald Sturrick. Again, you find that connection with a real person. 
And I mean, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory was my first book I read. – So I wrote this overture which the Royal Philharmonic played. After the performance I was having a drink with the brass players, and then to David Childs, a euphonium player, I said, “I should write you a concerto.” 

A few weeks later, he phoned up and said, "I need a piece that the Welsh Symphonic Wind Orchestra can play for a concert at Carnegie Hall, could you write something about 10 minutes long?” 
I'm like, “Carnie Hall? Well, of course.” So then, I was thinking, “What can I do to connect the two?" 
And then my friend, Mylène, who I adore – she's married to James Dean Bradfield, the Manic Street Preachers’ lead singer. So there's that big Welsh rock connection. She always has these amazing ideas. 
And I asked, “What connects Wales with New York, for instance?” And she said, “Well, there's that story of Artie Moore.” Artie Moore was a radio enthusiast, and Morse Code was a new thing at the time. When Titanic struck the iceberg on the 14th of April, 1912, he [Moore] received their SOS message. The Morse Code came up that crossed the Atlantic Ocean – because there was no sun to interfere – and it went straight across the Atlantic Ocean, straight to the Bristol Channel, and straight into his device. It had all the coordinates, said SOS, where the Titanic was, and he went to the police and told them what he received, and they didn't believe him. But he knew what was happening.. Before, I had thought of Carpathia and all the other ships that were around [to receive the SOS]... 
Of course, there were only two and a half hours before she was going to sink, and the nearest ship, Carpathia, was too far away. So then I thought, “Okay, there's something, because you've got a Welsh orchestra playing in New York, there’s the connection.” 

I've used the SOS motif, ( · · · ··· ··· ··· · · · ) that's how it starts, and the whole piece follows that around. 
Then you have the idea of American music in fourths and fifths, think of Copland, there’s a bit of that in the main motif. I wanted to have a feeling of nostalgia, excitement as well, but not necessarily of the tragedy of Titanic. 
Because back in those days, when people were leaving Europe in the shadow of the things that were happening, people migrated to America because of the possibilities and the idea of E Pluribus Unum and all the amazing stuff that America was founded upon and grew from. I remember saying to David "Well, I want to chat about the film. DiCaprio and Kate Winslet." Which I just love. 
That idea of them below deck, the dancing. So I thought, "We'll end it with an Irish Jig." 
I've used that idea of going back to Wagner and Liszt, and Liszt and Berlios, they use transformation of themes, augmentation, diminution, little ideas, so you get the little earworms in. 
It's the classic Hollywoody sort of leitmotif. Loving stories and film, I've always thought in those terms. 

Well, the funny thing is, for the premier of the performance, I booked into a hotel, a place in Greenwich Village called the Jane Hotel. It's a wonderful, elaborate, sort of ornate looking hotel. 
I thought, “This is interesting. All the rooms look like cabins.” It was designed for sailors who had finished the day's at sea, so they could acclimatize back to being on land. And the clinch of the whole thing was it was the exact hotel that the survivors picked up by the Carpathia stayed in after they were rescued. I've got goose pimples talking about this, because opposite [the hotel,] there's an old sign for a pier and you can just see “White Star.” 
That was the very pier that Carpatiha came to - it’s incredible. Even as we were flying over Newfoundland, they had on the map where it shows where you are on the flight: “
Wreck of Titanic Site.” The whole process was filled with synergy and everything was very strange, but wonderful. I mean, how many places are there to stay in New York? And I had no idea. 


Then for the longest time, I was playing this piece to my friends and one said, "Bernard, this would work really well for viola.” Oh, so talking about changes, 
I've changed the key. The original’s in A flat major, which works well on euphonium, but for viola it’d need to be in G because G is one of the best keys to play on the Viola, because you have open strings. 
You can get really ‘fiddly’ about it. 

The thing is about these great concertos that I've played -  The Walton [Sir William Walton’s Viola Concerto] - 
I've been playing since 1989, but I've never performed it. It's a standard audition piece, and I've spent so many hours of my life on it but I never perform it. Because it’s so hard. Because he [Walton] wasn't a viola player. Bartok does the same thing - 
They're not string players. So they're really, really hard to play. Brahms’ sonatas arranged for viola are so hard. 
They’re wonderful, but so difficult and so many works for viola are, because the viola didn’t have much repertoire so composers writing for it borrowed from other things. 

If you don't change the key, if you don't put it in an idiomatic key that's beneficial for viola, you're going to falter. 
I changed the key immediately. There were other things I thought of, I used the Celeste, because I love the Celeste. 
The colors you get with the orchestration; there's a tambourine, and that's inspired by Berlioz's Romeo and Juliet, the Ball scene. In the timpani part, I've written for them to use the sticks, and with that you hear the clear thrumming, and that’s supposed to be like the paddle steamer sounds. That was, in my mind, the machinery of the ship. 


The original is for euphonium and symphonic wind ensemble and orchestra, it's huge. I wrote this rendition for a smaller group of 13 players, so that you could play it alongside Appalachian Spring, and so it could be played a bit more than normal. 
I've loved the piece in a way. You hear all the little themes at the end. I pile them all on top, it’s polyphonic in a way that, not showing off, but I wanted to get everything sort of working towards one thing, and a big sort of fiddly, Irishy jig, and then 'cause it's G Major, it's just so much nicer. 
So, that's how it came together.  

CB: Well, thank you so much for talking with me and telling me all these stories, and for giving us this insight into your life and work. We’re very excited for The White Star and excited to be working with you again. 

You can view a clip of Bernard Kane performing the premier of his piece Seren Wen here!