Jesús Herrera cuts an affable figure on a video call, but the words tumble out of him and I am left racing to catch up. The London Philharmonic Orchestra liked what they saw of this charisma and energy when, in June this year, they appointed Herrera as their new Artistic Director. The orchestra’s music director, Edward Gardner, has welcomed the opportunity to work with “an intrepid, unique thinker.” I can see what Gardner means, but I wonder what Herrera thinks he meant?
By way of an answer, Herrera recalls his training as a pianist (graduating from the Salzburg Mozarteum and in Paris), and then early side ventures into the world of music administration. “I kept having ideas for musical projects. ‘If nobody else is doing them, maybe I should make them happen. How do I do that? I have no clue, but I'll find out.’ That was my mindset.”
Herrera went on to work for artist agencies in London, Madrid and Paris. Then, in 2020, he took over the general management and artistic direction of the Orquesta Sinfónica de Castilla y León (OSCyL), before returning to the London agency Intermusica as an associate director. “I have tried never to lose the determination to make good ideas come to life. I always have very set targets in the long run. And all these small ideas should take me in that direction.”
There is no shortage of such potential directions on London’s ever-evolving orchestral scene, as Herrera knows for himself. “It's such a rich environment with so many opportunities, and so many different things done at such a high level.” The activity of the LPO ranges far beyond its season at the Royal Festival Hall. Besides international tours and the orchestra’s summer work, as one of the two house ensembles for Glyndebourne, there are residencies at Saffron Hall in Saffron Walden, at the Congress Centre in Eastbourne and Brighton Dome.
Towns on the south coast of England once regularly hosted London’s orchestras, and such regional activity has become more significant in recent years, as the LPO seeks to extend its reach and profile beyond the capital. At a time when changing priorities in education have sidelined literacy in classical music, ensembles such as the LPO find themselves stepping up to fill the gap; to demonstrate that art music is not an exclusive pleasure for the wealthy or metropolitan classes. “The residencies, including community work in the south coast, fascinate me.”
The LPO’s schedule for the 2025–26 season was largely filled by Herrera’s predecessor, Elena Dubinets, who has left London for Amsterdam, to become Artistic Director for the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra. “She left the ground very well prepared: I’m tremendously grateful to her, She left the orchestra in a terrific state while leaving paths open for me to find my own way: I have to focus my efforts on the long term strategy. There are many ancillary activities that can still be done, which is exciting, because then I don’t have to wait 18 months before I see something that I’ve actually come up with.”
Such activity may include a diversifying of the orchestra’s portfolio. One of the most stimulating LPO concerts I attended last season took place on an early Saturday evening at the church of St John’s Waterloo. A trio of string principals introduced a full house to a bewitching piece by Andrew Norman, The Companion Guide to Rome, before Charlotte Corderoy directed a chamber-sized LPO in Morton Feldman’s Rothko Chapel. Such events give both the LPO and its audiences a far more varied diet than the overture-concerto-symphony which remains the meat and potatoes of an orchestra’s repertoire.
“St John’s Waterloo is an excellent resource with a very flexible setting”, says Herrera. “So I would love to maximise this. I have ideas with many different segments of the orchestra; I’m just holding off until I understand whether pursuing those ideas is right or not. You have to look after the musicians throughout the season, and I need to ensure they don’t get burnt out.”
As well as making such football-manager calculations, Herrera has to both contend with and capitalise on the uniquely crowded nature of orchestral culture in London, which still (despite periodic drives to slash and burn) sustains five full-sized ensembles. “People may turn up to a concert. Their friend asks them later, ‘Who did you hear?’ And they will say ‘Oh, I think it was the Royal Philosinfonia.’ It’s a real challenge for the different orchestras to carve out a distinctive identity when our names are so similar – and when we share performing venues, such as the Royal Festival Hall. The more you dissect an orchestra’s identity, the more opaque it becomes. That's why I think that exploiting these resources of smaller ensembles, but keeping them within the identity of the LPO, is positive, because we don't over-complicate things.”
The Multitudes festival at the Southbank in May brought several of London’s ensembles together for a fortnight of events which presented core repertoire in fresh ways, and often to new audiences. Herrera sees a strong future in such experiments, which saw the LPO partnering with Australian ballet company Circa for Ravel’s Daphnis et Chloé. “I asked myself at the time whether it was over-stimulating the senses in a superficial way, or if it had artistic integrity, and my conclusion was that it did: Daphnis is a ballet, after all. It's meant to be expressing something beyond the music. It was certainly very impactful and fun, but it also went with the nature of the music. And this is our mission: in whatever we do, to uphold the integrity of the music.”
For Herrera, such concerts offer a new kind of choice to audiences. “We can present them with a programme or a concept that maybe they can access at a superficial level, but if they want, we can give them the tools to go really deep into the music and its context. But it’s their choice.” In that sense, he is looking forward to LPO projects at the Queen Elizabeth Hall in the coming season, such as Piazzolla with tango dancers (21st March) and a Carnival of the Animals accompanied by a new animated film by Sandra Albukrek (15th April). Notably, these concerts also feature premieres of new concertos by Clarice Assad and Ryan Carter: such multimedia concerts take place within the orchestra’s ongoing commitment to living composers and to refreshing their own repertoire. “This is something I really admire about the LPO,” remarks Herrera: “the willingness to take risks. They won’t always come off, but everyone in the orchestra wants to give something extra. They really go for it – in terms of both planning and playing.”
Risk-taking is both a freedom and a necessity particular to an artistic organisation which does not rely on state support. “I know the state orchestra model very well,” says Herrera. “I ran a Spanish orchestra [the OSCyL] that's 100% funded by the government, which naturally produced a solidity but also a rigidity in terms of strategy and artistic planning. You can do wonderful things with this model. But the LPO is rightly proud of its completely opposite model, which they own for themselves, and which comes with so much more freedom.”
He returns to the theme of music as a force of communication. “I grew up in a small town in Andalucia, where there was no music to speak of. I was so hungry for it. Now I go to a concert at the Congress Centre in Eastbourne, and I see this hunger being satisfied. It’s a fantastic, enthusiastic, welcoming audience. But we have the opportunity to make a deeper connection, by going into schools and other local communities. And in itself, this work becomes an education for our fantastic professionals at the LPO. An orchestra is not just a single unit. It is made up of individuals, connecting through music to countless other individuals.”
Herrera points to the port town of Dover, where the orchestra is beginning to set up projects. “There are no established musical organisations. So we have to look for ways to connect with an audience there, through whatever existing structures there are, even if they aren’t musical. Maybe it’s even better if they aren’t. That way we can learn how to improve, to do things in different ways.”
See upcoming events from the London Philharmonic Orchestra.
This article was sponsored by London Philharmonic Orchestra.
