63 INTERVIEW BY GINNY FARRELL Dave Chatterton


From a childhood in Kingsbridge to the concert halls of Manchester and beyond, conductor Dave Chatterton has come full circle - bringing decades of experience, a passion for collaboration and a fresh musical energy to the Dartmouth Orchestra. The 65-year-old trumpeter spent more than three decades teaching at the prestigious Chetham’s School of Music where he helped shape some of the UK’s brightest talents. Ginny Farrell chatted to Dave to find out more about his latest plans unfolding with the Dartmouth Orchestra.


O


n a rehearsal night for Dartmouth Orchestra, there’s a moment - just before the music begins


- when everything hangs in the air. Bows poised, brass liſted, a quiet breath shared across the room. Ten, with a subtle cue, the sound blooms. For Dave, that moment never


loses its magic. “Te orchestra is the most


extraordinary instrument,” he says. “Te range of musical colours and sonorities from the wide range of instruments means it’s a medium which has inspired some of the greatest music written over many, many centuries.” And right now, that instrument in


the form of Dartmouth Orchestra is being finely tuned. For Dave, this isn’t just another


conducting role it feels more like a return. “As a kid, I lived in Kingsbridge


for four years – between the ages of seven and 11,” he recalls. “Tat’s where I first picked up the trumpet.” A few early lessons at Kings-


bridge Primary and then Secondary sparked Dave’s lifelong passion for music. One particular memory from that time stands out – a musical exchange with the school’s French twin town of Isigny-sur-Mer which gave Dave, as part of that young ensemble, the first taste of perform- ing abroad and perhaps the earliest


“As a kid, I lived in Kingsbridge for four years – between the ages of seven and 11.That’s where I first picked up the trumpet.”


hint of a life destined to be shaped by music. Soon aſter, Dave’s family moved to


Shropshire where he enrolled in a lo- cal school whose head of music was Glenville Hancox – later to become a professor at Canterbury University.


“He was an inspiring teacher


who ran an amazing department,” Dave recalled. “It just shows how important music education is.” Tat foundation proved trans-


formative. Youth orchestras followed, then bigger stages including a county youth orchestra tour to Canada performing in Toronto and Quebec where Dave featured as soloist in the Hummel Trumpet Concerto. Music was well and truly under


his skin. “As a player, you get this thing,”


he says, “this slight obsession, a nerdiness where you want to master an instrument as much as you possibly can. And it always escapes you, to a degree.” Tis pursuit led him to the Joint


Course at the Royal Northern College of Music and Manchester University, and then into a decade of freelance performing. Based in the North West, Dave


worked with leading ensembles including the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra, City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra, BBC Philharmonic Orchestra and Manchester’s two chamber orches- tras – the Manchester Camerata and the Northern Chamber Orchestra. “It was a fantastic time,” he says.


“You’d be playing all kinds of reper- toire, in all kinds of settings.” Alongside performing, he also


taught music technology part-time at the University of Salford - at a


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