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As he steps down as chairman of The Glasgow Barons, retirement is still a no-no for John Wallace, he tells KEN WALTON. He’s even been writing operas about Nicola Sturgeon and Joe Biden.

It’s ten years since John Wallace retired as the pugnacious principal of the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland. Far from sailing off into the sunset, and now fast approaching his 75th birthday, the tireless Fifer – best known for his starring trumpet solo alongside Dame Kiri Te Kanawa in Handel’s Let the Bright Seraphim at the 1981 Royal Wedding – is busier than ever. “I suppose I’ve semi-retired,” he concedes. “I now watch things like Death in Paradise on telly.”

Mostly, though, he’s doing the things he enjoys doing when he wants to. Given the extent of that – chairing arts bodies and think tanks, running and performing in his longstanding brass ensemble The Wallace Collection, composing operas, masterminding school educational programmes in Fife through St Andrews University where he holds an honorary professorship – this is what most of us would consider full-time employment.

This week, he steps down after seven years as chair of Glasgow Barons, the groundbreaking music-based regeneration programme in Govan founded and run by another tireless Scot, conductor Paul MacAlindin, the centrepiece of which is the project’s eponymous orchestra. 

“Paul is a genius at getting things going among locals in this former shipbuilding town,” he says. “For a start he actually lives there, so understands the problems first hand. Besides the orchestra, which has done so much for new music and Scottish composers, the project has its own choir and goes into schools with its Baby Strings and Baby Brass programmes. Its Musicians in Exile initiative has been phenomenally successful in giving asylum seekers a sense of integration and belonging.”

On Thursday, Wallace himself will direct his farewell concert, which reflects the very essence of the Barons’ successes. It features The Wallace Collection alongside Govan’s century-old Cooperation Band in Govan Linthouse Parish Church. Included is a performance of Jay Capperauld’s As Above So Below, written for the 2017 Cumnock Tryst Festival where it was premiered by The Wallace Collection and Ayrshire’s famous Dalmellington Band. 

“The balconies in Govan are perfect for the spatial element of this piece”, says Wallace, as they will also be for Derek Bourgeois’ Concerto for Brass Quintet and Brass Band, and Wallace’s full band arrangement of Giovanni Gabrieli’s polychoral Sonata No 20. 

He’s quick to stress that far from being the end of an era, there’s an element of transition attached to his departure. One of his Wallace Collection colleagues, fellow trumpeter Bede Willliams, is to take on the vacant chair. “Like all New Zealanders, he’s very get up and go. He has a lively interest in new music and in the social benefits music can have equally for younger and older people.” Williams is also head of instrumental studies at St Andrews University.

Nor is Wallace leaving to free up time for himself. “I’ve done seven years with Govan. It needs fresh energy. Rather than do another seven I felt it was time to cast around for younger blood.” Inevitably our conversation turns to certain American politicians who refuse to give way to younger blood. “Which brings us neatly to my operas,” chortles Wallace.

He’s keen to talk about a trilogy of short operas, the last of which – So Much Hot Air…… – features a certain Joe Biden, its title taken from actual words spoken by the US President at COP26 in Glasgow. The characters also include Boris Johnson and Greta Thunberg. “Boris’s words are all his, and for Biden I’ve scored in a tenor banjo to colour his music. Greta’s the only one who talks any sense so she’s surrounded by a combination of alto flute and harp.”

As for the earlier two operas, the first, Opsnizing Dad, deals with dementia and how healthcare might look by the end of this century. “My daughter-in-law had written this short story about dementia which won a prize. I thought it would be brilliant to set it to music, full of aphorisms and really concise.” The second, They Two Fush, is altogether more satirical, dealing with the recent infamous contretemps between Nicola Sturgeon and Alex Salmond. “It’s a rather lurid comedy set in Nicola’s living room.”

Wallace has begun a recording process with Opsnizing Dad already committed to disc on his own label, complete with two preview tracks from They Two Fish – an “independence Tango” and the closing number, “Time for a cup of Tea”. Central to his preferred casting is Scots tenor and broadcaster Jamie McDougall. “I’d always imagined these operas as small things that would suit [Glasgow’s] Òran Mór or television, and with Jamie in my mind’s eye,” Wallace explains. “He’s such a fantastic character actor.  For the COP 26 opera, McDougall is perfect for the Boris role.”

It doesn’t bother him much that live performances are proving slow to materialise. Opsnizing Dad did receive one in St Andrews, and was even nominated in 2021 for an Ivor Novello Award. “I didn’t mind being beaten in the end by Thomas Ades, who couldn’t attend the ceremony because he was conducting his own opera that night at La Scala Milan. Such is the calibre of that particular pool, Ades in his great big ocean, me in my dub in Langside.”

And that’s the thing with Wallace, whose modesty comes with good humour. “I just get on with things, and once they’re done they’re past, and it’s time to get on with something else,” he chuckles. 

Which rather undersells his lifelong contribution to British music: the ambitious Fife kid who made it to King’s College Cambridge from Buckhaven High School; the trumpeter whose stellar orchestral career spanned principalships with the LSO, Philharmonia and London Sinfonietta; whose solo career saw him premiere trumpet concertos by Arnold, Maxwell Davies, MacMillan and Muldowney; whose leadership of the RCS led on to his influential spearheading of the Music Education Partnership Group, which continues to influence political support for music tuition in schools; who late in life has returned to composition – including the completion and recording of a monumental Symphony for Brass Band he began as a student – and is just as content working with school children in Fife as performing with The Wallace Collection on the world’s stage. 

Will he ever fully retire? “I don’t think so,” he muses. “I’m like a musical lollipop man now, trying to guide kids repeatedly across the same crossing. Them getting so much joy from their music gives me satisfaction. Unless I’m happy in myself, I’m never happy. Right now, I’m happy!”

John Wallace’s Glasgow Barons’ Farewell Concert featuring the Wallace Collection and Cooperation Band is at Govan Linthouse Parish Church on Thu 29 Feb 7.30pm. Full details at www.glasgowbarons.com 

For information on CDs by The Wallace Collection, including the opera Opsnizing Dad, go to www.thewallacecollectionshop.world