Five minutes with… James Hardie


Join us in welcoming new Chief Executive, James, to Scottish Ensemble.

27 January 2025

We sat down with our new Chief Executive, James Hardie, to find out more about his first musical passions, memories of Goldberg Variations, inspiring programming at Sainsbury Centre in Norwich, and his love for fudge doughnuts.

If you could have a superpower, what would it be and why? 

Teleportation, I think. I hate airports! 

What got you interested in music?

I grew up with my Dad playing the fiddle, and I was constantly climbing the bookshelves as a toddler to try and reach the violin which was kept at the top. So, at four my parents got me a quarter-size violin to start learning. (It can’t have been a pretty sound – my granny dubbed it the vile-din.)

From age eight to twelve, I was a chorister at St Mary’s Cathedral in Edinburgh, singing daily. I also listened to my cassette recording of West Side Story most days as a child. Some years later I performed the Four Dances from West Side Story as a viola player with the Edinburgh Youth Orchestra.  

What is the first album you ever bought? 

Arctic Monkeys, ‘Whatever People Say I Am, That’s What I’m Not’. Before that I used to borrow CDs from my local library, which had a great music section. 

Name your favourite Scottish Ensemble performance and why?

Goldberg Variations at the Barbican in 2018. I saw that show and decided that if I had the chance to work with Scottish Ensemble, I would jump at it!

It remains one of my all-time favourite live performance experiences, and a gold standard of what cross-artform collaboration can look like. You could really feel the depth of the collaboration between Scottish Ensemble and Andersson Dance. 

Watch the film about Goldberg Variations

Where do you like to visit in Scotland?

Fisher & Donaldson for fudge doughnuts. (I’m looking forward to our concerts in Dundee.) 

What is your top live music experience and why?

Tristan and Isolde at Bayreuth Festival (in Wagner’s own opera house) was certainly unforgettable, if not exactly a favourite in the usual sense. The music-making was out of this world, and the sound extraordinary, but the atmosphere was quite strange, and the air felt heavy, oppressive even. 

What issues do you think the classical music world currently face?

The biggest issue is a lack of self-confidence. We don’t need to be embarrassed about what we do, nor dumb down. Make the work really good, engage with people deeply, and the support will follow.

There are issues, yes; but there are also huge opportunities!

What can we learn from other art forms?

How they engage with audiences. How they evolve their art forms. How they harness digital. How they tell stories, both with canonical and new work.

I’m particularly inspired at the moment by visual arts, galleries and museums. For example, the Sainsbury Centre in Norwich has embarked on a radical new model of programming; rather than simply put on an exhibition dedicated to an artist, it looks at big questions like ‘why do we take drugs?’ to explore through events and shows.  

I’m also struck by institutions like The Fitzwilliam Museum and the British Museum that are welcoming artists like Glenn Ligon and Hew Locke to survey, interact with and interrogate whole collections. 

Name three tracks you can’t stop playing?

If you could see Scottish Ensemble collaborate with anyone, who would it be and why?

I’ve recently realised I love lying down listening to music, so to create something durational with strings would be cool, with an artist like Jonny Greenwood or Kali Malone.

There are also some amazing young Scottish artists across genres it would be exciting to work with, like trumpeter Aaron Azunda Akugbo, accordionist Ryan Corbett, vocalist/instrumentalist Clarissa Connelly and others.

What are your hopes for the future and what are you looking forward to over the coming year?

Scottish Ensemble has always been about connecting classical music with the here and now, and creating one-off, exhilarating musical experiences. My vision is to continue doing exactly that, being bold, ambitious and collaborative in everything we do.

With all that in mind, I’m really excited to see the outcome of our new collaboration with Blind Summit in The Law of Gravity and to experience the magic of Concerts for a Summer’s Night in some beautiful galleries across Scotland, with guest artist Héloïse Werner. 

Watch the film about The Law of Gravity

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