Alumni Spotlight: Adam Cork

Can you tell us your career journey to this point?

I can’t pretend that Junior Academy didn’t play a major part. I started having piano lessons as a child, then when I was about ten somebody recommended that I should try out for something called the Junior Exhibitioners through my local council. The scheme offered funding to places like the Royal Academy of Music. From then on, my Saturdays were all about Junior Academy! My time there gave me a grounding not only in playing and performing, but in theory, harmony, and all the elements which would prove so useful in music at school and then at university.

When I left university, I was focused on singing and acting when a friend of mine asked for help writing the score for an adaptation of Graham Greene’s The End of the Affair. It ended up becoming a professional production at the studio space in Salisbury Playhouse. The director for the show was Rupert Goold, who is now the Artistic Director for the Almeida Theatre. At the time we were both very young and trying to learn our craft, and we’ve continued to work together a lot since that first show.

A lot of my work has continued through building relationships. For example, Michael Grandage came to see a production of Romeo and Juliet at Colchester Mercury Theatre which I had written the music for. Off the back of that he invited me to compose the music for his second production at the Donmar Warehouse, which kicked off another long-term collaboration. I worked on most of his shows during his ten years at the Donmar.

The hardest thing is to find yourself in the right place at the right time. You can’t underestimate how much luck is a factor in that and it’s important not to blame yourself if you are finding it difficult. The key is to make the most of every opportunity you are given and try your best to deliver work people enjoy because then you give yourself a chance to be considered for future projects.

What are your favourite memories of studying at Junior Academy?

Studying music at university is quite different to a conservatoire education. In hindsight, the Junior Academy was my conservatoire experience. In terms of my solo piano training, I studied with a wonderful teacher called Jeremy Brown, and everything I learnt from him helped to fill the gap in terms of conservatoire training.

I also loved singing. I was in the Junior Academy boys choir until my voice broke, and then I joined the tenors which was for older pupils. I stood next to another boy, Simon Phillippo, and I remember how we would laugh while we were doing our vocal exercises. We were also coached in a piano duo together, again by Jeremy Brown, culminating in a performance of Bartok’s Sonata for Two Pianos and Percussion. Simon remains one of my best friends today, and he is now Head of Keyboard at the Royal Welsh College of Music and Drama.

I remember sitting outside of teaching rooms, waiting for lessons, and hearing the drift of music coming through the corridors. Looking back, I was so lucky to be in an atmosphere where music and children’s education in music was taken so seriously.

What have you learnt recently?

Technology changes a lot. There can be a period of stability where you become an expert with a certain piece of technology and then there is a paradigm shift where it changes, and you suddenly become an amateur again for a period of time. I think we’re in the middle of a change like that right now. I’m currently learning a new system called Soundscape which allows you to accurately track actors wearing microphones around the stage. It has really come into its own in a show that I’ve been working on recently at the Young Vic. The stage extends into the auditorium and the actors are pretty much walking amongst the audience, so it’s been really interesting trying it out and seeing how it helps with this unusual staging.

I come from a musical background rather than a technical background, so it probably takes me longer to grasp new equipment than someone who has a degree in something like sound design or engineering. However, by forgiving myself in the early stages of learning I know that I can grasp the same things, over a longer period of time. At least the music half of my work is consistent – the rules of harmony don’t change!