Hollie Whittles

Clarinet

Director of data analytics consultancy Purple Frog Systems and national policy champion for skills and apprenticeships for the Federation of Small Businesses advising the Government 

Since 2008

I started with the recorder and quickly progressed onto the clarinet after watching Emma Johnson win Young Musician of the Year in 1984. Learning the piano soon followed as my second instrument and then after gaining a lot of classical orchestra experience I branched out into playing for shows and musicals too so I then learnt all of the saxophones and the flute! 

Principal bassoon Mike Syratt set up a BPO Concert Band and I was invited to come along by Principal trumpet Greg McEwan and ended up on the 1st desk to Principal clarinet Alastair Moseley who invited me to join the orchestra on bass clarinet. My 1st official concert included Strauss’ Don Quixote which I’d hadn’t realised was very exposed for the bass clarinet so I joined the orchestra with a bang and moved up to second clarinet in 2015.

BPO’s performance of Das Rheingold in 2019 at Birmingham’s Symphony Hall was truly amazing with a cast of soloists hand picked by our musical director, Michael Lloyd, who bought the opera to life.

BPO requested a large screen above the orchestra which displayed text explaining the story of the opera as we performed and it was truly a magical thing to be a part of.

Opening my double clarinet case and finding out I’d left one of my clarinet at home! Luckily it was only a rehearsal so I then had to transpose everything!

Rachmaninov because of the amazing solos he wrote for clarinet. I don’t think I have a least favourite, I generally prefer pieces where there are great tunes and lyrical passages for the clarinets and maybe an opportunity to play the shrieking twig Eb clarinet!

It would definitely have to be Scheherazade by Rimsky-Korsakov. I have actually played it several times but never the 1st clarinet part and there’s some brilliant solos in it which I’d love to perform.