The Guest List
Thursday September 18th, 2025 with Joe Reilly
Interviews with Alexander Shelley and Henry Kennedy with the National Arts Centre Orchestra and Graeme Fleming of the Ottawa band South Pacific

The On Demand version of the show today includes extended excerpts of the classical music we featured and more of my conversation with Henry Kennedy - as I had to edit some parts of that interview to fit the 60 minute format of the Guest List. We open in conversation today with Alexander Shelley, the Musical Director of the National Arts Centre Orchestra. Alexander tells us what goes into creating a massive program of concerts for a major orchestra like the NACO and how you must pivot when a featured performer like Hilary Hahn musc cancel at the last minute. He also talks about how much he has loved working with the NACO,and Mahler's amazing Second Symphony which the NACO will be performing next June as part of his farewell before leaving his position as the Musical Director. He has promised to come back next June for a final conversation about his legacy with the NACO! We look forward to talking to him again at that time. We also talk to a young British-Canadian conductor, Henry Kennedy, who is in his second year as a Resident Conductor with the NACO. Henry tells us about the special concerts he is doing with the NACO around the region and in Cornwall this week and why he feels these types of outreach events are so important. We also hear how Henry got into creating music as a young man. For more information about Henry Kennedy use these links: https://nac-cna.ca/en/bio/henry-kennedy https://henrykennedy.co.uk/ For more information about the National Arts Centre Orchestra and upcoming programming use this link: https://nac-cna.ca/en/orchestra Next it was a great pleasure to welcome Graeme Fleming back on the Guest List after more than 20 years. He joins us today to talk about the reunion of his great Ottawa band South Pacific. The band performs shoegaze, post-rock instrumental music and was much celebrated when they released the album Constance back in 2000. Graeme tells us about how they created the music, their reunion and what to expect when South Pacific plays at the 27 Club on Saturday (Sept. 20) with another great Ottawa shoegaze group Still Youth. For tickets to see South Pacific and Still Youth use this link: https://www.ticketweb.ca/event/south-pacific-still-youth-the-27-club-tickets/13840094?pl=spectrasonic For more information about South Pacific: https://www.southpacific.ca/ Thanks for listening to the Guest List today. Support independent music in any way that you can and get out to see some live music this week... or any week! And don't forget that The Guest List is sponsored by Spaceman Music, located at 388 Gladstone Avenue, just west of Bank. Visit Spaceman for all of your music making needs and don't forget they have a great repair shop and offer music lessons. Check out Spaceman online at: https://www.spacemanmusic.com/