Classical music in China beginning to take off as a growing art form, says leading artist manager

Jasper Parrott could be forgiven for looking slightly tired. He was just off the overnight British Airways flight from Heathrow and agreed to be interviewed in the lobby of the Park Hyatt hotel on the 63rd floor, enough to add vertigo to the jet lag.

Jasper Parrott says he does not mind Chinese audience being noisy at concerts. Liu Zhe / For China Daily

Despite not having had time to shower or properly check in, the 66-year-old Swedish-born Briton, who is one of the world's leading classical music artist managers, was unfazed and played down any fatigue.

"I travel somewhere every week. I am here until Sunday and then I am in Paris next week. This is my 20th visit to China and I think I have been to Japan 55 times," he says.

He was to be in Beijing for little more than 72 hours just to look after his client, Lorin Maazel, who was conducting The Dresden Staatskapelle (State Orchestra) at the Chinese National Museum in Beijing.

"The orchestra's manager sent me a message three weeks ago, asking whether I had any ideas about a big name conductor who could conduct this concert. Miraculously, Lorin Maazel had two days free and then I arranged everything," he says.

Parrott runs Harrison Parrott, which he co-founded in 1969 and which is one of the world's leading artist and project management businesses. It is based in London but has offices in Berlin and one in Shanghai, which it opened three years ago. The company employs just less than 60 people worldwide.

The music entrepreneur has been a pivotal figure in the development of classical music in China over the past 30 years.

His artists, including pianists Vladimir Ashkenazy and Helene Grimaud as well as the counter-tenor singer Andreas Scholl, regularly appear at China's major concert halls, including the new state-of-the-art National Center for Performing Arts, known as The Eggshell, next to Tian'anmen Square.

"We have at least one concert a month here and sometimes several," he says.

Parrott says classical music in China is now beginning to take off as an art form. The country itself has an array of leading international artists, including the flamboyant Lang Lang, other pianists Li Yundi and Yuja Wang and the violinist Huang Mengla.