Nicholas Michael Smith OBE is a British conductor, composer, arranger, and music educator, who will see the premiere of his new opera, THE STONE GOD, this November at the Bloomsbury Theatre, London.

After graduating from St John’s College Cambridge (1987-90), he moved to China to establish a post-graduate course at the Wuhan Conservatory of Music. Relocating to Beijing in 1995, Smith began working with the Beijing Concert Hall on concerts to foster interest in Western classical music and has stayed in Beijing since moving there almost three decades ago.

He has conducted on the biggest stages in China, including the first performances of Bach’s St John’s Passion, Handel’s Coronation Anthems and China’s first ever fully-staged Broadway musical. He was the subject of a documentary by China’s national broadcaster CCTV, and he was presented with an award by Phoenix Television for his significant contributions to China’s cultural life.

We spoke to Nicholas on a short visit back to the UK, ahead of the premiere for THE STONE GOD, which will be paired with his orchestra illustration, The Girl From the French Fort, which are both based on esteemed author Hong Ying’s Sangsang series.

WildKat: You’re quite new to using social media for promotion while you’ve been in the UK. How have you found it so far?

Nicholas Michael Smith: It’s been quite a big learning curve for me.  I have to admit that sometimes it has made me feel like I don’t really know the UK anymore.  But it’s always good to learn new things, and overall it’s been great fun.  I’ve enjoyed trying to present myself and my work a little differently from how I did before.  And it’s certainly been good for focusing on essentials!  I’ve particularly enjoyed the dynamic aspects of social media in what we’ve done so far.

WK: How does Facebook and Instagram differ to Chinese apps such as WeChat?

NMS: This is a really interesting question.  WeChat, for example, stretches into one’s day to day life so pervasively that it’s hard to imagine living without it now: one can pay one’s phone bill, buy cinema or train tickets, book hospital appointments, pay one’s utilities bills all through the WeChat platform.  It even offers some investment type products!  So in this sense, I think WeChat is somewhat different to Facebook and Instagram.  While one can share one’s life with one’s friends either through direct messaging or by posting on one’s “moments”, WeChat seems to have moved more towards being a kind of electronic personal assistant.  XiaoHongShu is closer to Instagram: it also uses hashtags as a way to share posts to wider communities, and seems to be a platform used by individuals and organizations to tell their stories.  It’s interesting that XiaoHongShu doesn’t seem to allow individuals to post web links or barcodes, which Instagram does.  One difference I have noticed is that XiaoHongShu, unlike Instagram, offers ways for people to find goods and services – one can, for example, look on XiaoHongShu for someone to repair a broken vacuum cleaner.  Or perhaps I don’t really know how to use Instagram well enough yet… 

WK: What have been your goals when it comes to using digital platforms for your career?

NMS: Mainly, I want to share what I’ve been doing as honestly as I can, and hope that more people will see value in what I do.  It seems to me that, when well used, social media is a way for people to tell their stories in a way that wasn’t possible even 20 years ago.  We can now all be our own feature article editors.  Of course, this means that there are a lot more stories out there, which in turn means that one’s voice may not be heard so well.  So my goal is to tell my story as honestly as I can, as I think that what I am doing will be of interest to and even resonate with others.

WK: Both you and Arcadian Opera’s Music Director Justin Lavender are fluent in Mandarin. Have you found a difference in how you think about writing your social media captions?

NMS: I can’t speak for Justin, but for me, I approach the captions completely differently in the two languages.  For example, I recently posted about The Stone God on XiaoHongShu with the caption “look what this foreigner is up to with a Chinese story”.  I can’t imagine using similar language on Instagram.

WK: What do you think have been the major factors that raised your profile as a composer, conductor and educator in China?

NMS: I think maybe I was lucky to start before the social media age, when reputation was spread by word of mouth and the work one did, as well as the occasional feature or report by traditional media.  Now that traditional media is no longer as effective or all pervading, I think that it has become crucial to have a clear social media presence, as long as it doesn’t interfere with the quality of the work, as it’s the quality of the work that ultimately matters most, even if sometimes it doesn’t feel like it.

WK: You’ve lived in China for almost three decades, what have been the key differences in how media/interviews are between China and the UK? 

NMS: I guess the biggest difference is that a Chinese media interviewer will always want to know if I, as a foreigner, have found a way to fit in here.  Do I like Chinese food?  What are my favourite dishes?  Can I use chopsticks?  How does life here compare to the UK?  What’s the best thing about living in China?  These are questions that usually don’t have any very tangible link to the interview topic, but tend to be very important to the interviewer and almost always make it into the final piece in some way.  In my experience, Chinese media likes to explore a topic through comparison between China and the rest of the world, rather than focus exclusively on the topic.