The film Colour Me Kubrick is the true story of a man called Alan Conway no less who posed as director Stanley Kubrick during the time of Kubrick's last film, Eyes Wide Shut, “despite knowing very little about his work and looking nothing like him”. At the ACO we had a similar encounter which we can now call Colour me Martin
In 1991 after the resignation of a previous Assistant Leader, we advertised the position in Australia and overseas. Amongst the responses to these we received an application from a certain Laurence Martin from England.
After hearing his audition tape and reading the accompanying documentation, we arranged for Mr Martin to fly to Australia so that we could give him a trial.
During the period for which we engaged him there was a tour with Marc Minkowski in an all Beethoven program and another program that included The Four Seasons with Richard playing the solo, and Mr. Martin expected to play the lead orchestral part.
During the first day’s rehearsals for the Vivaldi, it became painfully obvious that there was something amiss. Mr Martin’s playing was woeful. As a consequence, at the end of the day we began to investigate his background and look again at his resume. After many enquiries, faxes came in from all over Europe; nobody had heard of him let alone played with this fraudster.
He claimed that he had played a viola d’amore concerto with the Academy of St Martin in the Fields; had performed in a recital shown in the BBC’s Radio Times, worked with Pierre Boulez and Harnoncourt and provided other relevant material to back up his audition tape.
The next morning Tim Walker (the then ACO General Manager) spoke to Mr. Martin who then admitted he had ‘upgraded’ his resume, cutting and pasting the information. In addition he admitted that the tape was falsifed. He also claimed a side profession as a restaurant reviewer and that he was writing an article on food in Oz for the Wolverhampton Star, UK (funny that Wolverhampton gets a mention in Colour me Kubrick as well). When we rang the paper to enquire of his claim, a voice yelled out “someone’s havin’ you on mate”. Thank you.
When confronted he also claimed to play the viola as well and tried to offer himself up for a viola job.
He had the gall to ring RT himself and after receiving a right blasting (it had cost us months of wasted time and many thousands of dollars) Mr. Martin’s last words were “Well I didn’t like your playing anyway”.
He was sent packing and this experience modified our audition requirements regarding the provision of performance material. If played in a studio, the recording technician was required to state that there were no edits on the tape.
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