Band member starts to visit orchestral conductor with a compilation of items (8)
I believe the answer is:
vocalist
'band member' is the definition.
The answer and definition can be both people as well as being singular nouns.
Maybe you can see a link between them that I can't see?
'starts to visit orchestral conductor with a compilation of items' is the wordplay.
'starts to' indicates taking the first letters.
'with' means one lot of letters go next to another.
'a compilation of items' becomes 'alist' (I can't justify this - if you can you should believe this answer much more).
The initial letters of 'visit orchestral conductor' is 'voc'.
'voc'+'alist'='VOCALIST'
Can you help me to learn more?
(Another definition for vocalist that I've seen is " Singer with a pop group".)