Author: kfarrimond

Kerry Andrew in conversation with Ed Hughes.

Kerry Andrew is a classical composer and performer whose work reaches across genres, particularly folk music.

In this conversation, Kerry Andrew discussed with Ed Hughes how interests in folk music, and folk rock, have informed methods of composition involving existing material – for example, creatively working with and re-working folk song in new ways in her You Are Wolf albums. Perhaps this notion of ‘collecting’ and reimagining song in new work, a feature of classical composers’ work since the early twentieth century, inspired one of the methods behind her community opera for the Wigmore Hall? This was Woodwose, in which participants sang songs and lullabies that they remembered from childhood, and these were recorded, transcribed and woven into the final composition in which they performed.  Overall, there is a sense in this conversation that referencing other texts, or working creatively with pre-existing song, can produce an authenticity of expression, but only in the sense of one that arises from a creative engagement with material. Remaking the material for now, certainly engaging powerfully with memory, but transformed with an energy that speaks to contemporary experience. In common with other composers in these interviews, Kerry Andrew thinks this is not about a sepia-tinted reproduction of the past. It’s about a form of production that is rooted (see Shirley J. Thompson) at the same time as being hard-edged, colourful, vibrant and of today. English folk songs are not ‘sacred’. The important thing is that they are sung. Who cares how they are sung?

Ed Hughes: A piece of yours that I’ve been listening to a lot is Salve Regina, which I admire very much.

Kerry Andrew: Yes, it was commissioned by the Merton College Choir. They gave me the text – they asked me to do a Salve Regina . It was one of a number of commissions from women composers – Judith Weir, Dobrinka Tabakova, Hannah Kendall and me; they allocated us a text each as part of the larger project.

EH: Given the nature of the text was there any sense of mining the past for you?

KA: To be honest, with all my sacred music, I tend to look straight at the words, and not think about the history of Salve Reginas. I’ve realised more and more, recently, that the whole of my work has been on words and music. Sometimes the words are the most important. With Salve Regina I would have studied the text in Latin and English, and seen what comes. I like having a blank slate and not thinking about how a composer from earlier times might have treated those words. I go with my instincts. When you asked me for some tract to suggest I immediately thought, when I think of old forms that I work with, or the old material I work with, it’s folk music: works with older forms then it’s the work with folk material that is probably most relevant. But if we’re thinking about all the sacred stuff that I’ve done, one of the first pieces I wrote was for the Ebor Singers, Dusk Songs (2005). It was a 12 part compline mass; again I was interested in the words primarily and the interplay between the Latin and the English and the way in which the words emerge and combine. I tend to not thinking of anything musical but just begin with those words on a page.

EH: And yet you have a sophisticated sense of polyphony which might seem to emerge from an awareness of that culture/tradition of notated polyphonic music?

KA: I don’t have any knowledge of early music.

EH: What’s interesting me is the interweaving – I got that very strongly from Salve Regina with the stepped introduction of the high voices first, and then the lower voices. I admired this and it seemed to be polyphonic and therefore within that tradition and the idea of the motet.

KA: That’s interesting. I think it comes from a different place, actually. I think my polyphonic writing, which I never think of as very complex –

EH: It’s certainly very clear, but it is also complex –

KA: – comes from listening to West African traditional singing, when I was at university, and also getting really into Central African Pygmy tribe singing where, to my ears, I would often hear it that they would have a falling scale of five equi-distant notes and not at western tuning and that they’d all be doing that but at different times, all individually. And I was always totally struck by the idea of a choir; I know that’s not what you mean in the Salve Regina; but actually a lot of the time in my choral work it often suddenly does that and it probably goes back to that experience. I often put something in a box and say ‘freely and individually’ so it might sound complex but it’s actually just a little bit of material that I know in any combination, however they sing it in an overlapping way, will sound fine. So there’s a cloud of sound thing that I’m interested in, and there’s a more interlocking thing. In the end, my language comes from things like that, and Inuit throat singing, those type of hockets (as opposed to early music hockets). It comes from those sort of places which introduced me to experimental vocal music, and vocal music from around the world, and so it’s probably those traditions that influenced my choral writing.

EH: That’s great – but just to follow up on this point; the clear sense is that intervals and scales in that piece, Salve Regina, are based around G scales and A scales. Just purely as a listener; and I love the interlocking effect – and that comes from the non-western source really…

KA: Come to think of it I’ve still got something at home which I remember photocopying something at university. It was West African – Ghanaian I think – and it went [sings:]

So my Juice Vocal Ensemble writing comes from that.

EH: I love pattern making which is never quite a repetition.

KA: That again comes from those sources. But when I started working with a folk singer [in my folk work] I started to use a loop station, and so got very into the idea of repeated loops. But then what’s so nice about writing for live singers is those repeated patterns don’t have to be stuck in a box going round and round exactly the same way. I like doing that and you can trace that back to me doing loop station, and trace that back to these influences from world vocal traditions. And I’ve done that more and more. And talking about the scales as well – that comes from me getting into folk music, and sitting on modes, or sitting on scales; so I would naturally, if I was writing something tonal, which I do from time to time – e.g. for the National Theatre – it’s always a modal, aeolian, lydian [melody] because I’ve listened to and sung so many folk songs that that is a more natural scale for me than our western scales that we are taught first. I don’t consider myself very sophisticated. My priority is not harmony even when I write choral music. Obviously I’m thinking about it all the time, but I’m not thinking in grand harmonic schemes.  I just never have. For me, it’s much more about textures, words, modes, loops and interlocking things.

EH: One more question about Salve Regina! Am I right to detect a sense of journey or narrative through it. There’s this clear soundworld at the opening, then there’s the pattern section in the middle, then this fantastic tense close with maybe more chromatic sounds.

KA: Yes – it would be responding to the words – to whatever journey I thought was implied by the text. Or, whatever I wanted to make the text say. Not being in the slightest bit religious. So I try to find a personal way through the text. The shape/form of the work came from what the text demanded.

EH: I started to explore the new album Keld . I noticed you had drawn on a song that had been collected by Bert Lloyd and Vaughan Williams [track number 2: As Sylvie Was Walking].

There’s a distant vocal melody and a cello introduced in the mix which makes the atmosphere darker. So that piece is clearly based on existing music.

KA: It will be obvious which ones are original songs, and which are traditional songs, when you listen to the You Are Wolf albums.  And a bit like with me just working with the Salve Regina words, let’s say, when I would just print them out and scribble on them, with the folk material I take that melody and the words, and often I’ll try and find recordings by people like A L Lloyd , or Shirley Collins , or others that are as early as I can get – for example singers from the 1950s. And just hear an unadorned version so it’s the purest version you can hear. And there’s not any other associations. And you don’t listen to other arrangements of it. I don’t think there’s any need to. So the reason I would have chosen that song is because the tune alone struck me, rather than an arrangement by anyone else. So, with the second album, Keld, it’s very collaborative – I always choose the material and lead it, but the arrangement was collaborative in terms of what we did. And another layer is making the record, working with my producer, MaJiKer, and adding in a production later. So when you were talking about the counter-melody that’s my producer and me saying ‘let’s take it away from the live version and do a little bit more to it’. So very collaborative, but what I always say about the folk material when people say ‘very contemporary arrangements’ is it’s always the song at its heart – if you strip it back I can always just sing it. And even the arrangements have to be incredibly sympathetic to the original material. I never want to [impose an inappropriate creative elaboration upon] a folksong – it always has to be let’s see what is suggested by the [song’s] story and the melody.

EH: When I was listening I was thinking – could this ethereal voice [added voice in the production] be like a distant voice from the past? I think I was over-interpreting it!

KA: No but it could be – that’s nice. It emerged from the sense of wanting a bit more. But also, it feeling right in the story. It’s the idea of her feeling very lost, and her lover has left her. And so, it could be her lamenting voice, in counterpoint to her more factual voice. Or several lamenting voices as it develops at the end.

EH: So you said the West African influence is very important in forming your voice? Is the folk music also an influence on your voice?

KA: Yes, massive, and that’s become much bigger.

EH: Does that influence extend into your concert work?

KA: Not all the time. I have to work hard for it not to be. The tunes are there all the time. The folk thing came at university level – I’ve always been interested in folk legends and traditional stories. It’s just a feeling of a connection to an older – Sometimes I think this when doing British and English songs – I talk about being connected to the land – there’s not much wild land any more. That’s not in a wanting to get back to the past way, but somehow for me there are some roots there that I want to connect to. But then there are stories from all over the world that I’m influenced by, not so much musically, but more emotionally. But going back to the British songs, I think these are songs which should still be sung. And they can be heard in lots of different ways. There’s quite a good quote from Martin Carthy which is that you can essentially do anything with a song – it’s not sacred – the important thing is that they are sung. Who cares how they are sung? With all the You Are Wolf I sometimes worry about what people on the folky side will think – but not too much – nobody owns those songs. I can do what I like with them – but I have deep respect for them. So everything comes from those tunes.

EH: I am interested in what that signals – a bridge between the popular and then classical forms of transformation. I worked with the Agincourt Carol (1415) which is already widely interpreted but is in the manuscript in Trinity Library. I wrote it into a large-scale ensemble piece.

KA: I think I try to do that a bit more with some tunes than with others. My collaborators in You Are Wolf, Sam Hall and Peter Ashwell, are classically trained musicians as well – we all do a bit of everything; we don’t come from folky backgrounds – so in a sense anything is fair game. A community chamber opera I did for the Wigmore Hall, called Woodwose (2013) , which was an hour long project for 150 community participants, and one professional tenor, and Wigmore Hall’s Ignite ensemble – part improv and part classical band. I wrote the words too but there was a lot of song collecting with the participants as part of that. There were three different schools – two primary and one secondary – all youngish kids. And an adult community choir. And a small group of Westminster elderly residents who were persuaded to sing. I was very interested in lullabies, things that would have been sung to them or to their parents, or their grandparents when young, and monsters or creatures they might have been warned about. So I asked the kids to go and see what they could find, and also the elderly group. And because it’s Westminster, a borough which as people from very diverse backgrounds, I had all these great songs come back. It was really sweet what some of the kids brought back. They had to learn it from their mum, or from their grandad. So they had some songs that we would know – English songs; nursery rhymes; but also songs from South Africa, Poland, Lithuania, India, Bangladesh, etc. So we would learn bits of them and I would record everything. And then the elderly group were brilliant talking about monsters. Strange creatures from the Carribean, Macedonia.

Basically, Woodwose is a figure in the woods – an outsider, a wild man of the woods. Very Britten, and it was a Britten anniversary – centenary. It’s always winter in the village, and they blame this on the misunderstood Woodwose – but eventually they come to understand one another. So there are moments in which the parents are warning the children – and there’s a lullaby section in which I took some of the lullabies and layered them; and there’s an introduction in which I used lots of play songs. So in this work there is a lot of material collected from participants and then woven in.

EH: What was your method in the lullabies section?

KA: If I had ten lullabies, I’d choose four that fit; and kept moving them around. Lullabies the world over – even the one from India that I had – are very tonal. They share the same sort of melody shapes – also interesting. Lots work in rounds. They worked together naturally. I did a lot of research into folk lullabies. There’s variations on soothing words like lullay, lullo, in many parts of the world. So I became really interested in the commonalities in these songs. I wrote the libretto also. Some of the songs they taught me helped to shape the story. There was a man in the elderly group with dementia who sang if he was prompted. And so the ladies would say, ‘go on Robert, what’s that song; Early One Morning – go on sing us Early One Morning’. So I recorded that, and decided I would use that song towards the end where Woodwose emerges out of the woods, and there is a confrontation; but he ends up telling a story that he’s a traumatised soldier. And he’s been hiding for a long time; but he’s started to remember who he is, and that he’s from the village; and he sings a song that his father sang, and the idea was that Robert would sing the song – but he was not well enough to sing the song at the performance, but one of the other ladies did – and it’s very moving to watch the video because I think that she stepped up at the last minute to do it. But it’s nice to use that song – because it had real emotional resonance.

EH: I’ve been reading Marquez’s book One Hundred Years of Solitude , because Shirley Thompson was saying how she loves this literature and magical realism; there is a scene where the community is visited by an insomniac and the condition spreads across the town; but the particularly bad thing about this insomnia is it starts to erode memory. So they have to write things down like, this is a cow and you have to milk it everyday. They resolve it when a gypsy comes in with a potion, and they get their memories back. But the experience of losing memory is made very palpable through that story. But isn’t that beautiful that you can recover a form of memory through music?

KA: It’s incredible when everything is stripped away you can still remember the song that your sister sang to you when you were seven. I find that so interesting. There’s something about those formative years.

EH: I’ve got a linked question to that – I’ve found it’s really interesting to ask people are there any musical experiences that are particularly formative to you?

KA: When people ask about influences I say Meredith Monk . When I was introduced to her work, in my Masters year, that was a huge epiphany. Because I understood the power of the wordless voice; and the voice as instrument in a gestural sense. She uses a lot of repeating and varying patterns. I studied her during my Masters for a term; I also transcribed duets and solos, because nothing was written down. And learnt them with Sarah – before we were Juice Vocal Ensemble – these were the beginnings of the ensemble . So it’s getting under the skin of her music – not just learning about it but transcribing it – as a way of understanding it – was really important. And even though I played with taking text away, now I’ve gone back to words, I think I’m doing so in a very different way, as a result of her influence. Now I know I can set four words, and get loads out of them. Listening to country music and Fairport Convention in the car with my Dad was another formative experience. Also Willie Nelson when we lived in Canada. Those tunes stayed with me and they came back in a different way. My dad and I would sing in church choir – that was formative just in the fact of singing all the time, and realising very soon that I was an alto – I liked harmonising and not singing the tune – I wanted to be write in the middle doing something more interesting. Everything has a knock on effect to other things as well. I took it for granted I’d sing in a choir – it wasn’t a good choir but it meant you were singing all the time. And I didn’t sing much in school – so it was very important.

EH: I have one more question – it’s about notation. You are fascinated with Meredith Monk, and transcribing. So out of curiosity, a genuinely open question – is notation an active medium for you? Does notation enable composition?

KA: I think it’s changed a bit over the years but I was trained in notation, so I do think in notation first. If I was on a train, and something came in to my mind, I’d write it down; I would always notate it – when composing I always notate.  When working on a You Are Wolf song I will work like that but I cannot do it all like that; so I guess that’s more like a band – write down bits and bobs. Sometimes just an interlocking rhythm pattern. And the best way for me to understand it is to see it written down. So I do think like that; I know with Juice Vocal Ensemble we wanted to work like a band – collectively. But we always just end up writing it and bringing it back. It reflects the way we trained.

EH: My epiphany at university was discovering early music – motets and so on and discovering other ways of writing music than, say, sonata form. And I liked Cage’s early work for the same reason – different structures. But this idea of a motet you write music in ways that are really extreme – a piece of chant stretched out and you hear one note every thirty seconds – somehow almost architectural I find that interesting. In the back of my mind I’m thinking are there musical forms or processes that you can only achieve through notation?

KA: I’m often at the piano making chords and I’ll have to write them down. It is a mixture; sometimes when I’m writing tonal material I’ll just record things in. But generally – whenever any interlocking pattern is involved, for example – I will have to write things down. I can’t really think if any of my work is made by the notation. It’s an interesting question though.

Rowland Sutherland in conversation with Ed Hughes.

Rowland Sutherland is a British flautist and composer whose extensive international work encompasses jazz, classical, pop, improvised music, and non-Western music. In 2014 he fully realised Enlightenment, his composition in four parts inspired by the John Coltrane album A Love Supreme (1964), on the fiftieth anniversary of its release. Enlightenment achieved notable performances at James Lavelle’s Meltdown in the Queen Elizabeth Hall, Southbank Centre, London, and was broadcast on BBC Radio 3. The ensemble comprised soloists from a range of different backgrounds: Ansuman Biswas – percussion and melodic Indian instruments, Crispin Robinson, Dave Patman, Oli Savill – bata drums, Juwon Ogungbe, Cleveland Watkiss – voices, Tunde Jegede – kora, Neil Charles – double bass, Nikki Yeoh – piano, Orphy Robinson – xylosynth, Pat Thomas – electronics, Rowland Sutherland – flute and alto flute, Mark Mondesir – drums, Steve Williamson – tenor saxophone, Shabaka Hutchings – bass clarinet.

In this discussion with Ed Hughes, Rowland Sutherland speaks of his dialogue with the recent past – a conversation with the iconic album A Love Supreme by John Coltrane (1964), in the form of a brand new composition, Enlightenment (2014), which reflects some of Coltrane’s structure, methods, experimental musical thinking, and philosophy. While Rowland Sutherland’s work is distinct from other approaches profiled in these interviews in that it primarily responds to a recording and not a score, it also has things in common, especially thinking of ‘texts’ as open and subject to new readings and interpretations . Rowland Sutherland points out that both Coltrane’s work and his own Enlightenment used notations to help shape and plan progression across the large-scale of an album in long movements which perhaps have an almost symphonic quality. But most importantly, this is a new work which absorbs earlier principles and ways of thinking in order to attain the ‘feel’ and ‘spirit’ that is vital to a strong new identity. This is not about mimicking past practices or adhering precisely to a model. Its vision is of a shared and collaborative musical language for today that embraces several cultures of the past and present, including Western, Indian, West African, and Cuban.

Ed Hughes: I’m very interested in your composition Enlightenment in part because in an oblique way it has something in common with my project Sinfonia in which I worked with scores from the 16th Century. You’ve created a piece inspired by the work of an earlier artist. In my case I worked with scores from 500 years ago, in your case you worked with an album from 50 years ago. So, I admire your work, but would like to learn more about it. What is Enlightenment and how did it come about?

Rowland Sutherland: I chose that title after reading about John Coltrane (1926-1967) and his situation, and what he was going through, around the time before he wrote A Love Supreme (1964). And also listening to people who worked with him, and his family members and what they had to say about his experience. He’d been on a decline – not as a musician – but he got caught up in the drugs’ scene and with alcohol; and he got to such a bad situation… such as a time when some musicians got called to a session by Miles Davis, and on this occasion Coltrane didn’t turn up; and it became apparent that it was due to the drug abuse making him forget engagements. I think it got to a stage where Miles felt he couldn’t hire him any more, sadly . I know black musicians were going through a very difficult time during those periods. All kinds of horrific things they had to live with: being treated as second-class citizens; in comparison to white musicians and having reduced opportunities. A lot of the hardships caused many black folks to turn to drink and drugs. Not just black musicians though. Chet Baker , for instance, was an addict too, as were a number of other white musicians. But African American musicians found things particularly bad because of the abuse they met within society. I took part in physical theatre productions on the life of the pianist, bandleader and composer Thelonious Monk and his last seven years. He went through some awful things. He was befriended by the Baroness Pannonica de Koenigswarter who was disowned by her family, the Rothschilds, for her friendships with Black musicians. They were both in a car once which was hailed down by the police who told Monk to wind down his window; spoke to him in a horrible way, for no reason, got vicious and demanded he got out of the car; Monk froze, whilst gripping the steering wheel; the policeman then attacked his hands with a truncheon. All kinds of terrible things like that went on. Going back to Coltrane, he fell into despair. His upbringing was from within a very religious family – Christian. I believe he went to Pentecostal church, surrounded by Pentecostal worshippers. Singing, dancing, playing of instruments. Almost celebratory environment sometimes, like when the congregation would be overcome by the spirit – speaking in tongues. A lot of that stayed with Coltrane and came out in his playing. There were some members of the audience who couldn’t stomach what he was doing. Some people feel he was replicating the speaking in tongues that he experienced as a boy. He’s always had a spiritual side to his playing. It was becoming apparent that he was abusing drugs; so, according to his second wife, Alice Coltrane , he decided to lock himself away to focus on a special composition: he asked God to help him; perhaps he went ‘cold turkey’; something hit home hard with him and he turned to God in a bigger way and said if you can get me through this and help me to play much better again and get me out of this mess then I’ll devote myself to you. A Love Supreme therefore became an offering to God, as a thank you. To the point where, in the last part of A Love Supreme, on the original album sleeve, Coltrane reveals his devotional writing to God. Not long after this he regained special qualities in his playing.

EH: He had a short life didn’t he. It was positive that he attained his powers again.

RS: Yes, he managed to reach an even higher plane. All that is behind A Love Supreme, his dedication and gratitude to God. The album is in four parts. My own work Enlightenment (completed in 2014) is also in four parts – under the influence of A Love Supreme. I think of it as expressing the turmoil and struggle that you can experience in life and lack of coherence, and being blinded by the wrong stuff, and taking the wrong path… and then you suddenly see the light; that’s how I see it but not exclusively. What I decided to do was to go more meditative with it. I decided to be more reflective about love and more in the zone with devotional love. Where Coltrane was heading in life, he was becoming more and more spiritual, as was his wife Alice Coltrane. She gained her spiritual fulfilment from what she discovered in Indian practices. She practiced yoga; had a yogi master. The point is that I took inspiration also from Alice Coltrane; as she had even released her own track called ‘A Love Supreme’ . Her albums strike me as being devotional with chant; they remind me of Hare Krishna worshippers with their chanting, mantras and bells. There are other albums by her which are more jazz-like with world influences. This particular album is incredibly ethereal and loving; there’s a moment where she gets her yogi master, Swami Satchidananda, to recite a love poem. And I used the words of that in what I wrote for the introduction to Enlightenment.

Interestingly, John Coltrane was also moving more into non-western musical elements and incorporating  African drummers, Indian musicians… Taking in musics and spiritualities from other realms and bringing these to his own music. So what we decided to do was to relate Coltrane’s approach to our own present day realities, concerns and experiences.

EH: You conceived and composed Enlightenment – but I understand you see yourself as working with a collective of musicians?

RS: Exactly. For example, I wanted an Indian element so I approached Ansuman Biswas – both a contemporary and traditional musician as well as an improviser. I couldn’t notate everything because it needs space, freedom, and improvisation. But what I did was give him the framework and I actually sang to him the themes that were going to be in the introduction. So he had the themes and motif; and he was able to play lines on the santoor that are centred on the themes that I gave him, to the point where it sounds like traditional Indian music, and relates to the traditional stuff he’s doing today in his community. And basically I explained how I’d like it to build; and so it opens with the tampura playing the sustained drone notes and then the santoor comes in gently, and starts building, and goes into a rhythmic vibe. Sometimes he actually would sing an Indian love poem that he knows; and I wanted an African element to add to this – and I wanted something very traditional. So I brought in a kora instrumentalist because they have a griot tradition with vast knowledge and storytelling traditions in West Africa. A kora player to evoke the West African spirit of the Griot/Kora traditions, and then marry together with the Indian traditions.

EH: I read that Coltrane was interested in Indian music theory and that he had an idea that all music is connected, and there is a universality in music. So everything that you say about your own composition is in the spirit of Coltrane?

RS: That was our aim.

EH: So you were the composer, but your approach meant that it was a shared enterprise.

RS: The curator was Paul Bradshaw who appointed me as the composer and he was the editor of Straight No Chaser (1988-2007, and 2017-) a left field magazine that featured jazz and jazz related music, world jazz, jazz within hip hop, jazz dance – it had a big audience. The magazine collaborated with DJs as well as jazz artists. It had a particular style with an interesting focus on art work as well. Paul Bradshaw told me his ideas as a curator. These fed in to the process. It was agreed that the project should speak to our experiences today.

EH: So, a little like making motets modern, it’s not about being antiquated, but about speaking today by somehow connecting with the historical. It’s an attitude.

RS: Exactly. So what we wanted to do was to continue curating this melting pot, also reflecting the environment I grew up in as well. And so we added more and more elements. We wanted to infuse a Latin American element. And I did this from an African perspective – so I’ve got African Cuban musics that are also infused into it. There’s traditional chanting, of the kind of things that happen in Santeria which is based on the Yoruba tradition.

EH: As in Nigeria?

RS: Exactly. But there’s a big development of that in Cuba, which is ceremonial, and has chants that represent certain occasions.

EH: Do you feel you grew up with Coltrane?

RS: I grew up with Coltrane as much as I did with Miles Davis, Hubert Laws, Dave Valentin, Chick Corea, and a whole host of artists that influenced me strongly as I matured. I didn’t hugely focus on Coltrane but he was very much part of the environment.

EH: So – regarding these influences from Yoruba and Cuba – these are your world, it’s not really Coltrane’s world?

RS: No, some of it was where he was heading – he was working with the spirit of their culture and he wanted to become a part of that too, and absorb the traditions they grew up in and were sharing with him. Some players who were brought into the ensemble are musicians steeped in the spiritual, potent experience of music in Santeria practices, in Cuba. Music with certain specific rhythms that have certain specific meanings. And so I fused that with the Indian and West African traditions – they are all married together. And so the music is building all the time, and within that I’ve added the words of Alice Coltrane’s Yogi Master. I brought in a musician whom I first noticed featured in Straight No Chaser whilst I was still at music school, Juwon Ogungbe . He was becoming better known in London as a Nigerian musician with a unique voice. He possesses a rich classically trained voice singing from baroque to classical recital to opera to traditional and modern Nigerian music – with a well rounded, deep voice – and caught the attention of a lot of people like Paul Bradshaw and others involved in the left field scene. So, I brought Juwon in to recite this poem and it just keeps building – this is all just the intro! Later on I’m playing the melody inspired by the three of the first four notes that Coltrane’ played on A Love Supreme [C, F, G]. So that was like the seed of Enlightenment from which I developed the new composition. This musical motif then becomes the first theme of Enlightenment, once the introduction has developed. Just after that theme there’s a moment where I go into a solo.

By then it’s quite potent – you have the batá drums – and there’s three of those drums – going in rhythm; Ansuman is on the tablas; a rhythmic thing is going on, by Tunde, on the kora; Orphy Robinson then comes in on the xylosynth; and so it’s bubbling away, potent; with myself on the alto flute. And then once that’s been played, then I bring in the jazz side of things, and the jazz musicians. And that’s where it goes into this vibrant, pretty deep, Latin feel. It goes into African Latin Jazz. What used to be termed as Afro-Jazz. And it just keeps building from there. From that point, it has slight traces of some of the harmonies from A Love Supreme, at this point, but not the melodies. What you’ve got to remember is, if you looked at the score for A Love Supreme, it looks like a rough sketch. It’s not heavily notated – there are harmonies, but not lots of lines. It’s not that specific. So, it’s more like a feel. So, on the contrary, I wrote something which has specific lines, and has counterpoint.

EH: So your composition, Enlightenment, has a score?

RS: Yes – everyone has a part. It’s all scored out. Even Ansuman. And the kora player. The kora player changed a few times, but the main kora player was Tunde Jegede. Mosi Conde and Kadialy Kouyate were the other kora players.

The batá drums were the only ones without parts except at the start. I get some of the musicians to intertwine, like the vocalists, coming in and out, in and out. For me that’s all centred around the theme of love and developing that. But in the midst of that, especially when the sax solo starts, that brings in some of the tension and the turmoil. It is incessant; goes deeper – explores turmoil and anguish. After that there’s a bit more light and the piano solo comes in. The main theme comes back again, and then it goes in to part two.

EH: Is that main theme the one that references Coltrane?

RS: No – it’s more through-composing. However there is another echo of A Love Supreme. There was a song that someone wrote derived from chant. Coltrane does something like that on the original album – [sings] ‘A Love Supreme, A Love Supreme’. I did something similar that echoes my theme [but with the melody being amongst the instruments]. It repeats itself at certain points when the main theme with the whole band is playing [long, short, long: Eb, down to C, up to F]. It’s a three note chant-like pattern. It’s not the same, but it is similar [in function].

EH: It’s almost like an idée fixe ?

RS: Yeah, exactly. Exactly. And so that comes back after the solos, and then it goes into the second part. And it’s got a similar feel to A Love Supreme.

EH: So just to zoom out a bit. The piece is very much your music. Although you are following the structure of Coltrane, it’s new music. But in the midst of that, there are some what you might call secret references to Coltrane?

RS: No, not really. Rather than secret, I would use the term subliminal. It’s more the first part – the opening and the first part. So… In the second part we are now more heading to swing. That’s inspired by what happens in Coltrane where there is a real swing feel. I felt that spirit so I composed something that had a strong swing feel.

EH: You are not quoting the Coltrane album; but you are using a similar method or approach.

RS: Yes…there exists a certain feel or spirit that you can detect in a sense from what he is playing. It’s quite loose. He does have a specific theme – but then they develop it radically once that theme is laid down. The second part is another. It’s important to understand that my response is informed by how my personal experience relates to Coltrane’s. I grew up in a church; I’ve got the Caribbean background where many embrace the Pentecostal church and I’ve seen the worship there and the, at times, ecstatic state of the congregation. And when the band is playing and you’ve got the tambourine going – there is a celebratory aspect to what goes on, and there is heightened spirit. I wanted to infuse that atmosphere in my part 2. Even when the horns are playing, it’s a theme you can sing back. I’ve got the bass clarinet doing the high notes, sustained theme, which gives off the wail that goes on amongst that – the calling out to the greater being. That shuffle feel makes this part the footstomper part. Somewhat like the Jazz Messengers (where the drum leader Art Blakey exudes a very spirited and jubilant feel) who are synonymous with this style. So this jubilation is associated with the Pentecostal church. You are being lifted. That’s partly why I called the work Enlightenment. You are becoming more spiritually aware and sensing the goodness of the spirit. At the conclusion of that I took it to this powerful and vigorous section which starts slowish, featuring the bata drums, the tabla, and chanting as well. Then the kick drum joins in and it builds, faster, louder, stronger and explodes in the drum kit players powerful energy – goes into this vigorous solo – this is on the Union Chapel clip. It’s another ecstatic moment.

And then it enters into the third part. On A Love Supreme, Coltrane goes to the blues; I also go to the blues. It keeps within that spirit. Fast, loose. Fast and furious. Now he’s up and running – he’s got his health back. For me it’s like when you are celebrating having fought the obstacles and you are back and raring to go. You are so bursting to go so it shows in that energy. When we did it at the QEH it really took off in a ridiculous way. It was like fireworks going off on stage – I had a brilliant player in Pat Thomas using electronics and it sparking. The whole stage erupted.

EH: So it’s like a scherzo?

RS: Yes, exactly, exactly it’s like the scherzo. For example, Beethoven 7 . Quite vigorous. Or the Eroica scherzo! They’ve got a merry romp feel to them. Or the 9th Symphony.

EH: The fifth is weird too with its segue into the finale. Beethoven’s work was also a dream of freedom, somewhat against the reality of the conditions in which he lived. This reminds me of my chat with Shirley Thompson. She said her utopian New Nation Rising, A 21st Century Symphony (2002) was modelled on Beethoven’s Symphony No. 9.

RS: Really! That’s very interesting. I haven’t heard her symphony yet.

EH: Her fourth movement is a ‘melting pot’. She used that phrase too. It has the Beethovenian dimension. But also she draws together a rapper and other musicians from different areas.

RS: Overall… the soloists in mine are also narrating, singing, chanting. The setting [moves into] an otherworldly realm for the fourth part. I took inspiration from the word setting of Coltrane’s psalm. There are these momentary phrases that go in and out of the horns. You have the psalms, and the build towards the end, and then an ending with calmness. I was touched by the response of the audience. I literally saw people moved to tears at the end. Nevertheless Cleveland Watkiss’s reading of Coltrane’s psalm-like poem was the most controversial thing about the whole piece, according to some of the press it received. I think there were some reviewers that weren’t totally aware of what was being recited. After all, there’s a lot of God thanking during this final part.

EH: Like Haydn who usually closed his works with the remark ‘Laus Deo’?

RS: Yes. Surely religious texts can be appreciated in art. Steve Reich’s Tehillim (1981) is purely psalms. Handel’s Messiah – nobody worries or complains.

EH: I saw Roxanna Panufnik – and she has had to face difficult reviews about style; but I wondered whether the reviewers actual problem was that some of her works are an explicit representation of faith.

RS: So that’s a no-go area is it.

EH: I’m totally with you on this – we wouldn’t have Messiaen’s music if you couldn’t celebrate divine ecstasy.

RS: Why is that not a problem – is it only when you go into words and scriptures?

EH: Somehow with Messiaen you’re listening to ecstatic chords and colours. Perhaps the problem is with text.

RS: So text jars with certain people who might be agnostic or atheist?

EH: This is purely my off-the-cuff speculation. I have no idea. I am just wondering if the worry, the anxiety, for reviewers, is if people are not using their music so much for serving a concert-going audience but instead actually aiming at an expression of inner spirituality. I don’t know – it’s an interesting point you have raised. I haven’t read the reviews to Enlightenment but it sounds like it was a huge success.

RS: It felt extremely well received to be honest – to the point where BBC Radio 3 broadcast it on the date of the 50th anniversary of the release of A Love Supreme. And, they interviewed me before they played it. And they interviewed me before they aired it. The interview was placed alongside archive interviews with Alice Coltrane and with the members of John Coltrane’s Quartet who played on A Love Supreme. Which was a real honour. And Jez Nelson, the presenter, made his own comments before they played it. Almost, in a subtle way, to prepare the listeners to his show.

EH: Is there any possibility of reviving it live?

RS: It’s only been performed in London. The curator isn’t a promoter who has the capacity to promote it elsewhere. He did a brilliant job when it did happen. It kicked off at Kings College London, Chapel, Strand; in a raw, initial form . But there was still more to sort out in the music. And then we played it at the Meltdown Festival, Southbank Centre. And James Lavelle was curator… once employed by Straight No Chaser. Hence the connection. And it gave Lavelle a platform in an important magazine. When they released the tickets for sale, only 6 weeks before the Enlightenment concert, it sold out within a week. So when the Southbank Centre saw that they gave us a matinee show as well. Bear in mind, James Lavelle gave us the final day – we were on the last day of Meltdown. So, it was a big night (and afternoon). Both performances were sold out and it had rapturous ovations. A very memorable day. And then later on we performed it on two separate occasions at Union Chapel . It exhausted London. To be honest, I’m not totally sure why, but you couldn’t get the promoters outside London to take it on. So sadly other parts of the country didn’t get to experience it.

Judith Weir CBE in conversation with Ed Hughes.

In this conversation, Judith Weir discusses with Ed Hughes aspects of her work in the context of connections with historical music. Though comparatively rare there are two examples in her work which overtly explore early musical scores as vessels for modern thought. Judith Weir speaks of working with and appreciating old music as a natural ‘affinity’ but not often as a public process. Recomposition can on occasion be a way to inhabit ‘fantastic’ early music material but there is also, for Judith Weir, a strong sense of resistance to the old; that the vital aspect of composition should be in the transformation and indeed that she understands a general dislike of quotation. Nevertheless, at a deeper level, Weir acknowledges the importance of indirect influences and recalls her exploration of Bach’s repertoire through a handful of organ lessons while at school as a teenager. Weir remarks on the fascination of playing three parts with the feet and the two hands – perhaps there is a sense in which this early exploration of contrapuntal music helped to shape compositional methods later on. Nevertheless, while acknowledging the productive tension between repertoire and contemporary expression, Weir asserts a resistance to the old – apart from occasional works – in the comment ‘When I am composing I am really not thinking about style at all’.

Ed Hughes: While thinking about ‘recomposition’ and its fit within the modern compositional voice – a paradox, perhaps – I read that some of your earliest works were modelled on existing music . There seems to be two approaches amongst composers: one which references other music from within a composition, in a complex or even covert way, the other where a new composition is openly modelled on an existing work. Are there any acknowledged pieces that are openly modelled on earlier work?

Judith Weir: I can give two examples immediately, and they are both Perotin motets. One is based on Sederunt Principes, and the other is Viderunt Omnes (in All the Ends of the Earth (1999)). The modelling is very evident with material like Perotin. It’s quite easy to imagine that such material could be very plastic and capable of being moulded in various ways. Sederunt Principes was a piece for a big instrumental ensemble: that’s quite an old piece and I can’t really remember too much about writing it. But Viderunt Omnes – which is 20 years old now and gets performed reasonably often and is recorded – is based on the Perotin motet, but only taking the plainsong element “Vi-“, and then about two minutes later “De-“, and so on; and then, filling in the spaces with another text which is freely composed.

But I think of it as totally modelled on the Perotin because it’s got the exact spacings of the plainsong and, as you know, these become closer and closer together as the work proceeds.

EH: There’s a marvellous motet called ‘Nuper Rosarum Flores’ by Dufay which I learnt about at university in which the musical material gradually accelerates in a proportional relationship.

JW: Yes that’s a very interesting possibility. It’s almost like modern ideas of timing in composition – for example the golden section, or where form is conceived as a spiral so that the spaces between elements become gradually closer and closer together.

EH: Was this idea to build a new work out of a Perotin model one that you conceived, or was it suggested?

JW: It was a commission but it was one I very much wanted to do. It fitted into a request which was to write a piece for a series to do with the end of the last millennium. So, one thought was to go back 1000 years to the music that was about to be heard then. It didn’t seem at the time at all like a weird way to work, and that may well have been because I’d had really quite a long experience of considering models. I too have done very extreme editions of older music – like the transformation of King Arthur by Martin Butler and Peter Wiegold. I’ve certainly done that in my time – not necessarily as a published work but perhaps for use somewhere. Working with old music is natural to me.

EH: This reminds me that last week I met Robin Holloway in Cambridge. I’ve only just properly discovered his Gilded Goldbergs (for two pianos, after J S Bach, op 86 (1992-1997)).

JW: That’s one of the great [pieces] – I’m so glad you mentioned that – it’s marvellous.

EH: In the liner notes to the CD recording – generous because they give such insights into the ways in which the pieces were made through a diary of composition – Robin Holloway comments that, though the pieces started as practical arrangements, as he began to work on the variations ‘ “interference” crackled the transmission’; meaning that the creative spirit kicked in uninvited.

JW: I can think of all sorts of marvellous things about that project. Firstly just that he would have liked to have heard the counterpoint a bit more, but it was squashed in between the hands, so he had to have some means of widening it out – that was an early perception I think. And, also, that he played it with his pupils. I thought he should have had a teaching award for that project as well as artistic recognition. It was such a pure representation of what he does. I heard Huw Watkins and Ryan Wigglesworth play it.

EH: It came to my mind because clearly you wouldn’t have taken on a Perotin project if it hadn’t in some way been close to your compositional interests. And so building on that – and being aware of Robin Holloway’s work – that there’s a practical reason for starting (e.g. the two manuals on the old keyboard creating lines tricky to realise on a modern piano) – is it the case that work like this becomes a dialogue with musical notation, or with musical history? And what are the benefits of such work – for example it’s recorded that for Robin Holloway the engagement with Schumann was important creatively?

JW: Firstly there is the great pleasure of getting much closer to that model than one would do otherwise. I don’t perform in music, or conduct, and so just to look at it that carefully is fantastic – a sense of exploration. And of course, with the model there, one overcomes the perennial questions of ‘where shall I start’, or ‘what can I do’. Probably you should have the ‘where shall I start’ question before you go and work on that particular Perotin piece. But it’s a feeling of carving something out of some fantastic material, through a possibly more relaxed compositional process because there’s something there very clearly to work with.

EH: Can you recall any experiences with pre-existing music that you consider to be formative to your musical language? For example, Shirley Thompson was telling me that she was leader of her youth orchestra in Newham and they played Beethoven symphonies and Bach’s Passions every year, and that Beethoven 9 was formative upon the eventual overall outline and structure of her own New Nation Symphony, a portrait of London. Or in my own case I was transfixed at an early stage by the CD recording of John Sheppard’s music, by the Tallis Scholars.

JW: I wouldn’t know where to start because my whole wish to compose came out of my love of earlier music. It was difficult for people of my generation to hear music quite as old as, say, Sheppard. There weren’t recordings, really; but, being an oboe player as a student, I performed a huge range of music. Often when talking about a piece of music of mine, I recall some model that occurred to me – it’s almost difficult while working on a piece not to do that, to make a link conceptually to a pre-existing work – and so, just as you’re saying, the way that you compose [is conditioned by formative experiences with existing music]. Just to give one example, thinking back to my teens, I was given the chance by the person who taught me music at school to study organ. She said “I’m an organist, would you like to have organ lessons?” It was a weird experience – but I remember it being fascinating doing these three parts with the feet and the two hands. I think the furthest I got was Bach’s Orgelbüchlein – the easier movements – and somehow, the separation of the three lines, the top, middle and bottom – stayed with me. That’s an example that has come to mind, this afternoon.

EH: I was listening to I Broke Off a Golden Branch (1991) and I have that sense of two musics going across co-existing instruments, almost in two different registers.

JW: Yes that’s probably right – it’s a work with two bass instruments, and an upper and lower part – I’m sure that’s right; I could find many examples of that. That’s completely relevant to me.

EH: Do you connect with traditions and histories of music through the medium of instruments themselves? So I’m thinking of Art of Touching the Keyboard (1983), for example. Are you reaching into histories through the medium of the keyboard itself?

JW: I’m sure that is right – particularly working with solo instruments. It seems natural to think about their whole repertory. Often the players themselves offer you these incredible nuggets of inspiration, from their experience. The most recent piece I’ve composed like that is an Oboe Concerto (2018), and I’ve just got back from performances in Australia. I used to play the oboe so I can supply that history myself but [the soloist and I] were definitely talking in terms of the oboe repertory and making comparisons with this or that concerto from the past. It was a way of discussing the music that I’d written. I’d emphasise this is not because those pieces sounded like the music I had written, but there was something about the way they were written [which gave us a way of discussing the new material]. And so with instruments that I don’t play I’m really interested to hear the performers’ insights – after all, that’s their life story. If you play the horn professionally, you have spent thirty years or so thinking about these particular pieces from the past. That’s very interesting.

EH: I share the impulse to compose from a love of existing music. I appreciate Robin Hollway’s idea of ‘interference crackling the transmission’ because there’s a sense there that something new proceeds from what one’s building on. I’m intrigued also by the experience of being taught – Shirley Thompson and Errolyn Wallen, for example, have both spoken about the controlling or limited values of composition teachers when they were students who essentially said you can’t compose like that – you must use the methods of serialism and modernism. It makes me think that if one builds composition merely on techniques and therefore removes it from tradition there’s an impoverishment there which also creates a difficult tension. And in terms of the dilemma between having a new voice, a modern voice, and reaching back into the past in a way that is still fresh, I’m reminded of a recent very interesting talk by Pascal Dusapin before the performance of his dance opera Passion (2008) in which he said although he’s referencing the world of the early Baroque, and he immerses himself in musical histories and musical ideas, when it comes to composing, he said, ‘I close the book’, and the music is ‘totally my own’. I wondered what you think about that: is modern music still affronted by quotation?

JW: Funnily enough, the word ‘quotation’ would affront me a bit. There was a fashion when I was a very young composer, and I’m thinking of people even like Maxwell Davies but much lesser people also, who really would do that; you would hear the usual sort of modern [textures] and then there would be a little sentence from Monteverdi, or whatever; that seemed to me to be not quite right, really. I’d exempt something like Berio’s Sinfonia (1968-9) – that’s not the same thing at all. That actual thing of somebody else’s music appearing, especially recognisably, in the middle of your own, that would worry me too. But I know exactly what you are talking about. In a way I am a bit like Dusapin. I’m constantly out hearing this or that piece of old music. But when I am composing, I really am in a different world. I’m not really thinking about style at all.  And, at my stage, I really have stopped worrying about how modern it is. In a sense, in the context I compose for, it increasingly is not an issue. But I know exactly what you’re talking about because I wouldn’t want to hear a piece that sounded like a historical pastiche. I’d think, I’d rather be hearing the real work – Bach, or whatever. I think it’s a very interesting and dynamic question, and difficult to solve.

EH: This is helping me to understand that connection to histories of music needs to involve transformation or assimilation.

JW: I would say so – I think it’s very interesting when people create dynamic contrasts with some old piece of material, but I feel it’s not really the thing I’m doing myself. And I think critical commentaries are often so pleased to have an easy link – I mean if a journalist was going to write about your work and you say, ‘Oh yes, I was thinking about Bach’, then they gratefully latch on to that, and then it does sound like everything is a tribute act – but it really doesn’t work like that.

EH: Was Perotin therefore a specialist piece, a one-off?

JW: Yes – and I think it would be wrong to do that again, ever. It was a special idea that came out of that particular work, and the context of writing the piece. Yes – I think that could soon become quite a lazy thing – for example ‘now here is my new work based on’ the next great choral work!

EH: Yes, you express the dangers of that very clearly. But I still think there can be value and interest creatively and analytically in having a composer’s eyes and/or ears on earlier music through acts of recomposition. I was exploring Dunstaple’s (c.1390-1453) Veni Sancte Spiritus – multi-layered piece – and commentators rightly talk about the use of thirds which come over as an almost exotic effect. But for me it was helpful to go over that piece from a recomposition perspective, to experience the move from open fifths and octaves, to a moment where the third is added, as though with fresh ears, as a powerful event. A different sonority in fact. So that when you listen – with different ears [e.g. through recomposition] – to this music these moments are very striking.

JW: Yes – and often there will be tiny details that may not be that structurally enormous. I think that’s right. In almost any classical symphony there’ll be a strange moment with implications that you would never stop a rehearsal to remark on. Yes, you’re right, when I started as a composer it was not really possible to be based in these past composers – which is why Robin Holloway was such a controversial figure. Now the situation is different.

Shirley J. Thompson in conversation with Ed Hughes.

Shirley J. Thompson is a London based composer with international commissions across many genres, including orchestra, opera, ballet and ensemble. She founded the Shirley Thompson Ensemble in 1994 to develop boundary crossing work and in 2018 was awarded the OBE for services to Music. In this conversation, Shirley spoke to Ed Hughes about her interests in things that connect music, crossing or even demolishing the borders between high/popular music. This is what has motivated her to consciously reference contemporary and historical elements in her music, as well as to absorb and synthesise valuable methods from the western classical tradition. For Shirley Thompson the choral tradition, especially hymns and chorales, conveys ‘universal’, shared experience. But the key to this universality is that the experience is ‘lived’.

Ultimately, what connects musical cultures is far more important to her than divisions and distinctions based on style. In this context we considered the limitations that university training of composers sometimes imposes and associated ambivalent feelings about formal education: yet also acknowledge that experience of music outside one’s chosen field leads to enrichment and innovation. But most importantly, Shirley Thompson’s background and experience, and her interest in broad communication, led her to value and celebrate elements from popular musics, and political and historical topics, that have previously been excluded from western classical music platforms. Because of this Shirley J. Thompson has sometimes encountered resistance and lack of understanding, but has nevertheless developed a unique identity forged from the experience of multiple musics in collision.

Ed Hughes: Shirley, is it fair to say you bridge classical music and the popular? I notice you have many diverse influences, from very recently to long ago, and from popular to classical,  which can be heard in your New Nations Rising: A 21st Century Symphony (2003) with the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra. When you think about how your music relates to existing music does your reaction to music change according to how old it is?

Shirley Thompson: I look for good qualities in all music and am not really concerned about when it was written. With my Symphony, in the opening movement, I was trying to resurrect a kind of universal appeal. So the first movement was deliberately in a Beethovenian ‘Pastoral’ mood. In the second movement I worked the ‘We’ll Meet Again’ song and weaved it into the orchestral texture, to mark the world wars and how they affected London. Then in the third movement, about the industrial revolution – I went back to the Victorian period and tried to recreate the fairground with characteristic music such as the Viennese Waltz.

EH: So you immersed yourself in that kind of material? And then made your own one?

ST: That’s right. And then – in the Hip Hop movement, I was thinking of Lauryn Hill and the like .

EH: Is that the fourth movement of your Symphony, called New Nation Rising?

ST: Yes.

EH: Was the Symphony performed in concert as well as for the recording?

ST: Yes – before the Queen ; and in Romania ; and by orchestras in America. I even had a Romanian rapper perform the spoken word sections. I find that contemporary audiences really like what I do, audiences that aren’t necessarily classical music audiences. I’m not trying to write for a classical audience specifically – I’m trying to write for people searching for interesting cultural experiences. People, like myself, that like films, literature, a variety of music, and popular culture.

EH: I completely get that directness in your musical language. But I also like the way in which your music can be quite complex – for example in the New Nation Rising movement. And yet, also coherent. You can hear the layers – I really love music that does that – like Bach’s music, for example.

ST: Absolutely – Bach is one of my classical music heroes.

EH: So, sometimes with some tunes moving more slowly or quickly than other melodies. But somehow with your voice you’ve made it coherent and individual.

ST: I strive for coherence – and for musical lines that make sense to me at least.

EH: And hopefully the audience goes on that journey with you.

ST: Absolutely – my music is performed in local festivals, for example in East London, and not necessarily to classical music audiences. I need my audience to understand the music in the first take, and they do.

EH: Do you feel that, because they trust you, you take them on a journey to unexpected musical places, or is that not the point?

ST: Yes, I’d like to think that my audiences trust me. When New Nation Rising was performed in a local music festival, audience members said, ‘Wow! We didn’t know classical music could sound like this!’ Feedback from audiences really encourages me because I don’t get much encouragement from the establishment, necessarily.

EH: Well – who does!

ST: Well, one or two people, yeah!  But I’m very encouraged by my audiences – I get full houses when my music’s performed. Last week at Kings Place I had a packed house. My audience encourages me to write and pursue commissions etc.

EH: Could you tell me a little about the way you made the New Nation Rising? For example, with the rapper I hear on the recording – did you write all of that?

ST: I gave him a brief. I had to write and to realise the whole movement on audio before performance, because he didn’t read music. I recorded everything. The rapper created the spoken word to my brief – it was about a vision of altruism for our future, about optimism, about a progressive new leader coming over the horizon. What you hear in the track is what he came up with further to that discussion.

EH: Who was the new leader?

ST: Well, I was thinking of someone like Barack Obama.

EH: It was a really optimistic time!

ST: Well, at the time we were in the middle of the Iraq war. So I had no idea what would happen in 2009 – because I finished this composition in 2003.

EH: So it was more like a vision?

ST: Yes. I had a vision of progressive leadership from a strong, connected leader. At the time we had Bush, and I felt like we were on a precipice going to War, which we did.

EH: How very strong of you to write something optimistic in those times. And also that’s what you are doing now too.

ST: I think it is my duty as an artist. And now, we have Trump! I aim to lift spirits with my music and create optimism. With a tonal-ish language, I feel that my musical language connects universally. In my earlier years, at university, I was being encouraged to write like Birtwistle. If you wrote in that style you would be taken more seriously and get a good grade.

EH: The university environment has got some things to answer for.

ST: Yeah, the university environment was very much like that. I don’t think it’s like that so much, now. In my department, in the University of Westminster School of Arts, I teach composition, often in commercial contexts.

EH: I’m sure your department is very forward looking. My personal philosophy is if students want to write like Birtwistle they should, but there also needs to be space for all kinds of other styles. You’ve got to encourage great work and recognise it in whatever the style.

ST: Was Jonathan Harvey at Sussex?

EH: Yes – I knew Jonathan but that was after he left Sussex in the 1990s to devote himself full time to composition. Then, he got ill in c. 2010. I helped him write out his last, choral, composition, Plainsongs for Peace and Light (2012).

ST: I really like his work. Multilayered, very contrapuntal.

EH: Somehow Jonathan manages to be a visionary modernist. Also direct, and yet complex.

ST: I met him briefly with Peter Wiegold. Jonathan gave a talk at Brunel. Peter was my tutor for my PhD. I chose him because of his work in improvisation, which really interested me. I had an ensemble that improvised a lot.

EH: I also know Martin Butler – a colleague of mine at Sussex, and a collaborator with Peter Wiegold.

ST: I was right there at the beginning when notes inégales started in the Purcell Room.

So – I’ve been moving between improv, classical, film, popular musics, all these different styles and drawing on all of these having been immersed in them.

EH: Is it fair to say that you have been using these styles fluently, unconsciously – you don’t put things into big quotation marks?

ST: Yes, I think I have been immersed in all these musical languages. I’m not trying to put musical material in as an add-on. I think when people try to integrate popular music into what they do, and they haven’t lived it, it doesn’t necessarily work. In my case, I used to go to clubs, and so understood that whole vibe.

EH: I read your brothers are DJs. So you really know – from the inside – there’s a whole authenticity that counts. And it’s different from just lifting an artefact.

ST: I think so, that’s right. It’s all a lived experience, which makes the difference. Because I do feel authentic in my writing. I really have lived through these cultural experiences in some way or another and translated them into music. That’s what makes for me what I do resonate. It has to feel right, and be coherent.

EH: That comes over very clearly. Can I ask about the singer who sings “We want what is right for the world” in New Nation Rising. Did you write the words?

ST: Yes.

EH: So this is again a vision for a better world? More equality?

ST: Yes – we were in the middle of the Iraq war, so it’s an appeal for peace. It looked and felt like the world was going over a precipice and I felt I just had to say something, in music. Music can be very powerful in making change, or bringing attention to things.

EH: There’s a very interesting mix of elements including those purely coming from within, and music you are reaching out to, to evoke diversity.

ST: Yes, I used a kit drum which was unusual in a classical context at the time. I brought in a drummer who could play popular music to the recording. The recording was organised by the Royal Philharmonic CEO. I was working with the RPO on a project in Newham. I was also working with schools’ choirs in Newham at the time. I wrote specifically for that skill level of voice, as well as for classes from 7 to 17 year olds.

EH:  And were they used to any particular choral tradition?

ST: Yes, hymns, some from the basic choral tradition. It had to be a musical language they could learn very quickly as well. I like to reach out with a universal language that most people will understand from wherever they come from.

EH: Does that descend from Bach? Just thinking about the chords/notes you might use?

ST: I love Bach’s chorales; I love the Passions; Palestrina; Mozart’s operas…

EH: So that’s what you mean by a universal language – one that draws on all those elements?

ST: Yes and synthesising them. It comes out through me, as a 21st century person. And all those experiences I’ve lived, going to opera and so on.

EH: So you said Beethoven. Does Beethoven provide you with a compositional model, even though your music is new?

ST: Yes.

EH: There was an interview on a special channel and you were talking about a symphony; you brilliantly summarised what a symphony is – the guy didn’t know and you explained that it is like ‘mixing your tracks’.

It starts with a pastoral feel, and then there’s an energetic section, and then there’s a dance, and then you’ve got the ‘height of the story’, you said, and then it finishes with an anthem with singing. It sounded like a really cogent summary of symphonic form! It reminded me of Beethoven’s Ninth.

ST: Yes – well that was my model for this. You’re absolutely right! A striving towards Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony.

EH: Why – why Beethoven’s Ninth?

ST: I see it as a kind of ultimate in symphonic writing, yeah, still. I find it a very very moving experience. Especially the choral movement. I think it was the first symphony I was really exposed to. And I performed it in youth orchestra. I was with the Newham Youth Orchestra from the age of 11 until 18, I led it, in fact, for two years. We played all the romantic repertoire, the classical repertoire, Haydn, Brahms through to late 19th century. I had a lot of my orchestral experience through playing with the youth orchestra. We played the St Matthew Passion every year and the Bach B minor mass.

EH: These were formative?

ST: Entirely formative. And we did French orchestral music too. After that period I didn’t get back into orchestral music – at university it was more about musicology than about performance.

EH: So that period was difficult, was it, being told what to write?

ST: Well, I felt I was really going over what I’d already done – up to A level. We had studied the history of western music from medieval music up to the present day. That’s what we did again, for my first degree. I suppose we were going over it in more depth, with specialisms. So our specialisms were Mozart; we also had a Debussy specialist, and a Vivaldi specialist – so, like you, it’s all to do with who’s there. From the micro comes the macro – it’s transferable. Three years of Palestrina hasn’t done me any harm in my composition! Total immersion.

EH: One more question about the Symphony. I was struck by your loyalty to London – even though in your TEDx talk I heard you saying you had very mixed experiences growing up.

ST: Well, it’s my home. I was born here and have lived here all my life. And, having left London and gone to other places, I just see all the positives. So London has achieved a lot, culturally, because of the melting pot of cultures here. So I do see it as a sort of global place because of all the other cultures that are here and that you can be yourself, really, in London. Whereas you can’t in many other spaces around the world.

EH: So the piece is fundamentally celebratory?

ST: Very much, celebratory. Even with the experiences I’ve had, but that’s life. My challenging experiences have pushed me to be who I am.

EH: You really made me think when you spoke about your 10 year old self and having your grades suppressed by your teachers.

ST: Yes, apparently, I was being prepared for a factory life at school! The teachers supposedly thought that, because I was from a Caribbean family, I could not achieve very much in life. They didn’t say that, in so many words, but when my mother enquired why I wasn’t being sent to the same school as all my friends with a solely European culture (I happened to be the only person in my school from a Caribbean family) they said – oh she’ll be much better off in the lower ability school and hereby sealing my destiny, even though I was always obtaining A grades.

EH: Terrible. But yours was a really compelling talk.

ST: Thank you. And I made it up on the spot! The TED talk before mine was so heart-felt and I had prepared a musicological look at my symphony! I quickly changed my talk to make it more personal. It was totally and utterly improvised!

EH: Are there any other pieces of yours that I could look at that consciously use existing music? Robin Holloway’s music is haunted by earlier music, quite often. And recently I have done this too – so that’s why I was interested in the way you were responding to different texts. And consciously incorporating different musical traditions.

ST: With the Symphony I consciously employed direct musical samples that are known universally. I wanted the audience to relate to specific moments in history. But usually I integrate known music style, i.e. English folk, South African Township, Blue Beat, etc, subtly. Unrecognisably, in most instances. In my opera, Sacred Mountain: Incidents in the Life of Queen Nanny of the Maroons I employed the technique of signifying musically. Queen Nanny was a Jamaican warrior queen who defeated the English militia in Jamaica over a 20-year period. I try to set the scene with my music depicting a 17th century Jamaica when enslaved African people were working on the plantations and many escaped to the hinterlands of Jamaica forming their own enclaves. Queen Nanny was a famed leader of one of these enclaves – Maroon Town – and the British were always trying to capture her village. They had guns and gunpower to use against the enslaved – but without weaponry Queen Nanny was able to use guerilla tactics and ingenious strategy to defeat the English militia. The maroon soldiers would use camouflage to make themselves look like trees and then pounce on the [English] soldiers. They would create deep pits that looked like even ground, then the soldiers would fall in. They created all kinds of strategy to defeat the army, which they did. I employ several musical signifiers in the predominantly contemporary classical orchestral texture. These include the Abeng (cow horn), which was employed by the enslaved persons to send messages in code for miles across the land. I use the fife whistle to represent the presence of the English militia. I sometimes add a layer of reggae to capture the spirit of Jamaica etc etc

EH: And just curious again, are you quoting them, or are you living them and then composing them yourself?

ST: I would say that I’m employing compositional techniques to create musical textures that create an atmosphere; to create multiple layers musically and aurally and signposts with musical signifiers. 

EH: Any particular artists that were influential in respect of the reggae in your opera?

ST: I sometimes refer to a sub-genre of reggae from a period called Dub which was dominated by the sound-system period of the 1970s and 1980s. Sound systems playing Dub music were huge in particular communities and the bass line was everything. People would speak of having to ‘feel’ the reverberation of the bass line before the music could be authentic to them. In the opera, I integrate a Dub bass-line.

EH: Just using classical instruments?

ST: Yes, I use a double bass. Actually, I use both – electronic bass and acoustic double bass to emulate the sound and feel of a reggae bass-line.

EH: So innovation in opera is being driven by the knowledge of other music?

ST: That’s right, yes.

EH: A great reason for this kind of work. Without being able to refer to other music you don’t actually drive the innovation in [one’s own] classical music.

ST: That’s right. Yeah – I’m doing this as I go along but now you’re rationalising it for me – ha ha – it’s great!

EH: One thing I’m quite interested to do is ask why? The why. A personal reason for me to do this is actually what I’m really trying to do I realised before we met, I am really trying to work out what I am. Where I’m coming from. Because I was interested in early music at university and am still returning to it now.

ST: The thing is when we went to study musicology at our various universities, we weren’t encouraged to be ourselves, creatively. Whereas with my students it’s all about artistic persona – they know exactly who they are. But without the skills as yet!

EH: Often very true!

ST: You know they enter my class and say ‘I’m a composer’ – they know exactly who they are – and I’m writing in this style and doing this – they are very articulate. But we went in, wide-eyed, we’re learning about Mozart, Penderecki, Ligeti, the classical ‘canon’, without question. It was a while after I completed my Masters degree in Composition, that I began to explore my own musical voice.

EH: I can certainly relate to that.

ST: That’s why I think a lot of contemporary music is really lost because it’s not steeped in anything. It’s not grounded in anything.

EH: I think that’s shared with other composers. I think Robin Holloway might say something similar from his perspective – he sees some modern music as intellectually frozen and dogmatic .

ST: I felt that. How was Penderecki relating to me? How was Ligeti relevant?  Although I could admire what was being written, as a composer I was looking for a cultural ‘in’ as well. The culture of Eastern Europe, and how this music came out of this culture, was not discussed – it was all about the sound. We did not discuss cultural context. And that’s why I think now looking back, oh my gosh, I could admire all the music – and I did – but we weren’t taught it in a way that told the whole story.

EH: To be fair to Birtwistle I think there are some of his pieces which have a very personal sense. Soundworld of colliery bands and so on. I know what you mean – as well as teaching through analytical terms, you also need to give an indication that this is what drives the music which brings it alive…

ST: …So it becomes alive – yes – that’s all it needed. There was almost a fear of going into that in the teaching of it. I’m not sure how classical music is taught now because I’m in a music department where all music is given its cultural context.

EH: Yes, I was at a university in the late 1980s doing a first degree and (although composition teaching was more nuanced) the education itself was quite formal.

I was trying to remind myself why did I start this project of interviewing composers about sources outside their chosen genres? It’s because of my own recent Sinfonia, which you heard, which basically uses five different pieces as starting points: Agincourt Carol, Stella Celi by Cooke, Veni Sancte Spiritus by Dunstable, In iejunio et fletu by Tallis, Silver Swan by Gibbons. You said after the performance of this piece something really interesting. You said it was ‘very English’, which is great, because it’s true, because I’m English and because of all the references it builds on –

ST: Which I like – it’s very grounded.

EH: But then you said it’s magical, or surreal…

ST: Yes, because my favourite books are in that magical realist tradition where you’ve got all these layers of stories going on in different time spaces, in literature. A lot of my reference points are in literature and in film.

EH: Which authors are we talking about here?

ST: Mainly Gabriel García Márquez (Colombia, 1927-2014). One Hundred Years of Solitude (1967). Love in the Time of Cholera (1985) – one of my favourite all time books.

EH: Multiple simultaneous narratives?

ST: Yes – I love this style of literature. Marquez explores the minutae of his culture. Thinking of it – there are a lot of very successful Scottish composers – James Macmillan, Judith Weir, Thea Musgrave, Anna Meredith. There’s something about their grounding in their Scottish culture that affords them a distinct, confident voice. There doesn’t seem to be as strong an English identity. However, what strikes me about your work is its quintessential Englishness. You’re really creating this English identity in music. The French seem to have it, the Scottish seem to have it, the Irish seem to have it. But is there such a strong English identity? We seem to look towards Europe more than we do our own English culture.

EH: Perhaps there is an unconscious worry about the imperialist/colonialist past?

ST: Ah! Could be. Is that a recent thing? Did that affect early 20th century composers like Vaughan Williams and all those early composers – they seemed to have more of an English voice.

EH: They did, and they were certainly very culturally rooted in the sense that Holst and Vaughan Williams went round the countryside on their bicycles with wax cylinders recording traditional English folksingers in pubs. Or so I learnt from a BBC2 programme! But it fits in with what you’re saying about rootedness in the culture and with what we’re saying about this project and the impulse to compose out of earlier music.

ST: You’re really successful in what you are doing and it makes a lot of sense. Especially that whole reference to what happened at Agincourt, and all these spaces, because that’s what I was trying to do in my Symphony – recreate comparable historical scenes with a 21st century sensibility.

EH: Yes – perhaps we’re both saying that the present is vivid, exciting and complex, precisely because it’s still full of these voices from all different places including these distant voices from the past.

ST: Yes! Which is the magical realism. Because you’ve got all these voices coming in and out from the different spaces. All coherent somehow.

EH: So are you going to compose another symphony?

ST: Yes – I’ve had one on my mind for some time but not had a chance to compose it. I’ve been concentrating on the operatic work. I thought, I should have written another symphony by now though! I’d like to compose a comparable work to New Nation Rising, using a historical narrative. You’re doing something very comparable, with your stories. I love telling stories with music. That’s why I write operas as well. Music can really depict and deepen aspects of storytelling.

EH: So, for you, Bach is lived because the music was on the LPs that your parents played at home in childhood?

ST: Yes, and of course singing Bach every Easter. I also played a lot of his piano, violin and chamber music. I feel greatly formed by singing those Passions, and studying them too. Really going deep into the musicology and analysis. Ultimately, for me, composing music is about drawing on multiple experiences; including the lived experience, including the use of the narrative as well as being abstract. The imagination, is everything in creating new work. As long as I communicate effectively to my audience, I’m happy.