LATEST NEWS Welcome to the new NMC Friends Newsletter! Inside you’ll find news and updates from the office; a profile on composer Philip Venables and preview of his forthcoming Debut Disc; an in-depth interview with soprano Claire Booth; and on page 14, a look at forthcoming releases for the rest of 2017. We’ve made some changes to this issue, including the option of viewing it as an on-screen booklet, or downloading a printable version at home. We very much hope you enjoy reading it and welcome your feedback, so do let us know what you think. Over the summer we said a fond farewell to Head of Development Gwendolyn Tietze, as she left NMC to focus on her freelance work. We wish her all the best with her future career, and thank her for all she’s done for NMC over the past two years. I’m delighted to have taken over as Development and Partnerships Manager, and I’m very pleased to welcome back Lucile Gasser as Development Assistant who you’ll hear more from later. In the meantime, if you have any queries or would like to get in touch then I can be reached by email alex@nmcrec.co.uk or by calling the office on 020 7759 1826. I look forward to meeting many of you soon.
The Eagle has moved on Earlier in the year, we waved goodbye to the Royal Philharmonic Society Leslie Boosey Award, which had taken pride of place on the NMC mantelpiece since 2015. Awarded every two years for an “outstanding contribution to the furthering of contemporary music in Britain”, we are absolutely delighted that Sally Cavendar of Faber Music is the latest recipient of our bronze friend. Over the last 35 years, Sally has overseen almost 1000 new commissions in her time as Director of Performance Music at Faber, including many by composers recorded and released on NMC. Many congratulations to Sally!
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Catalyst update As some of you will be aware, NMC is fortunate to currently hold an Arts Council England Catalyst Evolve Award – meaning all new and additional donations made to NMC can be matched 1:1, doubling the power of your support. I’m delighted that we’ve already raised more than 70% of our matched funding target in the first 11 months! Thank you to all our Friends, Producer’s Circle and Debut Discs donors who have helped us to this milestone so far, your support is truly appreciated and we couldn’t have done this without your belief in NMC. We still have the final third of our target left to raise. If you would like to help us reach our target by making a donation above your usual level of support, then please do get in touch or visit the Support Us section of the website: www.nmcrec.co.uk/support-us.
One of NMC’s key responsibilities is to connect listeners with the best contemporary music from the British Isles and encourage audiences to experience the vibrant music of today’s composers through our permanently available catalogue. We are therefore delighted to launch a series of new nationwide initiatives in September 2017, with carefully selected partners including Rambert Dance Company and Kate Whitley Rhinegold Education. These projects aim to bring the recordings in our catalogue to new and younger audiences, in order to develop talent and inspire interest in and appreciation of British new music. With Rhinegold Education, we have developed resources that aid the composition element of the GCSE syllabus, including interviews with composers and a bank of additional listening playlists exploring many compositional techniques. Our resource with Rambert, for GCSE Dance, provides practical ways of approaching new music for choreography and encourages students to use unfamiliar music as a source of inspiration. We have also developed a creative music-making app for use with KS3 and KS4, r:strng, which takes Olugbenga Adelekan’s remix of Kate Whitley’s 3 Pieces for Violin and Piano, allowing students to create their own version of the Metronommy’s Olugbenga Adelekan remix using his techniques. Most of our resources are free to access, and we have a number of future projects to be announced soon. If you’d like to get involved or if you can offer any help, please email education@nmcrec.co.uk.
by Ambra Vernuccio
Education Projects update
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All roads lead to NMC Most of you will already know me but for those who I haven’t had the pleasure to meet yet, my name is Lucile and I’ve re-joined the NMC team as Development Assistant. I started working for NMC in 2014 as an intern during my final year of my Master’s degree and stayed on as Marketing and then Label Assistant. Last year, I renounced the desk-job life and decided to go travelling. I started off on my travels with a couple of months in the South of France and in ItaThe mountains of Zhangjiajie ly. I was then off to Canada where I spent 6 months living in Montreal and working in a Portuguese bakery. In between Pastel de Natas (a kind of custard tart) and Pastéis de Bacalhau (cod fritters), I visited Quebec and went a bit further North to go whale watching. A fantastic experience! I then flew to China where I revisited old favourites such as Wuhan (where I studied during my Bachelor’s) and Yangshuo (an amazing city surrounded by karst mountains), as well as discovered unknown territories such as Zhangjiajie (the inspiration for the movie Avatar). Then came Taiwan with its hordes of Bubble Tea (milk tea with tapioca pearls, delicious!) shops and temples, its quiet beaches and relentless heat. My final, and favourite, stop was Japan. I spent three amazing weeks exploring Tokyo, Kyoto, Osaka, and their surroundings. I absolutely loved this country and its people, always so friendly and polite. I wandered in a bamboo forest, walked around a city where deer are kings and roam free, and followed the footsteps of Samurais in ancient castles. All in all an extraordinary experience! My only regret when I quit London was to leave NMC, where I had learned so much and had been a part of such a dedicated team, to new music but also to its flock of loyal supporters. So when I heard that they were looking for a new team member when I came back, I jumped on the opportunity! I’m delighted to be back in the new music world and I’m looking forward to being in touch with all of you and to share with you all the exciting projects ahead!
A feudal castle in Kanazawa, Japan The 101 Tower in Tapei, Taiwan 3
Wearing the traditional Kimono in Kanazawa
The Listening Corner Ellie Wilson, General Manager I’m just back from a two day workshop at Sage Gateshead with six Higher Education students selected for our Next Wave project, a partnership between NMC, Sound and Music and Royal Northern Sinfonia. It was great to watch the young composers gain confidence as they developed their composition ideas with the artists, and I was impressed with the quality of their pieces. We will be recording their compositions in November for release in January 2018. The New Music Biennial weekend at London’s Southbank Centre had a vast array of new music from all genres, which we are currently making available as downloads. Favourites from the weekend were Mark Simpson’s After Avedon performed by the Gould Piano Trio and Daniel Elms’ Bethia. I’ve also played at a few folk festivals with my band Stick In The Wheel and caught a few acts along the way, including Martin Carthy, Furrow Collective & Jon Boden.
Alex Wright, Development and Partnerships Manager I’ve been listening to a lot of electronic music recently, with two stand out releases in Karen Gwyer’s Rembo – noisey, off-kilter yet enthralling arrangements – and Laurel Halo’s Dust – intricate, warm and complex song-writing. I recently heard the LSO Percussion Academy perform an exquisite movement from a new piece by Param Vir, inspired by Korean prayer chants; and also enjoyed LSO Live’s recent recording of Steve Reich’s Sextet. A packed half-year of releases on NMC has made it very difficult to pick a favourite. Recently I’ve had Quinta’s Themistocles is Captured on repeat, the final track from the Rambert album Flux. I also can’t wait for the chance to hear Mark Simpson’s After Avedon again, after two captivating performances by the Gould Piano Trio at the New Music Biennial earlier this month.
Rachel Wilmot, Label Assistant I had the pleasure of attending the recording sessions for two of Philip Venables’ pieces, Illusions performed by London Sinfonietta with Richard Baker, and Klaviertrio im Geiste performed by the Phoenix Trio earlier this month, fresh off the back of the New Music Biennial weekend at the Southbank Centre. It was a really successful session, despite what felt like the whole of Heathrow being redirected over the church roof which did somewhat disrupt proceedings, but we got there in the end! I’m so excited for Phil’s Debut Disc to be released next year and I’m interested to see other people’s reaction to it also (especially to Illusions, featuring the insightful musings of performance artist David Hoyle!) Outside of classical music, I went to Lovebox Festival this month. The stand outs for me were Sampha, Frank Ocean and Solange Knowles (couldn’t pick one!) so I’ve mostly been listening to their latest albums again and trying to relive the festival experience. 4
by Harald Hoffman
NMC PROFILE PHILIP VENABLES
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In early 2018, NMC will release Philip Venables’ first solo album as part of our Debut Discs series. In an exclusive portrait for our Friends Newsletter, he tells us about his coming release and what he’s been up to over a busy few months. “The release of my Debut Disc with NMC is a huge step for me, and something that I have been working towards for a number of years. I feel that the pieces on the album really make a coherent statement about what my artistic manifesto is all about – and that’s what a Debut Disc should be. Philip Venables Spoken text, political anger, expressions of violence are threads in many of the works on the disc, and definitely very present in my political diatribe piece Illusions with performance artist David Hoyle. As my career really takes off, particularly now internationally in contemporary opera, the planned release of this album comes at the perfect time.” Philip’s Debut Disc will include his works for spoken word and music: Numbers 76-80, Numbers 91-95, and The Revenge of Miguel Cotto; Metamorphoses after Britten for solo oboe; Illusions for ensemble and video artist; and Klaviertrio im Geiste for piano trio. Philip tells us a bit more about his piano trio: “Klaviertrio im Geiste was commissioned by the Phoenix Piano Trio in 2011, to be performed by them in several concerts alongside Beethoven’s Klaviertrio in D major, “Geistertrio” (“Ghost” Trio). In the last few years I have written pieces based on music by Dowland, Bach, Mozart and Britten, and I’ve really enjoyed experimenting with these older musical forms, bringing them far away from their original modes of expressions – sometimes even subverting them – but maintaining some kind of essence of what was there. In a similar vein, I took most of the raw materials for Klaviertrio im Geiste (notes, tempo ideas, gestures and figurations, etc.) from the slow movement of Beethoven’s “Geistertrio” – the music that gave his trio this nickname. Out of this I have fashioned what I would consider to be a ‘reflection’ of the classical form: miniature movements with simple and transparent textures, few ideas and a certain neatness. The sonata form first movement is, at the moment at least, tacet. ‘Im Geiste’ means, in German, ‘in one’s mind’s eye’ or, more literally, ‘in spirit’, as well as ‘der Geist’ having the literal meaning of ‘ghost’. So Klaviertrio im Geiste means ‘Piano trio in spirit’. I thought it a fitting pun for the provenance of this piece.
by Simon Jay Price
The NMC sessions for Klaviertrio im Geiste and Illusions were a dream. Richard Baker (conductor), David Lefeber (NMC’s Producer/Engineer) and both ensembles (Phoenix Trio and London Sinfonietta) were so easy to work with and I was absolutely delighted with the results. I can’t wait to begin to hear the disc as a whole set of pieces.” The composer had a very busy beginning of the year. In between being awarded the Royal Philharmonic Society Prize for Large Scale Composition for 4.48 Psychosis, and being nominated for a Southbank Sky Award for Best Opera and an Olivier Award for Best New Opera Production for the same piece, he talked to NMC about his recent and coming projects (and there are many!). Philip Venables and his RPS Award “The last 6 months have been insanely hectic, which has been as enjoyable as it has been terrifying! I’ve mainly been doing smaller projects, with two much larger pieces to write coming up after the Summer: The Gender Agenda for the London Sinfonietta for the reopening of the Queen Elizabeth Hall at the Southbank Centre in April 2018 – also co-commissioned by Ensemble Modern, Asko Schoenberg, and Remix Ensemble – and a violin concerto. In the first half of this year, I have been doing the reworking and extending of Illusions for the New Music Biennial 2017, which involved more filming with David Hoyle. Re-editing that video was so much fun, and I mostly spent my time giggling to myself and wondering what I could get away with. It went down really well in Hull and the Royal Festival Hall in London, and I’m still chuckling at the explicit discussion of sodomy broadcast on BBC Radio 3’s Hear and Now. I also made another collaboration with David Hoyle for Manchester International Festival, which was a sound installation along Canal Street, played every hour throughout every day of the festival. 204 plays in total, with wonderful brass recorded by Manchester Camerata, and David’s sometimes searing, sometimes soothing polemic. I was lucky enough to spend five weeks in the USA for meetings and I spent about three weeks on a fellowship with Ted Huffman (Director) at the prestigious MacDowell colony in New Hampshire, where we started researching and storyboarding some new opera ideas. I’ve been working with Laura Bowler and Patrick Eakin Young on a challenging one-woman music theatre piece using verbatim interview transcripts with female rape survivors. We’ve done two Aldeburgh residencies this season and a work in progress showing at Manchester Opera Project. 6
Alongside that, I’ve done another small verbatim piece for The Sunday Boys in Manchester, and Ted Huffman and I have started working on a Snappy Opera for primary school children with Mahogany Opera Group. In amongst all of this I have been trying to do some research & development work on compositional techniques with spoken word, both live and pre-recorded, with a view to this feeding into a variety of projects large and small along the way, and this has been supported by the PRSF Composers’ Fund. I’m so lucky to be doing all this at the moment and am trying to enjoy every moment of it.” Philip Venables’ Illusions will be released as a single as part of our New Music Biennial bundle in August, prior to the release of his Debut Disc in 2018. His opera 4.48 Psychosis will be performed at Lyric Hammersmith in London in Spring 2018.
by Sven Arnstein
ARTIST Q&A CLAIRE BOOTH
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Claire Booth, British soprano with an international career, has collaborated with NMC on many recordings. In an extended interview, she answers a few of our questions for the NMC Friends.
Who are your top five contemporary composers and/or pieces? I’m sure people would expect me to say Oliver Knussen, and of course he is included in this answer but perhaps it’s worth just prefacing that I can really only choose from the contemporary music I’ve got to know, whether through learning and performing it, or listening in the concert hall. Claire Booth There’s a whole ream of contemporary composers I just haven’t had the opportunity of coming across yet, so my answers might, and perhaps should, change in the future! But for now, I would say Oliver Knussen certainly. His music has been a constant throughout my career and I would have chosen him even before it became one. It’s impossible to pick a favourite, but I’ve recently bought Ophelia’s Last Dance (in my downtime I’m attempting to hone my pianistic skills) as, like everything else of his, it’s an absolute jewel. David del Tredici is out there on his own, but when I performed his Vintage Alice a few years ago, I just found myself laughing out loud at the sheer brilliance and bonkers of it all. It’s not often that you can say that of any composer, and I must admit I would love to get to know more of his ‘exhaustive’ Alice repertoire!
Harrison Birtwistle is firmly on my list. From the operas to the scenas to the song cycles, everything of his that I’ve got to know is just so incredibly detailed. For me, it’s not the easiest music to pick up, and definitely demands time spent in the rehearsal room, but the rewards are limitless. As a singer, it’s often only the pieces you’ve sung that you feel passionate about, but watching the world premiere of The Minotaur at Covent Garden remains one of my night-out highlights. To me, it was absolutely wonderful. Discovering György Kurtag’s Kafka Fragments was a bit of an epiphany for me. This piece is incredible. There’s nothing about it I don’t love, from sharing the stage with an incredible violinist to deciphering his extraordinarily complex bars and rhythms. It’s the second hardest thing I’ve ever learnt (I’ll tell you number one another time), and at times I felt like throwing the score away, but it was a fantastic feeling to finally have that music at your vocal fingertips, and I remain passionate about performing it wherever I can! Lastly I’d include Ryan Wigglesworth, both for the Augenlieder orchestral cycle I’ve had the absolute pleasure of performing, and frankly for all of his output. His writing is both beautiful and inventive, and it’s as much of a joy to listen to as it is to perform. Where and what was your first musical performance? Assuming we’re discounting school plays, are we also discounting university forays? While at Oxford University I was involved in a number of baroque operas, hastily put together oratorios, and under-rehearsed recitals that were totally thrilling for us performers at least. In no particular order they included Arne’s Alfred, Webern’s Op. 14 song cycle, Purcell’s King Arthur, Britten’s Rape of Lucretia, Alastair Nicholson’s Mini-mal Opera and Handel’s Orlando. There were high and low points in equal measure, but to have performed so much before even getting to music college gave me a confidence and enthusiasm for the whole caboodle which was quite remarkable! It was only when I finally got to Guildhall School of Music and Drama I realised how much work I still had to do!
Claire Booth with Recording Engineer David Lefeber during the NMC Songbook recording sessions
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Any stories of unusual jobs you had prior to entering the music world? I don’t know about unusual, but I tried my hand at a few things, fairly unsuccessfully. My career as a waiter was cut short when I was told I didn’t have big enough hands to clear a table of ten in one go. I got involved in writing a website about relocating to England from abroad. Having pumped my friends and family for information I ground to a halt and basically plagiarised Wikipedia. Not my finest hour. Having studied modern history at Oxford I did do some proof reading but the resulting book about Francis Walsingham, brilliant as it is, can hardly take any credit from me. I think my longest lasting job was in the basement of Oxford University Press where, as a new history graduate, I was asked to help with their upcoming ‘Dictionary of National Biography’. Clearly I thought I’d be doing the interviews, the writing, the editing ... but no, my days were spent in the depths of the building copying index cards, cross referencing index cards, storing index cards .... I don’t think I ever even wrote an index card. You’re stuck in a lift with three people of your choice (dead or alive)! Who are they and what do you sing/play to keep everyone entertained while you wait to be rescued? I often wish I’d been around during the first few decades of the 20th century. The explosion of creativity in so many art forms must have been so fantastic for those artists and audiences alike, so I think I’d have to put down Maurice Ravel. I am hoping he might even have brought along a few more of his artistic coterie, so I’d hardly need to sing or say anything, just enjoy the artistic atmosphere. I know it might be a cliché, but getting stuck in a lift with Mozart would be absolute heaven. For starters, the guy’s a genius and wouldn’t it be so wonderful to share that space and soak up some of his brilliance. Then if he’s half as crazy as we’re led to believe in Amadeus, he would be an absolute hoot. Finally, I could put my sight-reading skills to good use and sing whatever he put in front of me. I’m sure he’d create a good opera about being stuck in a lift with three strangers! Maybe Ryan Gosling for number three, so we could practice a bit of La La Land choreography ... What are you working on at the moment? A couple of things which might look pretty diametrically opposed. Christopher Glynn and I have just released a CD of Percy Grainger’s folk music. His music is extremely heart on sleeve, but also at times incredibly refined and this juxtaposition seems to echo the composer himself. Although Grainger divides people in fairly marmite terms, we were really intrigued to see what we could make of his music, and the result even sees me make a cameo appearance on the piano as we finish with a piano duet version of Country Gardens!
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At the other end of the scale, I performed Poulenc’s monologue Voix Humaine in a site-specific production by Welsh National Opera presented at Aldeburgh this year. It’s a raw experience for the audience being so up close and personal with the singer, and as I’m interacting with everyone there, every show is utterly different. But then again, it’s the heart on sleeve thing so there’s the common thread! If you could collaborate with anyone across any genre or art form who would it be and why? Unless it’s solo-singing in the bathroom, making music is a pretty collaborative affair to start with. One of the lovely things about any contract is the interaction with new artists, other singers, instrumentalists, directors. If you open your ears, then you’ve got an opportunity to learn from anyone and everyone in the room. Some partnerships click more easily, but it’s good to always remind yourself that you’re part of a bigger picture. It’s easy to think of the soloist as the singer in the big dress at the front of the stage and that rarely leads to collaboration! Though, to be honest, any opportunity to work with a discipline that I admire is something I totally cherish. A few years back I was singing at Sadler Wells as part of a Thomas Adès retrospective. His music was interpreted by various choreographers and I was totally blown away. It wasn’t only that the dancers were incredible, or that the choreography was so deft - it was really the proximity I got from sharing the performing space with them. It gave me such a buzz. So, I don’t think I can give a definitive answer here but I’m an absolute fan of great people collaborating to produce great work.
Find Claire Booth on NMC
Ryan Wigglesworth Echo and Narcissus NMC D213
Charlotte Bray At the Speed of Stillness NMC D202
Various The NMC Songbook NMC D150
Oliver Knussen Autumnal NMC D178
Alexander Goehr Colossos or Panic NMC D165 10
Howard Skempton Twitter Q&A Howard Skempton has a long association with NMC, spanning more than 25 years since the release of his seminal Lento. He joined us in the office in early May for a couple of hours, and answered your questions in a live Twitter interview. Covering amongst many other things his top 5 composers, desert island necessities and the inspiration behind his recent NMC release The Rime of the Ancient Mariner, we’ve Howard and Ellie in the NMC office provided a selection of our favourite responses below. You can catch up and read the full Q & A here.
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FORTHCOMING RECORDING SESSIONS Benefactors, Principal Benefactors, and Producers’ Circle are warmly invited to join us for recording sessions, and gain an intimate look behind the scenes at the creation of new albums on NMC. Coming up later in 2017 are sessions for Andrew Watt’s Counter-Tenor Songbook, a selection of mostly new pieces for voice and piano. 2-4 December 2017 – Milton Court, Guildhall School of Music and Drama, London If you would like to attend, please contact Lucile at lucile@nmcrec.co.uk or 020 7758 1826.
BPI SURVEY NMC is the only specialist contemporary classical label participating in this industry survey and we are particularly keen to compare the consumer trends of our audience against the survey data collected by the general classical music industry. Thank you for your help. You can fill in the survey by clicking the image on the right.
SUMMER DISCOUNT
To celebrate summer (or help us cope with the lack of sun!), we’re offering a 20% discount on our entire catalogue from August 1st!* Just visit our website to take your pick!
*This offer may not be combined with the 25% Benefactor Discount 13
FORTHCOMING RELEASES in 2017
New Music Biennial
Released throughout the summer Works by composers Eliza Carthy, Mica Levi, Simon Holt, Peter Edwards, Jennifer Walshe, and others
Imogen Holst: String Chamber Music NMC D236 - Released in September Phantasy Quartet Sonata for Violin and Cello The Fall of the Leaf • String Trio No.1 Duo for Viola and Piano • String Quintet John McCabe
Silver Nocturnes Piano Quintet (The Woman by the Sea) Horn Quintet
David Pyatt horn • Roderick Williams baritone • Sacconi Quartet • John McCabe piano
Colin Riley: Shenanigans
NMC D241 - Released in October Three Movements • Lyric Pieces Shenanigans As The Tender Twilight Covers
Peter Ablinger: Verkündigung (“Annunciation”)
HCR14 Released in September
John McCabe: Silver Nocturnes
NMC D230 - Released in November Piano Quintet – The Woman by the Sea Horn Quintet • Silver Nocturnes
The Music of Michael Parsons
HCR15 Released in November
Concert for Piano and Orchestra
HCR16 Released in November
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THANK YOU FOR YOUR SUPPORT! Our ability to record and promote the innovative, the challenging, the obscure and the lost is made possible by generous donations from individuals such as you who are passionate about new music. A very big thank you as well to everyone who took the time to answer our Friends survey. Your comments gave us a great insight into what you value about your involvement with NMC, and what you would like to see from us in the future. We will be in touch soon to discuss your thoughts. As we look to expand our community of Friends, we will soon be introducing a new level of support: Ambassador. For ÂŁ500, your involvement as an NMC Ambassador helps us ensure that new music from the British Isles is accessible to all. More information will be available soon, please do get in touch if you have any questions in the meantime. Thank you so much for your continuing support of NMC, and see you soon for a new newsletter packed with all things NMC! The NMC Team
GET IN TOUCH WITH NMC Recordings Ltd Somerset House Third Floor South Wing Strand, London, WC2R 1LA www.nmcrec.co.uk Find us on social media: Twitter: @nmcrecordings Facebook: /nmcrecordings Instagram: @nmcrecordings
To get in touch with Alex or Lucile: t: 020 7759 1826 e: alex@nmcrec.co.uk e: lucile@nmcrec.co.uk
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