THREE PIECES THAT DISAPPEAR
Welcome to the Autumn 2024 edition of the NMC
Friends Newsletter!
I am excited to introduce the Autumn 2024 NMC Friends Newsletter. In this edition, we hear from each of the 2023/24 Philharmonia Composers’ Academy composers; Yfat Soul Zisso, Florence Anna Maunders and Mathis Saunier about their experiences on the programme as well as their thoughts on having their music released by NMC.
Also in this issue, Tom Coult provides an in-depth insight into his Debut Disc entitled Pieces that Disappear (released on 11 November 2024), and you can meet one of NMC’s new trustees, Naomi Wellings, in our Listening Corner. There are also recommendations from our ‘Discover’ blog, as well as our recent and upcoming releases on NMC and our third-party labels.
I would also like to take this opportunity to say thank you for your continued support of NMC. As a gentle reminder, the structure of our supporter scheme is changing from November 2024, with the £50 Friends level being replaced with 'NMC Champions' and the membership fee increasing to £60.
If you have any questions about the new scheme, or would like to discuss anything related to NMC, please do not hesitate to get in touch with myself on stephen@nmcrec.co.uk, or NMC Head of Fundraising, Claire Wright on claire@nmcrec.co.uk – we are always delighted hear from you.
Best wishes,
Stephen Balfour Office & Fundraising Co-ordinator
The front cover features the first page of Three Pieces that Disappear by Tom Coult © Faber Music
This edition of the Listening Corner is written by one of NMC’s new Trustee’s Naomi Wellings. Naomi is a PhD student and a Music Education Consultant. Naomi writes:
I’m writing this at the end of the school summer holidays, during which my girls (8 and 12) have curated much of our listening and the soundtrack to our days has featured a lot of Taylor Swift and the like. My own taste in music is eclectic, to say the least! Classical, musical theatre, folk, pop and rock – a little bit of everything – but the two most recent additions to my own playlists I discovered thanks to TV theme tunes.
All We Do by London-based alt-pop duo Oh Wonder was the theme to ITV’s Unforgotten – a cold case drama featuring Nicola Walker and Sanjeev Bhaskar. All We Do’s lyrics reflect the show’s premise to catch criminals who’ve long been hidden away and the music, much like the rest of the album, is ethereal and catchy.
My other discovery was Caroline Shaw’s Partita for 8 Voices, the first movement of which was the theme tune to the BBC’s drama Marriage, also featuring Nicola Walker alongside Sean Bean. Although I didn’t enjoy the series, I tracked down the Grammy-winning recording made by American vocal group Room Full of Teeth. Partita for 8 Voices is an acapella work for amplified singers in 4 movements. Each movement is named after a Baroque dance and the work is inspired by Sol LeWitt’s Wall Drawing 305 - some of the lyrics are drawn from LeWitt’s instructions to the draftsmen who realised his artwork. The harmonies are rich and close, with some spoken narration, vocalisation sounds and non-western vocal techniques – as you listen you’re submerged into a series of complex sound worlds best experienced in stereo.
Naomi Wellings, September 2024
© Naomi Wellings
Philharmonia Composers’ AcademyYfat Soul Zisso
In the first of three articles from the Philharmonia Composers’ Academy Volume 7 composers, Yfat Soul Zisso writes about their compositional process, as well as how they found the structure of the programme as a whole. Soul writes:
Being the first major piece I had written since finishing my PhD, Spiral was the most challenging piece I have created to date – knowing this piece could be and do anything after spending years composing pieces related to my research was both exciting, and, looking back, overwhelming. I was grateful for the Philhamornia Composers’ Academy workshops, which allowed me to experiment with various ideas I had throughout the months-long process of composing, but overall I had to completely restart three times (a personal record!) before finally feeling like I was composing the ‘right’ piece.
While I initially wanted to write a big rhythmic piece (probably similar to what Florence’s piece ended up being), nothing I tried seemed to work. It was only when I allowed the simplicity of my piece to speak that Spiral finally began to materialise, both in my head and on the page, with two ideas that start off calm and light, but, as they repeat, begin gradually
© Yfat Soul Zisso
taking on the weight of stress and anxiety. This process showed me the importance of connecting to my authentic self, emotions, and personal experience rather than what I felt I needed to prove I could do with a particular ensemble or opportunity.
I like to write music that connects to my own experience and struggles with mental health as it feels important to add visibility to this (surprisingly still) taboo topic. I aspire to create music that allows the audience to connect to ‘difficult’ emotional states (such as stress and anxiety) they might be avoiding, and, as part of the journey of the piece, release them, creating a sense of catharsis. I feel Spiral is successful in doing that, with the use of breathing and breathing-like sounds (alongside the musical materials) to amplify the audience’s connection to the emotional journey from calmness to anxiety and back, which the piece represents.
In the end, I felt my piece created a super interesting and varied balance alongside Florence’s and Mathis’ pieces, with Florence’s rhythmic and fast-developing Bare Boss, Innit? providing a perfect contrast to my minimal and repetitive Spiral, and Mathis’ Noctopolis providing an atmospheric story-like adventure into various realms, which added another completely different dimension to the programme.
Yfat Soul ZIsso, October 2024
Recommended on Discover
Click on the images to go to the articles on our website.
Ben Lunn on disabled composers working in the UK
12 September 2024
Ben Lunn shares his reflections on letting the light in, released on 20 September 2024.
Errollyn Wallen appointed Master of The King’s Music
27 August 2024
A huge congratulations to composer Errollyn Wallen who has accepted the role of Master of the King’s Music. Click here to find some of Erroylln's Music on NMC.
NMC at 35: Some words from Colin Matthews
22 August 2024
If you missed this article in our previous Friends Newsletter, Colin shares some insight into NMC’s history, and how after 35 years, NMC is looking to the future.
Tom Coult: Pieces That Disappear
Composer Tom Coult provides an in depth preview into his upcoming Debut Disc entitled Pieces that Disappear. Tom writes:
My upcoming album for NMC – Pieces That Disappear – features four pieces of orchestral music, some with solo instrumentalists or vocalists.
It’s an unusual privilege to have an album of orchestral music recorded. For obvious practical and financial reasons, things are often on a slightly smaller scale. I think my orchestral music, however, is pretty central to and representative of what I do, so I’m very lucky that NMC (and its funders) have been able to make this album.
I think of writing for orchestra as being a kid given free reign in a big sweet shop. The first time you do it, you want to gobble down everything all at once, enjoying a dizzying sugar rush from using absolutely everything it has to offer. When you give it another go later, you know a bit more about what your tastes are, and your trolley-dash around the shop becomes a little more selective, a little more characterful. As you get more used to the shop’s contours, you can chart an interesting and different path each time – sampling new things, enjoying things that you know will work for you, creating a different experience from the last time but still with something of your personality in it.
© Tom Coult
To abandon the sweets metaphor for a moment, I now think of the orchestra not as a massive army of soundmaking troops, but more like an almost inexhaustible set of eccentric chamber groups. The fun is ‘I’d never get a 45-second piece commissioned for 8 violins, bass trombone, 3 flutes and a snare drum, but here I can do exactly that!’ Then – ‘let’s use two double basses in harmonics, bowed marimba and 4 horns – what could I do with that?!’.
Three of the four pieces on this album were written during my time as Composer-in-Association with the BBC Philharmonic Orchestra, and that wonderful orchestra perform all four.
The first piece, and the piece that gives the release its title, is Three Pieces that Disappear, premiered in 2023. I wrote in the programme note that ‘the three movements of this piece are linked by a vague, loosely connected set of ideas about music being remembered, forgotten, misremembered, imagined or deteriorating’. To this end, there are chains of suspensions typical of Baroque laments (with their evocations of loss and remembrance), music disappearing into a haze and becoming timbrally threadbare, and evocations of decaying recorded media – a worn-out wax cylinder perhaps, or a warped vinyl record. Most notably, there is the use of a scratchy recording of a Schoenberg orchestration of a Handel piece, which weaves its way into the music.
Beautiful Caged Thing is the oldest piece on the album – from 2015. I think it’s nice to have something that I’m proud of, but maybe belongs
Pieces that Disappear © NMC Recordings
a bit to a previous version of myself. Though it wasn’t originally written for her, this recording features the amazing soprano Anna Dennis. Anna played the lead and title character in my opera Violet in 2022, and has premiered two other of my pieces. She has the most extraordinary voice – agile and sensual, quicksilver and rich. I made the text of this piece myself, but out of some of my favourite sentences of Oscar Wilde’s The Picture of Dorian Gray – there is no writer whose sentence-level artistry I more admire. The piece is three different mini-dramas with three very different narrators.
I wrote Pleasure Garden as a concerto for violinist Daniel Pioro. Like Dennis, Pioro is an extraordinary artist. He can play any virtuosic, fiendishly difficult thing put in front of him with ease, but he also has such a beautiful, stylish tone and musicality. The piece evokes images of natural spaces within cities – sludgy dye in Manchester canals, capricious birds in Florence, the elegant balance of Japanese rock gardens. Sometimes the violin is the strutting, showy soloist typical of concertos. More often however, he is a either a spirit guide – urging onwards, ushering in sound from the orchestra – or a mischievous outsider, lobbing in foreign elements and seeing how they land.
A sweet treat to end the album – After Lassus for voice and orchestra. Again featuring soprano Anna Dennis, this piece takes a series of vocal and instrumental duos from Renaissance composer Orlando Lassus, and (in the words of my programme note) ‘turns them around in the hand like plasticine – reshaping, stretching and compressing them, combining them, putting them in unfamiliar surroundings, and generally getting the coloured paint out’. With very little fidelity to the originals, these old melodies get taken through icy, liquid, dramatic, or serene landscapes, and there is even a visit from a louche 1920s jazz band.
Anna Dennis and the BBC Philharmonic recording After Lassus in BBC MediaCity, Salford. Photo © BBC Philharmonic.
This album will be a lovely way to start signing off on my time as Composerin-Association with the BBC Phil, before my fingers are eventually prised off this luxurious post. A final goodbye will come with the premiere of Monologues for the Curious, a big piece for the 2025 Proms, featuring the amazing tenor Allan Clayton.
Tom Coult, October 2024
Pieces That Disappear will be released on 15 November 2024. This recording was made possible with support from Vaughan Williams Foundation and Tom Coult is supported by PRS Foundation’s Composers’ Fund. Thank you to the trusts, foundations and individuals who have invested in NMC’s Debut Discs series. With special thanks to BBC Radio 3, The Delius Trust, Arts Council England, Vaughan Williams Foundation, The Radcliffe Trust, The Finzi Trust, The Bliss Trust and The PRS Composers' Fund.
Philharmonia Composers’ Academy
- Florence Anna Maunders
Composer Florence Anna Maunders describes their experience working with the Philharmonia orchestra, during the Composers Academy. Florence writes:
© Florence Anna Maunders
It’s impossible to really quantify just how useful it is for a composer to have direct access to amazing musicians –not just to present them with sheets of notes to play, but to get alongside them, to speak with them, and to learn from each other. One of the true strengths of this programme is the experience and knowledge that we’ve gained from spending time with the musicians. In addition to the rehearsals leading up to the performance and recording of our actual final pieces, we were able to have extensive individual and communal workshop time with individual musicians, small groups and the ensemble as a whole. This allowed us to trial ideas, seek solutions and then have time and space to use these insights to develop our own practice as composers and creators.
Among my current compositional interests – perhaps obsessions might be a better term – are the sonorities and timbres of electronic music, particularly electronic dance music, and in finding ways to include those sounds, textures, effects and techniques in my own, almost exclusively acoustic, works. There’s lots that can be done with imagined sounds, individual explorations and with software, but in order to really explore and evaluate my ideas, it’s only possible if I can actually hear the results, played live, by real musicians. There’s no substitute for being metres away from incredible performers, and to personally experience the direct air vibrations from their instruments. In this piece, Bare Boss, Innit?, you’ll hear the results of these experiences, these experiments and insights and collaborations – but you won’t hear all of the results – there’s so much I’ve gained from this process which you’ll have to wait to hear in future compositions...
Florence
Anna Maunders, October 2024
Philharmonia Composers’ AcademyMathis Saunier
In Part 3 of our Philharmonia Composers’ Academy feature, Mathis Saunier speaks about his experience of having his music recorded, and whether it fulfilled his artistic vision. Mathis writes:
The recording process is fascinating, somehow the piece prints itself, and transitions from the score to the audio player – a way to officialise itself through sound this time. As the piece was recorded in a single take within a concert setting, it is an opportunity to embrace the spontaneity of the moment.
The experience with studio sessions, somehow, shaped me to seek full control over every aspect of the music, down to the smallest detail. In this case, though, the approach was entirely different, requiring us to accept the work as it stood at that particular moment.
I was amazed by the Royal Festival Hall sound engineer’s ability to adapt the electronic soundscapes to suit the aesthetics of the piece. to respond to the aesthetics of the piece. We tried our best to recreate this approach within the studio version. The elevated volume of the techno sections might seem controversial, but it captures the essence of Noctopolis
The role of the mix becomes crucial as it pictures the piece for future listeners, independently from the concert. The balance between the electronics and the Philharmonia was therefore essential in capturing both the raw intensity of the techno influences, the subtle nuances of the musicians’ performances, and the stark contrasts between each sonic environment as one journey through the fictional city of the piece.
Mathis Saunier, October 2024
Philharmonia Composers’ Academy Volume 7
Florence Anna Maunders, Mathis Saunier, and Yfat Soul Zisso write an original chamber work for an ensemble of Philharmonia players.
© Mathis Saunier
Philharmonia Orchestra. NMC DL3057
Third Party releases
Birmingham Record Company
Jamie Savan: The Polyphonic Cornett
Savan has been a member of His Majestys Sagbutts & Cornetts since 2005. As a cornettist he has performed with many of the leading period instrument ensembles, and is interested in exploring the cornett’s full range of musical possibilities.
BRC026 DL/Streaming
Huddersfield Contemporary Records
ELISION Ensemble: scalar
Release date: 15/11/2024
Australia’s premier new music ensemble play works by Cat Hope, Mary Bellamy, Aaron Cassidy, Golnaz Shariatzadeh, John Aulich, Charlie Sdraulig, and Annie Hui-Hsin Hsieh.
HCR35 CD/DL/Streaming
Release date: 15/11/2024
Club Inégales
Club Inégales: Chain of hands
Between 2011 and 2019 there were 21 seasons and 95 gigs, at Club Inégales. With each gig comprised of the same 3-set form, featuring the resident band Notes Inegales as well as a wide range of guests. This single includes music from six gigs at Club Inégales.
CI006 DL/Streaming
Release date: 20/11/2024
Recent & upcoming NMC releases
Recent releases
Slide Action: RE:BUILD
Slide Action is a virtuosic, multi-award winning trombone quartet, on a mission to discover a new voice for the trombone.
Slide Action. NMC D289
Freya Waley-Cohen: Spell Book
The debut album from composer Freya Waley-Cohen, whose distinctive voice in contemporary classical music draws inspiration from literature, folklore, and the natural world, and is characterized by its vivid imagery and emotional depth. Manchester Collective, Héloïse Werner, Katie Bray, Fleur Barron, Tamsin Waley-Cohen, Ann Beilby, Nathaniel Boyd. NMC D284
Upcoming in 2024/25
Tom
Coult: Pieces That Disappear
Tom Coult’s music has been championed by many of the UK’s major orchestras and ensembles, resulting in a series of acclaimed large-scale works which form the basis of his debut album.
BBC Philharmonic Orchestra, Daniel Pioro, Anna Dennis. NMC D261
Clare O’Connell: Light Flowing
A radiant body of newly commissioned work for solo and layered cello, with harp, double bass and electronics, by six leading British composers including Edmund Finnis, Emily Hall, Alex Mills, and Natalie Klouda.
Clare O’Connell. NMC D287
with
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