NMC Champions Newsletter - Spring 2025 by nmc_recordings

Champions Newsletter Spring 2025

Welcome to the Spring 2025 edition of the NMC Champions Newsletter!

Welcome to the Spring 2025 NMC Champions Newsletter. Spring has well and truly arrived, and with it, a feast of action from NMC!

In this newsletter, we highlight NMC's success in early March at the Royal Philharmonic Awards, when we were awarded the prestigious Gamechanger award. In addition, Martin Iddon provides an in-depth insight into Hesperides (released 16 April), and Simon Emmerson discusses his upcoming album Sound Around - both near and far at once (due for release 16 May).

There are also recommendations from our ‘Discover’ blog, as well as our recent and upcoming releases on NMC, and a brief article on the album launch event for Tippett's New Year hosted by NMC, Schott Music and the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra.

As always, we would like to thank you for your continuing support of NMC Recordings. We would not be able to carry out our work without your generous donations, so we are incredibly grateful for your support. Finally, please do not hesitate to get in touch with either of us in the development team - it is always wonderful to hear from our supporters.

Best wishes,

Claire Wright, Stephen Balfour Head of Fundraising Office, Fundraising & Marketing Co-ordinator

NMC receive the RPS Gamechanger Award

On Thursday 6 March, NMC Recordings was presented with the Royal Philharmonic Society’s Gamechanger Award. The NMC team made their way to Birmingham Conservatoire for a very special evening, to celebrate all things NMC...

The RPS Gamechanger award – first presented in 2019 – celebrates those who in unique and contemporary ways continue to break new ground in classical music. It is specially presented by the Board and Council of the RPS to an initiative, individual, group or organisation for their inspirational and transformative work. This award is decided by the RPS Board and Council and is supported, this year, by I Can Compose.

We've included a snippet of the citation: ‘This year’s recipient is new

music’s national treasure. It’s a small organisation that gives a vital voice and visibility to composers, putting the creative forces behind the music in the limelight. It opens the ears of millions of music-lovers each year to thrilling sounds and new discoveries.

NMC Recordings has changed the game for composers and for audiences worldwide. A record label and a charity, NMC was founded in the 1980s by composer Colin Matthews. His vision was to remedy the lack of living British and Irish composers in record catalogues of the time.

The full citation from the Royal Philharmonic Society is available on our website. You can also watch the tribute video compiled specially for NMC below.

What they said ...

Royal Philharmonic Society Awards 2025Gamechanger Tribute - NMC Recordings

Dame Judith Weir, Errollyn Wallen, Zoe Martlew, Freya WaleyCohen and Sir Simon Rattle pay tribute to NMC Recordings.

Click on the image to watch the video!

Colin Matthews, Founder and Executive Producer of NMC

Recordings said: ‘Who would have believed back in 1989 that NMC would still be going strong 36 years later, with a catalogue of almost 500 composers? I am so proud of everything the label has miraculously achieved over the years with just a small but dedicated team of staff. There is still so much that we want to do and despite the challenges of the industry I have confidence that we will continue to thrive.’

In response to the award, Cathy Graham OBE, NMC's Executive Director said: ‘It is impossible to overstate just how much it means to all

Angela Dixon, Royal Philharominc Society Chair, Eleanor Wilson

NMC Creative Director, Colin Matthews NMC Executive Producer & Founder, Cathy Graham NMC Executive Director on stage receiving the Gamechanger Award © Royal Philharmonic Soceity

of us at NMC to receive the Royal Philharmonic Society Gamechanger Award. To be recognised by the prestigious RPS Council and Board in this extraordinary way and to take our place alongside so many exceptional RPS award recipients, past and present, is an honour.

I can safely speak for the whole NMC team that we are exceptionally proud to win the RPS Gamechanger award. It is a remarkable achievement and highlights NMC’s importance within the industry. Without our supporters, we would not be in the position we are in today, so thank you.

However long you have supported us for, and at whatever level over the last thirty-six years, we hope you too will bask in the glory of this tremendous achievement.

Stephen Balfour, April 2025

Martin Iddon: Hesperides

Composer Martin Iddon provides an in depth preview into his recently released album entitled Hesperides. Martin writes:

I’ve been trying to think about what I can tell you that might be useful. Or interesting. Something that the music doesn’t already say or do. The pieces on this album are pretty much all incredibly quiet and incredibly static. Perhaps not as quiet or as unchanging as some lowercase or onkyokei music (if unfamiliar to you, do look ‘em up! Terrific genres both), but I’d go out on a limb and guess that for at least most of the people who are reading this, I could probably say “I know you think you’re imagining something hushed and still, but it’s much quieter and it does much less than you’re imagining”.

“No. Even less than that.”

I remember when this all started. I was a second-year undergraduate; it must have been 1995 or 1996. I was at my friend Adam’s house—he was a music student too—before our next lecture. With an hour and a half before that lecture, we put on, I don’t recall why, a recording of Górecki’s Third Symphony (the one everyone had, the Dawn Upshaw recording with the London Sinfonietta). Again I don’t know why, but we looped about a twosecond fragment of somewhere in the final movement: Adam’s CD player had this, then quite unusual, facility.

After about ten minutes of this two-second loop of Górecki, I was more musically bored than I had ever been. After twenty minutes, it was

© Martin Iddon

worse. I don’t know why we didn’t just stop it there (and I’m not wholly sure that Adam didn’t leave me to it). But at half an hour it started to get interesting: I began to hear fine detail I’d missed before; the upper partials of the pitches started to reveal themselves. After forty-five minutes, the loop had revealed itself as incredibly rich, a subtly nuanced interior world, full of sound. At the hour mark, or thereabouts, I was devastated that the impending lecture meant that I would soon have to press stop and, when I did, I was left with a sense of profound emptiness, even regret, now that it was gone.

I also remember—it must have been round about the same time— showing Steve Martland an organ piece that he became enthusiastic about: “This is much better”, he said, compared with what I suspect was a pretty derivative bit of minimalism I’d previously presented, “It keeps looking like it’s going to get started, then doesn’t.”

I’m not one for big statements or claims about the work, but I recall that the average shot length in a Hollywood movie is about the 2 second

mark. In Béla Tarr’s wonderfully slow Werckmeister Harmonies (2000), the average shot length is going on for four minutes. It’s not that one is better than the other, but something happens in the sort of slowness, stillness, and concentration of Tarr that doesn’t in, say, Michael Bay. Something happens, I think, when nothing happens. Because there’s so much less time for nothing happening in a world of ‘content’ and it’s so much harder to focus on one thing, when that content is ever new, ever changing, I want to keep trying to stake a claim for the value of slow, quiet attentiveness.

© Martin Iddon

One of the reasons, I suspect, why I’ve had these near thirty-year-old anecdotes in mind is because, if you’d told then-me, listening in the music school’s library to NMC’s releases of Jonathan Harvey, Simon Holt, or the Bingham String Quartet, that he’d have an album on NMC one day, he’d hardly have believed it. It’s an incredible privilege to be added to that roster. I’m grateful to NMC, as well as to Jack Adler-McKean and the quiet music ensemble for their generosity and commitment to the work.

Martin Iddon, February 2025

Martin Iddon: Hesperides

An album of work by award-winning composer Martin Iddon performed by the Quiet Music Ensemble and tubist Jack AdlerMcKean.

Quiet Music Ensemble, Jack Adler-McKean tuba. NMC D295 Hesperides was released on NMC Recordings on 4 April 2025.

Recommended on Discover

Click on the headshots to read the articles below!

NMC Guest Playlist 9: Oliver Soden

13th March 2025

To celebrate the release of Michael Tippett's New Year on NMC, we asked writer, broadcaster and Tippett biographer Oliver Soden to curate a special playlist exploring the composer and his world. We have also included Oliver's notes for the playlist within the article.

Sally Groves on Michael Tippett's New Year

13th March 2025

NMC Principal Benefactor and former Creative Director at Schott Music, Sally Groves provides a personal insight into Michael Tippett's New Year.

NMC Recordings: Extended PlayJerwood Series

26th February 2025

We are delighted to announce that the Jerwood Foundation has awarded NMC Recordings with a grant of £25,000 to support four new digital only releases that will focus on emerging composers.

Simon Emmerson: Sound Around – both near and far at once

Composer Simon Emmerson provides an in depth preview into his upcoming album entitled Sound Around - both near and far at once. Simon writes:

Nearly all the works I have written over now more than 50 years combine live performers and electronic resources. I first heard live electronic music in June 1969 at a concert of the London Sinfonietta – performing Pulses for 5 x 4 players by Roger Smalley whom I had just met in Cambridge. I clearly recall its visceral impact on me – and a love of this complex soundworld has never gone away. I also remain interested in studio-made fixed works, though these are always about liveness in some way, too.

Around 2010 I developed a live performance system that I explored with different instruments. Based on live sampling this develops sustained but evolving harmony which I hear equally as three dimensional timbre.

Simon Emmerson © Simon Emmerson

generation of pitch modes from multiphonics. This became Solo Flute Quartet (2018). With Heather Roche playing clarinets it was the breath sound within pitch that caught my ear as well as the amazing range of key and mechanism sounds she produced - Wind Clouds Showers (2019-20) emerged. But let’s be clear – these studio sessions are not for the collection of ‘pure sounds’ to assemble later, they capture the embodied sound that I hope to replicate in live performance.

Sound Around - both near and far at once © NMC Recordings

The piano has been a constant companion, with electronics (‘ring modulation’) since I heard Roger Smalley play his Transformation (1969). He played some graduation pieces of mine with electronics in 1971-72, so it felt right to revisit this in modern form for Piano Ring (2018) written in memoriam for Roger who died in 2015. The other piano work (Microvariations II (2014)) was written as a gift for Philip Mead who had commissioned three works with electronics from me over the years. This, too, is a memorial - to Jonathan Harvey whom I had known since the 1970s and whose works with electronics I greatly admired.

The instrumental recordings were a ‘covid lockdown’ project – at least when things eased up to allow strictly controlled access to studios. Zubin Kanga and Philip Mead came to north London for an excellent Steinway, while by total contrast Heather Roche and Carla

Rees came down to a studio in Brighton overlooking the Downs. I am so grateful to NMC for accepting the album proposal that resulted shortly after. Their request to include a Dolby Atmos streaming mix was perfect for my surround sound works!

There are two fixed studio pieces – both are sonic journeys, real and imaginary. One (Aeolian (2016)) is an evocation of an over sea odyssey, the other an imaginary soundwalk across my home city Brighton, from windfarm, through the city, up to the Downs - Near and Far (at Once) (2022) helps give the album its title. All the pieces surround us, near and far in space, near and far in time – all at once.

Simon

Emmerson, April 2025

Simon Emmerson: Sound Around – both near and far at once

Sound Around – both near and far at once brings together instrumental pieces with live electronics written in the 2010s alongside fixed studio-made works, surveying a range of mesmerising and complex electronic soundscapes.

NMC D282. Sound Around – both near and far at once will be released on NMC Recordings on 16 May 2025.

New Year Launch event

On 11 March 2025, Schott Music, The BBC and NMC hosted an album launch event for Michael Tippet's New Year.

The album launch took place in the Schott shop and was attended by guests of Schott, the BBC as well as a selection of selection of NMC’s Producers’ Circle, Ambassador and Principal Benefactor supporters. Special guests

included conductor Martyn Brabbins, former creative Director of Schott Music Sally Groves and Tippett's biographer Oliver Soden.

The evening was a great success and a fantastic opportunity to highlight the release of New Year. During the evening, Ian Mylett (Head of Contemporary Music at Schott), Dominic Parker (Director of BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra) and NMC's Executive Director, Cathy Graham each spoke about New Year and thanked all involved.

If you are a current NMC Champion or NMC Benefactor and you are interested in attending future exclusive album launch events, please contact Claire Wright on claire@nmcrec.co.uk or Stephen Balfour on stephen@nmcrec.co.uk to discuss upgrading your membership.

Stephen Balfour, April 2025

Michael Tippett: New Year

The first commercial recording of Michael Tippett's opera New Year, featuring a stellar cast, BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra conducted by Martyn Brabbins.

Soloists, BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra, BBC Singers, Martyn Brabbins. NMC D291. New Year was released on NMC Recordings on 14 March 2025.

Recent & upcoming NMC releases

Recent releases

Martin Iddon: Hesperides

Hesperides showcases a collection of Martin Iddon’s most delicate and captivating compositions and features the work Λαμπάδες (Lampades) for tubist and fixed media, which won the Ivor Novello Award for solo composition in 2021 and performed here by Jack Adler-McKean.

Quiet Music Ensemble, Jack Adler-McKean tuba. NMC D295

Clare O'Connell: Light Flowing

Light Flowing is an album of works for cello performed by Clare O’Connell as part of NMC’s Artist Series.

Clare O'Connell cello, Eleanor Turner harp, Marianne Schofield double bass. Edmund Finnis, Emily Hall, Alex Mills, Nick Martin, Emilie Levienaise Farrouch & Natalie Klouda composers.

NMC D287

Upcoming in 2025

Simon Emmerson: Sound Around both near and far at once

Simon Emmerson electronics, Philip Mead piano, Carla Rees flutes, Zubin Kanga piano, Heather Roche clarinets, NMC D282

Hannah Kendall: shouting forever into the receiver

shouting forever into the receiver, presents a broad survey of Kendall’s recent compositions, from intimate solo pieces to full orchestral canvases.

Anne Denholm harp, Jonathan Morton violin, Hallé, Jonathan Bloxham conductor, Ensemble Modern. Wavefield ensemble, loadbang, Louise McMonagle cello

NMC D285

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This quarterly Newsletter is written and edited by Stephen Balfour.

To get in touch with Stephen: t: 020 3022 5836 e: stephen@nmcrec.co.uk

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