Classical Music Now

Jo Cheung is director and founder of Olympias Music Foundation, a Manchester charity championing diversity in music – from violin lessons for children on free-school meals, to community choirs for vulnerable BAME women and school children. Since 2015, they have delivered over 2000 free music lessons to 250 children in Manchester, and engaged with many more through workshops and performances.

https://www.joyeecheung.com/

—

Enjoying the podcast? Leave a kind word on iTunes to help others find us

Join our mailing list to get everything No Dice first

Raymond Yiu is a Hong-Kong born, London-based composer, jazz pianist, conductor and writer on music. Originally trained as an engineer, Yiu was self-taught as a composer until he undertook his DMus under the auspice of Julian Anderson at Guildhall in 2009. His debut album The World Was Once All Miracle showcases his talent with three identity-exploring works informed by his time at Guildhall.

https://raymondyiu.com/

This episode is sponsored by Dorico: the next-generation music notation software from Steinberg.

Links and Show Notes

Raymond Yiu: The World Was Once All Miracle out now on CD (with great liner notes)

Lontano ensemble directed by Odaline de la Martinez

—

Lara Agar is a composer, violinist, and collaborator who recently caught my eye with a credit on Shades of Blue, a dance piece performed at Sadler’s Wells and broadcast on the BBC. We talk about how the piece came about, curating nights, and the different relationship musicians, dancers, and actors have with their art. Also in the episode:

https://www.laraagar.com/

Enjoying the podcast?

Aubrey and I geek out about marketing in the classical realm.

If you’re a musician or arts administrator of any kind, this is an essential listen. If you fall outside of that, enjoy looking behind the curtain at what an orchestra exec spends her time thinking about.

Some Aubrey bio fun facts: she grew Seattle Opera’s BRAVO! Club to the largest group for young patrons in the US, led the Bumbershoot Festival to achieve an unprecedented 43% increase in revenue, and propelled the California Symphony to double the size of its audience and nearly quadruple the donor base. 

https://www.aubreybergauer.com/ 

It’s a CELLO-BRATION! - California Symphony (Available till Dec 11 2020. Emphasis mine.)

The referenced LSO video. Click ‘show chat replay’ to see Maxine Kwok in action.

Jill Robinson at TRG

Aubrey’s excellent blog. This post is California Symphony’s ‘Public Commitment to Diversity’, which I love.

Geffen Playhouse’s Zoom play: The Present

San Francisco Symphony: Throughline (free!)

Live with Carnegie Hall: Remembering Ruth Bader Ginsburg (also free!)

Join our mailing list to fill the void in your heart between now and season 2 in March

Ellie and I have a really open chat about our experiences with choral conducting and running a music group. Plenty of golden advice from Ellie, plus she explains why conductors shouldn’t silo into orchestral or choral, the weirdness of masterclasses, and creative administration.

Ellie is a conductor, and founder of Kantos Chamber Choir (who I sing with). She recently debuted with the Hallé and toured with Matthew Bourne’s Romeo and Juliet production as the Young Associate Conductor. She is musical director with the Hallé Youth Orchestra, Radius Opera, Stafford Choral Society; and associate conductor with Manchester Chamber Choir and Huddersfield Choral Society.

Ellie Slorach https://www.ellieslorach.co.uk/

This episode is sponsored by Dorico: the next-generation music notation software from Steinberg.

Links and Show Notes

Royal Opera House - Opportunities for Women Conductors

Jamulus

Ellie’s Britten-Pears Young Artist Programme masterclass with Marin Alsop

Ellie conducting the Hallé Youth Orchestra

National Theatre Live (online screenings have now finished)

Piece of the Month blog series - No Dice Collective

Available to hear as part of Kantos’s In The Field project

—

Leave a kind word on iTunes to help others find us

Join #mailinglistgang and get new podcasts and pieces sent straight to your inbox every month

Shruthi Rajasekar is a composer from Minnesota USA who straddles the worlds of Western contemporary music and south Indian Carnatic music from a truly unique position. Having grown up in the US with prominent Carnatic musician Nirmala Rajasekar as a mother, Shruthi is a joy to talk with as we cover:

Shruthi Rajasekar https://www.shruthirajasekar.com/

Shruthi’s ‘German and Sanskrit’ piece, Devotee (played throughout)

Shruthi’s mum, Nirmala Rajasekar

Out of Context #1: Diversifying Programming with Integrity – Shruthi’s article for I Care If You Listen

B C Manjunath's Instagram:

—

Get new podcast episodes straight to your inbox and a piece recommendation every month

or Picking Weird Enough Instruments That People Can’t Look Away

Cello/singer–accordion duo Good Habits perform live for us all the way from New Zealand. We chat musical storytelling, capturing attention, and moulding a bar gig into a full blown concert by playing the room right. We also hear about their experience writing pop songs for a Chinese media company!

Good Habits https://www.facebook.com/goodhabitsband/

The Trouble Notes

The Unthanks

The Fitzgeralds - amazing!

Silkroad Ensemble

A great series on mixing basics by Dan Worrall for Fabfilter

Benjamin Marrington-Reeve

Hugh Morris

Bonus link: https://www.facebook.com/goodhabitsband/videos/841706926030804/
(for context https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Klhfo6sB4N4)

—

Get new podcast episodes straight to your inbox and a piece recommendation every month

⭐ Revolutionary alternatives to tokenistic diversity programmes

Vijay Iyer is an ECM-signed artist. He has worked with Yo-Yo Ma’s Silk Road Ensemble, written violin concertos for Jennifer Koh, and music for the LA Phil New Music Group. He has been ‘Jazz Artist of the Year’ more times in more magazines than it is polite to count and it is my immense honour to welcome him to Classical Music Now.

If you want to access the work for yourself and check go to https://en.schott-music.com/shop/autoren/vijay-iyer

Wadada Leo Smith

Fluxus movement

Mutations – Vijay Iyer

Shepard tone demonstration

Time, Place, Action – Vijay Iyer (extracts)

Still Life With Commentator – Mike Ladd, Vijay Iyer

Vijay Iyer presents Ritual Ensemble at Wigmore Ensemble

Vijay’s conversation with Georgina Born

We didn’t really dig into Vijay’s views on genre and community, but they're really good so if you're interested you can hear him talking about it in an interview for the Ojai Music Festival, where he was musical director in 2017 – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FUtV9E5AB_I

Read Hugh’s article on Emergence that sparked this episode!

—

Get new podcast episodes straight to your inbox and a piece recommendation every month

Emergence was commissioned by the National Forum of Music in Wroclaw, Poland which organizes Jazztopad Festival. It was premiered by the NFM Leopoldinum Chamber Orchestra in April 2016.

Ah what a lovely chat. We begin with a love letter to new music and Manchester, work through why everyone should be improvising and the parallels between graphic scores and electroacoustic soundscapes, before ending with the role of music in activism, and electro finding a mainstream home in horror music and Amazon’s Alex Rider adaptation.

Sarah Keirle - http://sarahekeirle.wixsite.com/

Links and Show Notes

James Keirle

International Anthony Burgess Foundation

The Vonnegut Collective episode

I found it! Turns out we liked the piece enough to commission him… Theme & Transformations by Mark Bowler reflecting deforestation (not temperature change)

Sonification & The Problem with Making Music from Data - Tantacrul

https://harryovingtonmusic.com/sonic-rewild

Harrison Birtwistle: Silbury Air (with score) – See also this excellent primer by London Sinfonietta which includes an explanation of what metric modulation is if you’re wondering.

Can you hear Sarah Keirle’s burp in Okypete and Aello? I can’t. Send me a timestamp!

Danny Saul

Music played in this episode (in order)

Okypete and Aello extracts throughout

Blue Lungs outro bed

Okypete and Aello final piece played in full

Support the podcast

Subscribe to the mailing list to catch every new episode

Illy Quane: trumpet player extraordinaire, composer, and very funny guy. If you’re looking for some light lockdown distraction, this is it.

We chat about our disappointment with existing brass repertoire (apart from one piece for brass ensemble), Illy explains his developing thoughts on creating gran-friendly contemporary music programmes, and Joe recounts the moment he realised The Sixteen had more than sixteen members.

All in-betweeny music composed or arranged by Illy, and can be heard in full at the links below.

Links and Show Notes

Penderecki - Threnody (Animated Score) starts 0:32

Illy playing with the University of Manchester Brass Band (I’m at the back right)

Kantos Chamber Choir

AGBEKO - ‘22-legged Afro-Party Monster’

A Fela Kuti tune - Water no get enemy

EXCLUSIVE: Secret Footage of Quartet Menine Performing The Metal by Tenacious D Found in Deepest Darkest Corner of YouTube

Quartet Menine playing an arrangement of Debussy’s Dr Gradus ad Parnassum

Shout out Darren Bloom

The New New Manchester Manchester School School presents: And And And And I’ll [Live] (discussed later)

Other members of The New New Manchester Manchester School School, Izzy Williams and Aaron Breeze.

Worship Music

The Lion King (but the songs are different and the plot is terrible)

Jacob Collier’s beautiful performance of Hallelujah live for BBC

BeatSketch_#1 - BIRD SCUFF

‘Like those videos of people playing along with a Nigel Farage Speech’ example

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

Subscribe to the mailing list and get new podcast episodes straight to your inbox, as well as a piece recommendation every month and exclusive ticket discounts (oooh)