When soprano Gweneth-Ann Jeffers stepped through hushed nightclubbers in January singing Dido’s Lament, it was the culmination of a long-held artistic ambition by Matt Fretton.
Fretton – a former pop recording artist, producer and one-time manager – had always wanted to bring classical music to the clubbing crowd. His answer was This Isn’t For You (TI4U), a monthly ‘classical club night’ at Shoreditch Town Hall where he’s presented music by composers including Tallis and Bach, Pärt, and Piazzolla, Webern and Nancarrow. Performers have included the violinist Alina Ibragimova and trumpeter Alison Balsom as well as more established names such as cellists Natalie Clein and Matthew Barley. The events have also included ambient DJ sets by Eleanor Wilson and visual imagery by photographer Sussie Ahlburg.
‘Having made records and been briefly successful,’ Fretton says, ‘I know I love classical music as much as I love pop or jazz. What inspired me to launch TI4U was how profoundly wrong everyone had got their approach to bringing classical music to new audiences. There were lots of groups playing rock and pop music in a classical style or in classical combos such as string quartet, but they were trying to change the music rather than the environment in which it was presented. Classical or contemporary music doesn’t need to ape pop.’
Fretton’s focus is on bringing existing music to new audiences but his programming decisions have to be carefully judged: ‘Rock venues are made with no resonance so clubs can be horribly inappropriate spaces for some classical music – or you have to amplify it, which is no good. It took me a long time to find the right space in Shoreditch Town Hall but you really do need a room with resonance and some reflection.’
'classical or contemporary music doesn't need to ape pop'
Charlotte Ray, manager of the PRS Foundation (PRSF) agrees that finding the right space for work is crucial.
‘As a concert-goer, I wouldn’t necessarily go to a standard venue and the audiences these new projects are trying to reach are not people who will sit in a concert-hall environment,’ she says. ‘What we are seeing is a proliferation of different types of venues in which people are using their imagination a little, putting new music into places where you might not expect to hear it – bars, say, or outdoor spaces. It’s about getting the right kind of music in the right kind of venue.’ One of the PRSF’s most successful projects was The Art of Noise, a series of free concerts in March and April this year celebrating the 150th anniversary of the National Portrait Gallery (NPG).
The PRSF has been a long-time supporter of the NPG’s Friday Evening Series concerts, showcasing a range of new music by living British composers and songwriters. The Art of Noise featured newly commissioned music that exploited the gallery’s spaces. Among them was Stephen Montague’s Facing the Carnyx, which saw four brass groups echoing through the galleries while 30 masked violinists glided up escalators.
‘Montague’s work took over the whole space,’ Ray recalls. ‘By using new music in those kinds of guises, the audience reaction is extraordinary. And it’s about collaboration. Venues can bring their own expertise to a project, as they know what brings people in.’
The NPG is not the only London visual arts space to have programmed new music. The Whitechapel Gallery has staged urban music events. Recently, the London Sinfonietta performed Stravinsky’s The Soldier’s Tale in the South Bank Centre’s Hayward Gallery as part of its Undercover Surrealism exhibition. One strand of the Tate and Egg series of concerts in 2003 saw Mute Records artists such as Nick Cave appearing at Tate Britain, just as the London Sinfonietta was partnering Sheffield’s influential Warp Records for a series of collaborative concerts at the Royal Festival Hall (and, a year later, in Liverpool Philharmonic Hall and at the Brighton Dome). Tate St Ives got in on the act last year, scheduling the three-day series Dialogues in Sight and Sound. Each day started with a performance, followed by a talk and a concert of music chosen to relate to exhibits.
Now the catwalk is being touched by new music, thanks to a PRSF award that has enabled Phillip Neil Martin to become the first composer in residence at the London College of Fashion. Martin has created sound for graduate shows and other projects, exploring ‘the sound of fabric’.
'it's about getting the right music in the right venue'
‘We are moving back into an age where an artist is fluent across several disciplines,’ Martin says. ‘This multi-genre approach is already becoming more of a focal point. For me, it’s about creating specific projects in specific spaces – there are certain things you could do in a nightclub that you couldn’t in a traditional concert hall. I don’t have the problem of pushing boundaries but the context is so important for defining the kind of project you want to put on.’
Thanks to developments in technology, the interface of space and sound offers some exciting programming opportunities. Last November, the Philharmonia orchestra collaborated with I am the Mighty Jungulator, the Bristol-based artists and engineers who use software to manipulate audio and visual images. The group recorded the orchestra’s performance of Shostakovich’s 6th Symphony at Colston Hall and processed it.
‘They presented a reimagined Shostakovich,’ explains Philharmonia marketing manager Alice Walton. ‘It was the idea that you could play with the notions of what classical music is and offer this adjusted version in the bar simultaneously. What was interesting was that, because the “jungulated” version was happening, a lot of young people came in for the classical concert. So we did achieve some of the crossover we were hoping for.’
Emma Smith is leader of the dynamic young Elysian Quartet. She and her colleagues have regularly championed performances in unusual venues and across genres. On 3 August the quartet supported Polar Bear, the punk-electric jazz ensemble, at The Spitz - the performing space at London’s Spitalfields Market. The Elysians also premiered composer and dance-music producer Gabriel Prokofiev’s first string quartet – a classical piece, heavily influenced by Russian romanticism and the pulse of dance music – at Cargo, the East London nightclub in 2004.
‘We are used to playing in those sorts of venues,’ says Smith, ‘but it doesn’t always feel natural. If you’re playing on a bill with bands, we have to explain that unlike them we didn’t write most of the music we play. We have changed what we programme and our expectations of audiences – one of the first things we accepted was that people would applaud between movements of a quartet, for instance, and not to have an issue with it. If you play acoustic music in a concert hall it works but sometimes we need to be amplified and if you don’t have enough monitoring it can be a real problem; sometimes the precision and accuracy of what we’re trying to do is not as perfect as we’d like it to be simply because of the acoustic challenges.
‘But the reaction of audiences is so much more alive,’ she continues. ‘So while it can be a bit confusing, for the most part it’s really good.’
Sarah Allen promotes a bi-monthly classical night called Arctic Circle at Notting Hill Arts Club, supported by the PRSF and that grew out of radio station Classic FM’s Chiller Cabinet (an ambient classical mix played overnight at weekends). She feels atmosphere and programming must be closely unified and carefully thought through if such events are to succeed.
Arctic Circle is a ‘classical chill’ night – it’s about mixing genres,’ Allen points out. ‘It’s basically bringing classical music to non-classical listeners. You often find that barriers disappear if you present the music appropriately. We once staged a very cutting-edge tuba and bongo set but put it after a percussion group so people stayed and listened with genuine interest. We’ve programmed more familiar things such as Philip Glass and Barber played on string quartet. There’s no dress code – the idea is that they are informal and fun evenings. People are there to love the music.
‘Lighting plays an important role too,’ she adds. ‘Notting Hill Arts Club is like an underground car park so we brighten it up. We are doing more and more video and presentation work. We’ve had DJ sets and we are working with Nick Hornby, a young video artist and sculptor. We also stage a Young Professionals Platform, programming recent graduates who we encourage to bring friends to build our younger audience. We do a podcast before each event, use things such as MySpace and other people’s mailing lists and huge amounts of word-of-mouth marketing.’
‘The exciting thing is the wealth of music out there we are available to perform in different contexts,’ says David Butcher, chief executive of the forward-thinking Britten Sinfonia. ‘New music doesn’t have to be of a particular type any more – and as an orchestra we are taking advantage of that. When I’m planning our seasons, I’m not thinking about concerts; I’m thinking about productions. I’m thinking more like a theatre company than an orchestra.
‘A while ago we did a series called Fast Forward, targeting new music audiences but concentrating on adventurous dance theatre and progressive rock. We played Frank Zappa, James MacMillan and Gil Evans. We used subtle lighting, the audience could come in and out with glasses – and the concerts all sold out. Eighty per cent of the people there had never been to a classical or new music event.
‘What we don’t do is go out there to be “cool” or do things differently for the sake of it,’ Butcher adds. ‘The repertoire is absolutely central. But as long as how you present it is appropriate for the music and for you as a group – which means always having the quality-control button there – it’s fine. Done well, it can be very exciting.’
‘If “cool” is about things being very good,’ echoes Matt Fretton, ‘then classical music is very, very cool indeed.’
LONDON SINFONIETTA: Warp Works and 20th Century Masters is now available from www.warprecords.com
This article originally appeared in M21, published September 2006.