Press: most recent 2010-12
Classical Music December 2012
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Prospect Magazine 2012
Includes interviews with composers Richard Lannoy, Tansy Davies and Anna Meredith and others:
Click here for the full article: Prospect Magazine Friend or Foe: Classical Music & Electronic Music
Friend or Foe? Electronic music is not the enemy of classical music by Alexandra Cochglan
".....Decades after electronic music first conquered dance-floors, it has infiltrated the heart of the classical establishment. These two traditions of classical and popular electronic styles are coming back together—a trend some have hailed as the saving of classical music, others as its death knell. It is neither. Electronic music can become part of modern classical without rotting it from within. But its growing influence does not herald a golden age where electronic classical vies with Rihanna for chart success.
There’s no denying that electronic techniques offer classical composers the chance to expand their musical vocabulary—a responsibility composer Richard Lannoy sees as too important to ignore. “There’s this idea that the orchestra reached its peak in the 19th century and has since stagnated. Thanks to technology we have the opportunity to change this, to develop sounds not available to us acoustically. This isn’t about electronic music replacing the acoustic orchestra, it’s the sound of the orchestra reimagined in ways we’ve never heard before.”
A new musical vocabulary demands a new musical grammar, something Tansy Davies—one of Britain’s most distinctive young composers—is currently developing. “I have a very tactile relationship with the sounds I use; recorded sounds become like just another instrument for me, an extension of my musical palette.” It’s an approach that has already yielded a marvel in the shape of 2005’s Salt Box, an evocative and melancholic musical landscape for chamber ensemble and electronics.
Yet for every composer like Davies or Lannoy for whom integrating two musical worlds is a creative and considered process, there are many for whom thrusting a beat on top of a Debussy string quartet or hacking Bach into bleeding melodic chunks to sample on a dance track (the music of DJ Kissy Sell Out offers some choice examples) is an end in itself.
Misuse and abuse aside, there are real problems with electronics in the classical arena that go beyond ideology, as composer Anna Meredith acknowledges. “[Live performance] is something I really wrestle with; you can be sweating behind your laptop doing incredibly difficult and spontaneous things and to the audience it can look as though you’re just playing Solitaire.”
How can composers preserve the unique energy of the live acoustic performance, while still incorporating new electronic sounds? “I’m realising increasingly that the music can’t all happen behind the Wizard of Oz curtain,” admits Meredith. “My solution has been to take elements that could be electronic and make them happen live instead. I would much rather have something slightly flawed that allowed the audience to see how it is being made.” It’s a philosophy shared by Lannoy. “What’s most exciting for me as a composer is to use electronics to explore new sonic possibilities then to re-translate those sounds back into acoustic forces, and ultimately to make the computer redundant.”
All of which seems to take us full circle, restoring electronic music to its classical origins. Rather than a rivalry, or even a dialogue, the relationship between acoustic music and electronica seems to be one of cyclical growth and influence. We have travelled via technology to arrive once again at gut and wood; we have jettisoned the classical constraints of sonata form only to achieve the rigid structural patterning of a techno track......"
Nonclassical @ Reverb, Roundhouse preview in the New York Times
Nonclassical @ XoYo, 19th Jan. 2012
Review in Spoonfed
"...Richard Lannoy is at the decks and starts off his set with The Orb classic ‘Little Fluffy Clouds’, which brings some sharp pop relief into a two-hour set of interesting yet challenging music. While Lannoy spins the tunes, clarinettist Mark Simpson returns to the stage to do some incredibly impressive freeform playing over DJ Lannoy’s set, which has elements of techno, trance and ambient - although the audience saves its warmest response of the evening for the ten minute solo. Lannoy then brings the 45-minute journey to an end, bringing ‘Little Fluffy Clouds’ back in one more time before handing over to Glasgow’s J.D. Twitch from legendary duo Optimo, to finish the night off with minimalist set with just enough funk to allow this evening’s stragglers to strut their stuff on the now semi-empty dance floor."
Emil Blake, Spoonfed
Includes interviews with composers Richard Lannoy, Tansy Davies and Anna Meredith and others:
Click here for the full article: Prospect Magazine Friend or Foe: Classical Music & Electronic Music
Friend or Foe? Electronic music is not the enemy of classical music by Alexandra Cochglan
".....Decades after electronic music first conquered dance-floors, it has infiltrated the heart of the classical establishment. These two traditions of classical and popular electronic styles are coming back together—a trend some have hailed as the saving of classical music, others as its death knell. It is neither. Electronic music can become part of modern classical without rotting it from within. But its growing influence does not herald a golden age where electronic classical vies with Rihanna for chart success.
There’s no denying that electronic techniques offer classical composers the chance to expand their musical vocabulary—a responsibility composer Richard Lannoy sees as too important to ignore. “There’s this idea that the orchestra reached its peak in the 19th century and has since stagnated. Thanks to technology we have the opportunity to change this, to develop sounds not available to us acoustically. This isn’t about electronic music replacing the acoustic orchestra, it’s the sound of the orchestra reimagined in ways we’ve never heard before.”
A new musical vocabulary demands a new musical grammar, something Tansy Davies—one of Britain’s most distinctive young composers—is currently developing. “I have a very tactile relationship with the sounds I use; recorded sounds become like just another instrument for me, an extension of my musical palette.” It’s an approach that has already yielded a marvel in the shape of 2005’s Salt Box, an evocative and melancholic musical landscape for chamber ensemble and electronics.
Yet for every composer like Davies or Lannoy for whom integrating two musical worlds is a creative and considered process, there are many for whom thrusting a beat on top of a Debussy string quartet or hacking Bach into bleeding melodic chunks to sample on a dance track (the music of DJ Kissy Sell Out offers some choice examples) is an end in itself.
Misuse and abuse aside, there are real problems with electronics in the classical arena that go beyond ideology, as composer Anna Meredith acknowledges. “[Live performance] is something I really wrestle with; you can be sweating behind your laptop doing incredibly difficult and spontaneous things and to the audience it can look as though you’re just playing Solitaire.”
How can composers preserve the unique energy of the live acoustic performance, while still incorporating new electronic sounds? “I’m realising increasingly that the music can’t all happen behind the Wizard of Oz curtain,” admits Meredith. “My solution has been to take elements that could be electronic and make them happen live instead. I would much rather have something slightly flawed that allowed the audience to see how it is being made.” It’s a philosophy shared by Lannoy. “What’s most exciting for me as a composer is to use electronics to explore new sonic possibilities then to re-translate those sounds back into acoustic forces, and ultimately to make the computer redundant.”
All of which seems to take us full circle, restoring electronic music to its classical origins. Rather than a rivalry, or even a dialogue, the relationship between acoustic music and electronica seems to be one of cyclical growth and influence. We have travelled via technology to arrive once again at gut and wood; we have jettisoned the classical constraints of sonata form only to achieve the rigid structural patterning of a techno track......"
Nonclassical @ Reverb, Roundhouse preview in the New York Times
Nonclassical @ XoYo, 19th Jan. 2012
Review in Spoonfed
"...Richard Lannoy is at the decks and starts off his set with The Orb classic ‘Little Fluffy Clouds’, which brings some sharp pop relief into a two-hour set of interesting yet challenging music. While Lannoy spins the tunes, clarinettist Mark Simpson returns to the stage to do some incredibly impressive freeform playing over DJ Lannoy’s set, which has elements of techno, trance and ambient - although the audience saves its warmest response of the evening for the ten minute solo. Lannoy then brings the 45-minute journey to an end, bringing ‘Little Fluffy Clouds’ back in one more time before handing over to Glasgow’s J.D. Twitch from legendary duo Optimo, to finish the night off with minimalist set with just enough funk to allow this evening’s stragglers to strut their stuff on the now semi-empty dance floor."
Emil Blake, Spoonfed
The Sunday Times, Culture 11th March 2012 / Reverb Roundhouse gig 3rd March 2012
"Although Lannoy scoff's at the idea of asking someone not to talk when the music is playing and I expected distractions to be rife, I was amazed to find the audience more manifestly attentive than practically any I've been in recently. As soon as the performances started, a sort of reverent rapture seemed to descend on the 1,000-odd souls, some at cabaret tables, some in the galleries, but a great crowd standing........Electronic music of another sort - DJ sets by Lannoy, then Prokofiev - filled the intervals, and a good time was surely had by all. It was striking that these were not the usual faces seen at many a modern-music event, but satisfying that what was on offer shouldn't, after all, be so far removed from standard classical procedure.." Paul Driver, The Sunday Times, Culture 11.03.12
Kevin Kyle (tenor) and Carl Herring Performing Richard Lannoy's 'The Capital', Nonclassical 2008:
NONCLASSICAL @ STAR OF KINGS, 20th October 2011
Review click here: Blog Review
NONCLASSICAL @ The Troy, 2nd Nov.2011
Click here: Strad Review
Richard Lannoy DJing at Scottish Ballet, November 2010
Click here: Scottish Ballet Blog
Review click here: Blog Review
NONCLASSICAL @ The Troy, 2nd Nov.2011
Click here: Strad Review
Richard Lannoy DJing at Scottish Ballet, November 2010
Click here: Scottish Ballet Blog
