Who or what are the most significant influences on your musical life and career as a composer?
I suppose like most composers, I have my favourite sounds and inspirations, of which there are several. However, rather than rattling off a too-long list, I can narrow it down five individuals/ensembles that have had, by far, the greatest influence on my ear and musical leanings to date. In no particular order or hierarchy, they are: Miles Davis, Igor Stravinsky, the progressive rock band Emerson, Lake and Palmer, Johann Sebastian Bach and Josef Zawinul, founder of the visionary jazz fusion group Weather Report. I find that regardless of where my search for new sounds or music takes me, I always return to one or all of these artists – they represent my ‘base camp’ during my musical excursions.
What have been the greatest challenges of your career so far?
Perhaps the biggest challenge has been in convincing people that I’m actually a composer!Seriously, because I have fortunately managed to achieved a notable pedigree as a singer, it seems that sometimes people are somewhat suspicious if one wears two hats.
What are the special challenges/pleasures of working on a commissioned piece?
Creating a bespoke score for a particular soloist or ensemble is a lot like being a tailor. It’s the art of fashioning a unique outfit something for someone that brings out all of their best qualities (and sometimes minimising any ‘flaws’!). This often involves a lot of collaboration. The challenge is being able to strike a balance between writing music that takes advantage of someone’s particular skillset, whilst maintaining my own compositional voice. Not only that, the music created should ideally have a life beyond the dedicatee, so there has to be a certain ‘universality’ in approach.
What are the special challenges/pleasures of working with particular musicians, singers, ensembles or orchestras?
Each musician/ensemble has their own dynamic, so it’s difficult to be specific. However, I do feel that some of the most rewarding experiences I’ve had have been in relation to working with amateur or less-experienced groups. Crafting music for semi-professional ensembles however, takes a great deal of care and consideration. For example, if the music is overly simple people can get bored pretty quickly. Too difficult, and despondency sets in. In this instance, it’s about striking the right balance between stretching their collective abilities, but not writing beyond them. Music making should be both a challenging and nurturing experience.
Of which works are you most proud?
I suppose top of the list would be my third opera ‘Love Me To Death’, which details the harrowing true story of the notorious murderer Ruth Ellis, the last woman hanged in Britain. In addition to conducting the premiere for the Tête à Tête Opera Festival, I also directed, designed the production and created the filmed scenes that accompanied the live action. It was a complete immersion from conception to execution. I was also honoured to have the premiere of my oratorio ‘The Affirming Flame’ given by Ipswich Choral Society at Snape Maltings (on the same
programme I sang the tenor solos in Mozart’s Requiem) and more recently the first performance of another large-scale oratorio, ‘Cromwell’ with the St Ives Choral Society. I have also been fortunate to have chamber works premiered here for the Hertfordshire Festival of Music, including my Violin Sonata, played by the brilliant violinist Litsa Tunnah accompanied by
Daniel Grimwood.
How would you characterise your compositional language?
I would describe my compositional style as ‘Neo-Romantic’. I am naturally drawn to the musical gestures of the mid-20th century – Stravinsky, Shostakovich, Britten and Bartok.
How do you work?
As any composer will tell you, musical ideas rarely come at convenient moments. They usually arrive when one is in the shower, or in the middle of an 8-hour flight. Fortunately, I have perfect pitch, and I always carry manuscript paper with me so I can notate (mostly) what’s bouncing around in my head at any given time. The piano is, of course, where the serious ‘laboratory’ work takes place and ideas are then put through various stress tests to see if they can stand up to all the various transformations and twists necessary to develop them into something of musical value and interest.
As a musician, what is your definition of success?
Perhaps I can best answer this by paraphrasing a musician I greatly admire, the great bass player Marcus Miller. Miller speaks about musical success by comparing a career in music with that of an athlete. If you’re an athlete, your goal is to win a championship in whatever form that takes, be it an Olympic medal, World Cup trophy or World Record. While these are certainly all worthy goals, the ‘only’ thing the athlete can do is to win the same thing again. Being a musician, however, means that you can never actually ‘win’ anything – the goal is to constantly improve and grow as an artist. There may be individual battles to be won along the way, but the musician never has to ask the question ‘what do I do next’? There is no end in sight if you choose music as your goal.
What advice would you give to young/aspiring composers?
If you hear something you like, write it down and try to copy it – not literally, of course – but if you admire they style, sound and architecture of another composer’s music, you could do a lot worse than try to emulate it. And by doing so, you most likely will be able to find your own voice quicker.
What do you feel needs to be done to grow classical music’s audiences?
Not sure about this one. Classical music is essentially a niche activity, both in terms of practice and consumption. Like stamp collecting, train spotting or Bonsai, only certain people are drawn to it. But of course, the same can be said about different categories of music. People who love Drill, for example, can’t stomach R&B. Jazz lovers hate Hip-Hop, and fans of Country music loathe K-Pop. Hell, people who adore Baroque music run a mile when they hear a single phrase of Wagner. For others, it’s Schubert Lieder or nothing. (Even Benjamin Britten notoriously detested the music of Johannes Brahms.) So you see, there really is no one single classical music ‘audience’.
But if we were to put what is generally accepted as ‘classical music’ under one umbrella, it’s still (for me at least) a simple acknowledgement that you either like it or you don’t. There was absolutely no reason at all for a ten-year-old me to be drawn to Western classical tradition, but when I accidentally stumbled on a grainy black and white PBS television broadcast of Sejii Ozawa conducting ‘The Firebird’ with the Boston Symphony Orchestra’ it was the musical equivalent of being hit by a truck. Once I’d recovered, I realised at that moment that I could never go back to being satisfied with the three-chord, three-minute pop song. My ears were suddenly open to an entirely different and magical musical universe, changing my life forever. But as bowled over as I was at that moment, I also know that Stravinsky’s score could just as easily wash over the person sitting right next to me and make absolutely no impression.
What’s the one thing in the music industry we’re not talking about but you think we should be?
This is a very interesting question. There seems always to be an obsession (for lack of a better expression) with ‘spreading the word’ about classical music, and of course this is a very noble goal. (Would it be that the Arts Council had a tiny fraction of the funds spent on Trident nuclear
submarines or missile defence systems at their disposal.) Cheerleading for the arts was indeed a constant theme in my other role as an opera singer and believe me, I did far more of my share of school workshops and going into classrooms to preach the gospel according to Mozart. Of course, I did it in my own style and was always far more interested in what the young people I was working with had to say about themselves that anything I had to offer. While I acknowledge that early exposure to the arts in general is a good thing, I still contend that opera – and classical music in general – is something that either grabs you or doesn’t.
In my experience, no amount of exposure to classical music significantly shifted the balance, either in terms of who takes up an instrument or decides to buy a season ticket. One would have to be living under a rock (on Mars) to have never heard of the Three Tenors, for example, or – going back to my generation – to have somehow missed the great lectures (on primetime television, no less!) by the towering genius of Leonard Bernstein, so worldwide exposure to classical music is hardly new.
Yet it appears to have had minimal effect, either in increasing the number of new participants or aficionados. Classical music has been fighting a battle for acceptance and assimilation into the wider public consciousness for what seems like forever. Remember – Mozart died alone, penniless and debt-ridden. Not even Mozart himself could make his music ‘popular’ – or at least popular enough to sustain him, even for the duration his desperately short life. Of course, I don’t mean to sound pessimistic, and truth be told, I’m not. I will always be eternally grateful for what musical awareness has brought into my life, and as such, would never have chosen any other path. If I could grant that same awareness to everyone on the planet, I certainly would!
What next – where would you like to be in 10 years?
In Los Angeles, watching my daughter pick up her first Academy Award.
What is your idea of perfect happiness?
Giving away everything.
What is your most treasured possession?
My sanity.
What do you enjoy doing most?
Making things.
What is your present state of mind?
Cautiously optimistic.
Tom Randle is Featured Living Composer at this year’s Hertfordshire Festival of Music. He will be in conversation with the festival’s Artistic Director, composer James Francis Brown, and performing with the Rossetti Ensemble. Clarinettist Poppy Beddoe will give the world premiere of his Sonata for Clarinet & Piano.
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