Piers Connor Kennedy, composer

Who or what are the most significant influences on your musical life and career as a composer?

Teachers, mostly. Among the most influential is Michael Hoeg, Head of Music at my school whilst I was there and for a long time Organist at Llandaff Cathedral. Piano teachers John Cheer and Daniel Martyn-Lewis (classical) and Paul Jones (jazz) are also central figures in my musical education. Those early years singing as a chorister and making up funny tunes on the piano were very formative for me. My undergraduate tutor Roger Allen also has had a huge influence on my early career both in academia and in composition.

Growing up the music I was introduced to by my parents was mostly 80s rock and Irish folk – so bands like Rainbow, The Eagles, Planxty and Jethro Tull all found their way into my brain. As a 90s kid, I played a lot of Nintendo and I think as a result there’s a sort of kitch Japanese pop sensibility that is lodged in there, too. I’ve always listened almost exclusively to jazz and pop, so artists like Esperanza Spalding, Robert Glasper and The 1975 are big influences on my musical style. I think they engender certain counter-classicisms in my writing.

It’s worth saying that certain classical composers are also significant influences – those whose music (discovered through singing) resonates with me in a kindred sort of way: Britten, Warlock, Leighton, and others. I think they have an economy of sound and a talent for bittersweet beauty that I’ve always admired.

What are the special challenges/pleasures of working on a commissioned piece? What are the special challenges/pleasures of working with particular musicians, singers, ensembles or orchestras?

I always find the peculiarities of each commission the most fun aspect – the idiosyncrasies that curb but also give character to a particular piece. I enjoy most writing for people in particular. So getting to know an ensemble’s personality, their sound, their strengths and their limitations before I begin, and then working with all those traits to write something that is for them, that enhances their character, and that they enjoy performing are the most important things for me, and the most rewarding.

Of which works are you most proud?

I get bored of most of the things I write soon after finishing them. I guess that’s why I keep writing more. But I wrote a couple of song-cycles over the first lockdown in 2020 – one was a rather intense setting of a selection of William Blake’s Songs of Experience which I wrote as part of my DPhil portfolio. The other was just for fun – a selection from John Betjeman’s A Few Late Chrysanthemums which I dedicated to my friend Paul Vaughan who had met Betjeman as a young man and reminds me of him. A couple of those little ditties are probably my proudest works – they say exactly what I was trying to say through them, which is a terribly rare feeling, and they sound to me like they were written by someone else entirely, which is probably the best thing I could say of my music.

How would you characterise your compositional language?

A hodgepodge of folk, jazz, pop, classical, and Nintendo.

How do you work?

In fits and spurts, often in the wee hours and usually just before a deadline.

As a musician, what is your definition of success?

I really don’t know, if I had a definition it would probably change day to day.

What advice would you give to young/aspiring composers?

Don’t worry at all about having dispiriting or confusing experiences with composition tutors and the like – you just always keep doing you and stuff the naysayers.

Tell us about the Worcester Service, which is featured on the Magnificat 4 album. How did the work come about? What was it like to hear it performed by the Choir of St John’s College, Cambridge?

It was written for the Clerks of Worcester Cathedral at the end of my choral scholar year there, so in Summer 2015. It was written pretty quickly and intended for one of those gloomy midwinter midweek lower-voice Evensongs, for which cathedral directors of music are always lamenting an undernourished repertoire. There is something special about the intimate sound of the Choir and Quire in Worcester Cathedral. We later sang the piece during my time at St John’s in 2016-18, and I must say it’s a real treat to hear their recording of it now – the sound is gorgeous.

What is your most treasured possession?

My cat Pamela. I like to think she’d say the same about me.

Piers’ website: https://www.piersconnorkennedy.com/

Magnificat 4, recorded by Andrew Nethsingha and the Choir of St John’s College, Cambridge, is released on Signum on 12th July: https://signumrecords.com/product/magnificat-4/SIGCD777/