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This is the BBC. This

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BBC Sounds.

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Music, radio, podcasts. Hello,

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I'm Adam Rutherford and this is Start the Week

0:15

on BBC Radio 4. In today's musical

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edition, we've had to trim down the music clips

0:20

for rights reasons, but I do hope you enjoy the

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show anyway. Hello, we're talking

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musical composition today, not the dusty

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trawl through scores as we debate the classical

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canon, but that extraordinary leap

0:31

from page to performance. It's

0:34

something the jazz singer Emma Smith knows

0:36

only too well, how you take the notes written,

0:38

the familiar tune, and reinvent them.

0:41

So stop what you're doing right now

0:42

and spend a moment with this.

0:45

There's no

0:48

people like

0:52

show

0:55

people. They

0:59

smile when

1:02

they are low.

1:10

Yesterday they

1:12

told you... Jazz singer

1:14

Emma Smith with her interpretation of There's

1:16

no business like show business. It's

1:19

all very well to play around with classic songs,

1:22

but what about Handel's Baroque masterpiece,

1:24

Jephthah, currently on at the Royal Opera House?

1:27

Lawrence Cummings is the first person to conduct

1:29

this opera in Covent Garden since

1:31

Handel himself more than 270 years ago. And

1:35

he's doing it in the Handel style, conducting

1:37

and playing the harpsichord at the same time.

1:41

We begin with the multi-award winning composer,

1:43

Errollyn Wallen, who's written a book, a memoir

1:45

of sorts called Becoming a Composer,

1:48

a journey that takes her from her birthplace

1:50

in Belize via Tottenham, eventually

1:53

to a lighthouse in Scotland. Errollyn,

1:57

you express surprise about this

1:59

journey. right at the beginning of the book. Tell

2:02

us how it happened. Well

2:04

if you do tell me age seven that I would

2:07

be a professional composer, I would have just, well

2:09

I wouldn't know what a composer was, but I was always

2:11

writing music and singing

2:14

and in

2:16

a way I followed that path even though I thought

2:18

I wanted to be a dancer. And I suppose

2:21

once

2:22

I got the music bug,

2:24

it was through the piano that I was able to explore

2:26

other music. That was so important. At

2:28

how many people to libraries and just book books

2:31

of Willy Nilly and I mean I never worked

2:33

at school but I just read about music and read

2:36

books in general and play the piano and that was really

2:38

my training and I started,

2:40

you know, the more I wrote longer works

2:43

I thought I needed proper education. So somehow

2:45

I navigated this pathway which of course

2:47

my parents couldn't properly help me with and

2:50

it was this, I was just following my gut in a way.

2:52

But I suppose that being a composer you need

2:54

a, you do need a formal training. All children sing

2:57

and compose and make up songs but the pathway

3:00

that goes from, you know, noodling

3:02

around on a piano when you're eight to

3:04

performing at the last night of the proms, I know,

3:08

that is quite a journey. But

3:09

I will always be a noodle at heart and

3:11

it took me a while to realise that somehow to

3:13

capture that noodling

3:16

in notation

3:17

so that other people can perform it, not just you. So I

3:20

think that was the bit I needed help with

3:22

and that's been, in a way, my life's journey how to

3:25

take music so that it can come alive

3:27

in performance. There's a phrase you use right

3:29

at the beginning of the book, intuition and

3:32

tuition together, which is a bit like the sort of inspiration

3:34

and perspiration idea.

3:37

What is the process of coming

3:40

up with a tune or a composition

3:42

and then having to get it down onto the page

3:44

so that someone else can perform it? Sometimes

3:47

I see the image, sometimes I feel

3:49

something or I find a chord and

3:51

there's this feeling

3:52

of pressure trying

3:54

to move that

3:57

information from one realm of the imagination.

3:59

into sort of just

4:00

dots on the page. And that takes

4:03

time working out, involves improvisation.

4:05

But usually, you can

4:07

spend months or years or something. And

4:10

it's just that process of refining, I guess. Well,

4:13

it's iterative. You talk about it going back

4:15

and back. And I suppose it dispels

4:17

the notion that some of us might have that it's

4:19

all just in your brain, this

4:22

incredible creative space, and you just got to get it on

4:24

the page. It's back and forth

4:26

and back and forth. And then when it comes to performing, it's

4:28

back and forth with the musicians.

4:30

Exactly. Because the things that isn't in your brain, but

4:32

as an instant snapshot, music

4:35

exists in time. So

4:36

you've got to move from that sphere

4:38

of snapshot to sort of realizing

4:41

everything through time. And that's fascinating,

4:43

actually. You live in a Scottish

4:46

lighthouse. I do. Which

4:48

I think kind of fits the idea of a

4:51

lone genius composer. I

4:52

know. I was trying to avoid that.

4:54

There we go.

4:55

Well, the book itself talks about how collaborative

4:58

the process of composing is. It's your name on

5:00

the score. But there are a lot

5:02

of people involved.

5:04

Yes. I mean, a composer

5:06

would not exist without. You're often

5:08

working in a team, whether that's just a team

5:10

of the commissioner and various

5:13

institutions. But also, you're working

5:15

always very closely with performers. And you're

5:17

trying to get the best out of them. And also,

5:19

you have to please the commissioner or the

5:22

event. You have to have a sense of what that

5:24

performing event will be and

5:26

how your music works within it. Do you have that

5:28

vision when you're writing, when you're getting

5:30

the dots on the page? Do you have a sense

5:32

of what the performance will be? Well, you should start

5:34

sort of blindly stumbling. And

5:37

then there's a moment where I start to see performers

5:39

in it. Maybe just imagination. And then I think, oh,

5:41

that's it. It's going to be real. Well, let's have

5:44

a listen to an extract of

5:46

one of your tracks. This is from When the Wet

5:48

Wind Sings. Before we listen

5:50

to it, can you just explain the genesis

5:53

of this piece? Yes. This

5:56

work marks the

5:57

beginning of the abole- the

5:59

beginning of the- slavery, which was,

6:03

I guess, pioneered by John Hawkins, 1562. And

6:07

I lived in Greenwich, and it's tracing

6:11

the journey

6:12

of slavery at the very beginning.

6:39

There's

6:45

a clip from When the Wet Wind

6:48

Sings sung by the National Youth Choir

6:50

of Great Britain. Erroline Wollan, how

6:52

much do you look to ideas of identity

6:55

and history for inspiration

6:57

of your compositions?

6:59

I feel strongly that composers, all artists,

7:01

should be witnesses of their time. And

7:04

I look

7:04

at old stories,

7:06

but I'm very interested in our

7:09

history, my history, as it relates

7:11

to me and how it affects our time. Because we're living

7:14

in a fascinating time where we're finding

7:16

new things, new stories. There's an

7:18

incredible diversity of inputs

7:20

into your work, as well as a diversity of outputs.

7:25

You teach your students to look at

7:28

things and not think about pitch, but really

7:30

just to look very deeply for inspiration.

7:33

Most of inspiration

7:34

comes outside oneself. There's

7:36

this myth that we navel-gazing,

7:38

but that will only

7:39

last you a couple of months, and then it'll

7:41

be bored. You run out of your

7:44

position. The world

7:45

is so fascinating, I can't tell you. Looking at traffic,

7:48

the way

7:49

the different motions weave

7:51

and simple things are inspirational.

7:55

I wanted to ask you all about inspiration

7:58

and early influences.

7:59

because it's clear in some of your work,

8:02

Errolinn, but Lawrence, you've become an expert

8:06

on Handel. We'll be talking about Jethra in

8:08

just a minute. Was it

8:09

Handel from a very early age for you? Well,

8:12

it was actually. I mean, I slightly cringe

8:14

at the term expert because I just love the

8:16

music and I do a lot of it. And I've been very lucky

8:19

in my professional life to get to perform

8:21

a lot of it. And

8:23

I remember

8:25

hearing Emma Kirkby singing the

8:28

Refiners' Fire from Messiah when I was a teenager,

8:30

and it was a light bulb moment. It just

8:32

sort of, my hair stood up on end for the first

8:35

time. And I suddenly

8:37

realized that there was a way of expressing

8:39

music. I mean, I was really into music already, but

8:41

I just realized that there was something very alive

8:44

about that way of doing music. And

8:47

do you still get that sort of visceral reaction when you

8:49

perform things that you know inside out?

8:52

Oh, absolutely. And the lovely thing is it

8:54

feels different every time. You know, when you're repeating

8:56

performances, there's always something. And of course the audience

8:58

pay a huge part in that and the performers

9:01

all bring their own things to the table. And

9:03

Emma, I mean, you come from sort

9:05

of jazz royalty. Perhaps it was inevitable

9:08

that you were gonna be a jazz singer given

9:09

your heritage. My parents

9:11

did not want that for me, but yes, it

9:14

seems that that was my inevitable path. For

9:17

me, it was Ella Fitzgerald singing

9:19

The Beatles, Can't

9:20

Buy Me Love, that really got me hooked

9:22

on jazz and how it can move

9:25

through so many genres and

9:28

still have so much

9:30

identity and it's a swing feel and it's improvised

9:32

brassy notes. Well, we'll be talking more about

9:35

that in a minute, but back to Errolen,

9:37

you've composed for so many different musical

9:40

styles. I'm not super into classification

9:43

or the sort of taxonomy of what is jazz,

9:45

what is classical, but you have, you've written

9:47

jazz? Well,

9:48

just recently I wrote a song cycle for Sarah Connolly

9:50

and she told me that she's memorized all

9:53

of Ella Fitzgerald's scat, but

9:55

there's one song that she

9:57

can sing jazz, so there's one song

9:59

which is... in that style for her.

10:01

And what newness

10:03

do you see in the performance that you hadn't anticipated

10:07

or that wasn't written on the page when someone

10:09

performs it or an audience? Oh, it's the humanity,

10:11

somebody's personality. And

10:15

you have to be as careful and

10:17

precise as you can, but

10:18

always leave room for the

10:22

greatness of another human being. I'm

10:24

very interested in the relationship between the composer

10:27

and the conductor, Lawrence, and

10:29

the audience that you just mentioned. I

10:31

suppose, Emma, you're facing the audience, but

10:34

Errol and Lawrence, you're not. You

10:37

can't really, Lawrence, your back is

10:39

literally too low. Yes, it was

10:41

a bit rude, to be honest. So

10:44

where do you get that feedback? Well, I

10:46

mean, in the theatre, I mean,

10:48

if you're doing an opera, but you're doing a show, then

10:50

you get the convection current. You know, the music,

10:52

we're making the music happen, it

10:54

circulates into the audience, and then it flows

10:57

back onto the stage. And

10:59

never was that more obvious than

11:02

during the pandemic when we were doing performances without

11:04

an audience in the same concert halls

11:06

that we used to. And it felt so

11:08

strange because even knowing that

11:10

people were watching online, it was very hard

11:13

to reach people, if you know what I mean. And

11:16

that's what I find so exciting, is that every

11:18

performance is different as much

11:20

as anything else because of the audience. Not

11:22

just the acoustics, but the vibe you're getting off of them,

11:25

Emma, it must be hugely significant

11:27

to you standing on stage. Absolutely. I

11:29

change my set list depending on how the audience

11:31

is whilst mid gig.

11:33

Yeah, depending if they're like

11:35

a rowdy late night Ronnie Scott's crowd

11:37

or a Cadogan Hall early evening. Sometimes

11:40

I got it wrong, you know, whilst preparing the

11:42

show. And that's the beauty of jazz and beauty of performing

11:45

with deeply rooted

11:48

musicians in improvisation. I can

11:50

just pull out any tune I want at the drop of

11:52

a hat.

11:53

That flexibility must be very exciting, but I

11:55

suppose for Lawrence and Errolan, you

11:57

don't have that freedom because you...

11:59

written the notes to be performed in

12:02

this particular order. But

12:03

sometimes I'll only get 70%

12:06

of what I've written performed. I always feel that the

12:10

hallmark of good pieces, can it bear

12:12

being played incorrectly, if the spirit

12:15

is still there? That's what I'm after really. Incorrectly?

12:18

Yes. You think of it in those terms.

12:21

Well, especially at first performance,

12:23

it's quite hard to get everything all right, you

12:25

know, things go wrong and the piece

12:27

should still be able to stand on its

12:28

feet I think. When you continue, you go

12:31

through an iterative process even after it's

12:33

been performed in front of people, you modify as

12:35

you're going along.

12:36

I'm not a great reviser, but certainly it's

12:38

only in rehearsal

12:41

that you can see really like crucially

12:43

the tempo is right,

12:45

or so often your things will

12:47

be changed and the conductor will change things in

12:49

subsequent performances,

12:51

depending on the acoustics of

12:53

the space or the performance involved. One

12:55

of the things I adore about live music is

12:58

the

12:59

visceral nature of it, the

13:01

fact that you can hear Yo-Yo

13:03

Ma's fingers as they hit the strings

13:06

and it gives this sort of real sense,

13:09

you know, to rattle your bones. You

13:12

can't,

13:12

can you write that? Do you write that? Yes.

13:15

I tell you how, the more you, you

13:17

know, this is Smith that the composer is a solitary person,

13:19

but we are, I'm inspired by the musicians,

13:22

actually, Yo-Yo Ma's played a piece of mine that

13:24

was written for another performer, but it was the other

13:27

performer, everything about how it performed, you

13:29

know, made that piece what

13:31

it was.

13:31

And you describe yourself as an introvert, which

13:34

seems, again, a bit like the sort of

13:36

classical myth of the composer, isolated

13:39

in your Scottish lighthouse. Some of my pyjamas,

13:41

yes. That's some extra

13:43

detail, which I'm glad you've included.

13:47

But you can't wear your pyjamas when you go into

13:49

a rehearsal room, can you? Or do you? But I always

13:51

remind

13:51

myself, you know, at the brand premiere, remember

13:54

how this was written in my pink onesie,

13:56

but actually

13:58

the thing with the composer has to be.

13:59

have to have this really nerdy introvert

14:02

self and then be able to work with

14:04

people. And that's,

14:05

you know, that's not always easy. And

14:08

when it works, it is conflict which is productive.

14:11

Yes.

14:12

Yes. And you only get that when you're in

14:14

the room with the performance. Definitely.

14:16

Well, let's move on to talk about

14:19

Jephthah and Handel's opera,

14:21

Lawrence Cummings. You

14:23

were doing something which is, I think,

14:26

unusual and hasn't been done since Handel

14:29

himself did this. But as you're conducting,

14:32

with one hand, you're playing the harpsichord with

14:34

the other. Yes. Well,

14:37

I mean, Handel directed the performances himself

14:39

and from the harpsichord. We know that.

14:42

And of course, conducting in its modern sense hasn't been invented

14:44

yet. The

14:47

role of the person at the front was really just to mark

14:49

the time. So to make sure everyone was together

14:51

really. And the reason the baton

14:54

came into being was from a rolled

14:56

up piece of white paper, which was held

14:58

up. And they were just waved

15:00

to give the tactors to give the actual beat, the

15:03

pulse of the piece. And

15:07

just building on what Erlen was

15:09

just saying, and in fact, Emma as well, because our

15:12

music is very improvised. Handel

15:14

has given us the bare bones, if you like.

15:19

Music at this point was sort of almost,

15:21

you could say, written in short score. You

15:23

get the melodies, the tunes, you get

15:26

the bass line and then the given

15:28

harmonies. And those were indicated with a series of

15:30

numbers. I don't want to go into too much detail,

15:32

because it's one of my passion subjects. Oh, no,

15:34

we love detail. It's all figured bass.

15:37

So you get a series of, you get a bass line, which

15:39

the cellos and basses play in the orchestra. And then the

15:42

people who are called the continuo sections.

15:45

So that's the harpsichords and

15:48

the theobos, which are giant lutes with long giraffe

15:50

necks. We play chords, so

15:52

with a sort of rhythmic harmony, if you like. And

15:55

the composer gives us a series of numbers which

15:57

indicate which chords we play. quite

16:00

similar to jazz, I think. It's

16:02

improvised but within a formula. So

16:05

he tells you what harmonies to play but it doesn't tell you how to play

16:07

them. So you've got all that freedom going on. And

16:10

then of course on stage, you've

16:12

got the singers who were, you know, the

16:14

famous singers from the 18th century were renowned for their ornamentation.

16:18

So they would come with their

16:20

little jewellery boxes of fantastic

16:22

ornaments and the audience would be wowed because

16:26

the nature of the artist is usually A, B,

16:28

A. So you get a first section, a contrasting

16:30

second section and then it returns to the A but

16:33

of course differently ornamented and

16:35

that's where you get to dazzle. And that's

16:38

actually a very improvisatory quality. And

16:40

that presumably means that every performance

16:43

is somewhat different. Indeed. And of course

16:45

the more daring performers can keep

16:47

one on one's toes during

16:49

performance as well. Depending on how they

16:51

feel, how you feel, what the audience is... Exactly.

16:54

I mean, if the audience are sort of really

16:57

digging it then they can indulge them at a

16:59

particular moment and then perhaps it's my job to indicate

17:02

subtly that perhaps we've had enough of that moment and

17:04

it's time to move on. Well let's just talk

17:06

about what the story is for a bit because it's not

17:08

one that I think is... it wasn't familiar

17:10

to me and it's a very short passage in

17:13

Judges from the Bible but can you just give us a sort

17:15

of an overview of the story

17:17

of Jephthah? Well the

17:20

Israelites are in...

17:22

they're

17:23

imprisoned,

17:25

incarcerated really by the Ammonites and

17:27

they've been there for 18

17:29

years and it's... the

17:32

story of the Old Testament is about Israelites

17:34

suppression and always trying

17:37

to do the right thing and they

17:40

decide that they need to

17:43

promote a hero to lead

17:46

them against... in battle against the Ammonites

17:49

and in the Handel

17:51

version, which isn't mentioned in the

17:53

Bible, but in the Handel version, Zabel

17:56

starts off the oratorio saying

17:58

we must appoint a leader. must be so. Those

18:01

are his very first words, it must be so. In

18:03

fact, it mustn't be so. Really

18:06

they make a huge mistake because what

18:08

they should be doing is praying to God. They

18:10

should be being devout and spiritual, but

18:12

in fact they're thinking of war. And they

18:15

bring Jepsa back who's been ostracized

18:19

because he's

18:21

a bit of a misfit, but he's a flawed hero

18:24

basically. He's brought back and

18:26

immediately as the oratorio starts he

18:29

displays too much confidence in

18:31

his own abilities and it's hubris and

18:34

you can sort of tell that he's going to be brought

18:36

down. Yes, I mean the hubris is

18:38

very stark. I think of him particularly

18:41

to do with the production design and the staging itself. He's

18:44

more of a cult leader and a religious

18:46

zealot and goodness shall

18:48

make me great is the

18:50

refrain. Yes, lots of sentences

18:53

that begin with I and include

18:55

the word me. It's a bit of a giveaway. So you

18:57

mentioned just then that it is an

18:59

oratorio. So it isn't when

19:01

Handel was doing this, it didn't

19:04

have full production design, but your

19:06

version is very much an

19:09

opera. Yes, we're staging this oratorio

19:11

as an opera. I mean, but

19:13

that's not to say because it was written

19:16

for Covent Garden, it was written for a theatre

19:19

and the opera would have been possibly

19:21

playing on the other nights in the season.

19:24

And the thing with oratorio

19:26

again, it's a big topic, but really

19:29

it started in the previous century in the 17th century

19:31

as a way of being

19:33

able to put on drama during

19:36

Lent because the church forbid for

19:38

bad any stage

19:40

drama. So they turned to the religious stories

19:42

and of course the stories from the Old Testament are so

19:45

vivid that there's a whole

19:47

sort of minefield there of things that you

19:49

can take and use for

19:52

the dramatic purposes. And this is sort of much

19:55

later on almost the sort of the peak of

19:57

this tradition. The

20:00

core element of the story is the, in the biblical

20:02

version, the unnamed daughter, that she's Iphys

20:07

in the opera, who

20:10

is set to be sacrificed.

20:13

For what reason?

20:14

Well, before battle,

20:17

Jepsa makes

20:19

a vow to God that

20:22

if he's successful in battle, he will

20:25

sacrifice the first thing

20:27

or person he sees on his

20:29

return, or give

20:33

them up to the service of God. But

20:35

unfortunately, he is successful in battle.

20:37

That all goes very well. He returns from battle,

20:41

and the first person he sees is his daughter, but he

20:43

forgets the second part of his own vow. It's

20:45

almost like he's got an obsession with this,

20:47

you know, it's the typical catastrophist, I

20:49

suppose. And he

20:52

just can't see, and I think it's

20:54

all part of this sort of flawed hero thing. He

20:57

cannot see the wood for the trees, and he thinks his

20:59

daughter, despite everybody else's protestations,

21:02

he thinks she must die. I don't know how we feel

21:04

about spoilers for an opera that was written 270

21:07

years ago, but the ending is,

21:10

well,

21:11

she lives.

21:13

But it's not quite how Handel intended. Well,

21:16

no, in our production, we've slightly subverted

21:18

the end, I think it's fair to say. And

21:20

in fact, she lives, and

21:23

she is able to be with her

21:26

lover, Hamor. And

21:29

I don't think it's giving too much away to

21:31

say that they are

21:33

together. Let's just leave it at that. But

21:35

this is great that actually that's

21:38

how you were feeling about it, because in fact, the 18th

21:40

century audience would have also been there, because

21:42

it's a cliffhanger, because the Bible is unclear. The

21:45

lines in the Bible say he

21:47

did unto her according

21:50

to his vow. And of course, his vow is open-ended.

21:52

So the 18th century audience wouldn't have known

21:55

which way Morell, the librettist, and Handel were

21:57

going with this. So it's

21:59

great that... there is a sort of, you know, a cliffhanger

22:02

to the edge. It's interesting that you refer to him as a hero

22:04

though, because I came out, the first thing I thought in that

22:06

very final scene was, I literally

22:10

said to the, to the, my producer who I was

22:12

with, men like him never really

22:14

learn. Well, no,

22:17

I mean, or men never

22:19

learned one, could also say, but it's, it's,

22:23

there is something cyclical about it. You

22:25

know, you, you get this kind of feeling that we

22:28

pass on our own sins

22:31

to the next generation. And that's, that's what this,

22:34

the power of this production, I think is trying to indicate.

22:37

Errol, you've seen Jeff though.

22:39

What are your thoughts on this?

22:41

It was so striking. And that, exactly

22:44

you're saying that the idea of stage and oratorio, it's

22:47

kind of a gift, isn't it? So dramatic.

22:50

And you can, you know, by physicalizing it, you

22:52

know, it was, yeah, it was

22:53

quite a bit revolutionary. I mean, the

22:55

great thing with the oratorio is against Handel's

22:58

operas is that the chorus plays such a huge

23:00

role. And they are us of course, because

23:02

the chorus is they're fickle, they, they,

23:05

they go against Jepsa, they, they,

23:08

they praise him, they, they say, Oh,

23:10

we don't want any more to do with the Ammonites because they're evil,

23:12

sinful people, but they imitate all their music. So they're

23:14

indicating that they've had a lot of fun on the way.

23:18

So there's a sort of, you know, they're complicated people because

23:20

they're us, it's every man. And the staging

23:23

is really

23:23

worth mentioning. I know we're focusing on

23:25

the music and the conducting here, but the production

23:28

design is, is

23:29

wonderful. And it has

23:31

a lot of sort of horror film influences. There's

23:33

a couple of scenes which are, which, well,

23:35

immediately made me think this is straight out of the exorcist.

23:38

Well, the great thing with oratorio is that

23:40

it was theater of the mind. So

23:43

there were, it wasn't staged, there were no

23:45

costumes, but the audience would have had the

23:47

libretto, they knew exactly what was going on. They even had

23:49

the stage instructions. So they knew what

23:51

was going on in the story. And I mean,

23:53

rather like on radio, you're able

23:55

to, you know, feel your own imagination with,

23:58

with what's going on. And

24:01

so there's a lot of moments in

24:03

the oratorio where your fantasy can

24:05

take you on all sorts of things. And of course their visions. And

24:09

I mean there's a very striking moment where

24:11

Storje, who's Jeptha's wife, and

24:13

of course Ivis, is Marna, who

24:17

has a presidue that fact that

24:20

something awful is going to happen to her daughter. And of course she's proved

24:22

right. But that's like a nightmare vision.

24:25

And that's very filmic, I think. You

24:28

just have this suspended

24:31

person dressed as Ivis

24:35

walking on a vertical wall.

24:38

Yes, sideways, held up. And I

24:40

was looking for the strings and there weren't any. No.

24:43

That was very impressive. Errolinn, I suppose

24:45

this is what we're talking about, as

24:48

the central idea how you go from something which

24:50

handles

24:50

races and oratorio with no stage directions

24:52

to something so dramatic. Again, is it

24:55

something that you think about when you're writing, you're thinking

24:57

about the performance you've written or press? Yes, I've

24:59

written 22 now. But

25:00

I've also written a few oratorios. And

25:02

there's one where we did include a little bit of

25:04

stage. But just again,

25:07

if you work with dramatic texts, there's more than

25:09

one way of realising it. And I think that's

25:12

a joy of it that a work can exist

25:14

in many different ways.

25:15

Emma Smith, jazz singer. It

25:17

is currently the London Jazz Festival.

25:20

And I suppose jazz in its improvisational

25:24

form is almost like a gel that's holding

25:26

all of these ideas together. Has

25:29

that always been the case? How much is improv part of what

25:31

you do?

25:31

Absolutely. When it comes

25:34

to composing in the jazz idiom, we're

25:36

doing it all the time. I always say that improvisation

25:39

is composition in real time. So

25:42

I could take a piece, I don't know, something like Lady Be Good

25:44

or something I've sung a million times. And

25:46

every single time I do it, depending on

25:48

the mood, depending on the audience, depending on the

25:50

sound, depending on the time of day, time of year,

25:53

it's going to be a completely different interpretation,

25:55

a completely different new composition

25:57

on top of those chord changes.

25:59

I think that sometimes people

26:02

make the mistake of thinking that improvisation is just

26:04

making stuff up as you go along, but actually it's

26:07

severely constrained. You have to learn how

26:09

to improvise. Absolutely. There is so

26:12

much structure to what we do,

26:13

and I love that. I love the order

26:16

of it, and I love the chaos that you can create, the

26:18

playtime

26:18

you can have within the structure of the chords.

26:21

And sometimes you can go totally off-piste and know that

26:23

you are. It's all about being in the

26:25

driver's seat as an improviser, which

26:28

is especially challenging as a vocal improviser, because

26:30

if you haven't got

26:31

perfect pitch, you haven't got the button

26:33

to press to know that that's definitely a G-flat.

26:36

So you really need to understand the music and get

26:39

acquainted with the personality of the chord tones

26:42

so you can choose. And I think slightly unusually,

26:44

you went to a classical music school, you went to the Purcell

26:47

school, which presumably

26:50

has a very different approach,

26:53

a much more classical, traditional approach

26:55

to music than is inherent

26:57

in jazz. I was the first ever jazz

26:59

singer to go to the Purcell school of music, so

27:01

they basically made the role

27:04

for me there. And the

27:06

same thing happened at the Royal Academy of Music, where I

27:08

went and studied for four years after that. They

27:10

hadn't had an undergrad jazz

27:12

vocalist on the course there. And me

27:14

and my fantastic friend, Quabs, were

27:17

the first singers to go there on that undergrad course too. So

27:19

we pretty much made up our own education,

27:23

but I really enjoyed studying all

27:25

the different types of music while I was at Purcell, especially

27:27

baroque. And how did

27:30

being a jazz singer or thinking of yourself as

27:32

a jazz singer, how did that fit into those

27:34

more traditional forms, such as the handle of

27:36

the baroque? It informed

27:39

a lot of what I was doing, and it gave me that kind

27:41

of

27:41

historical context to

27:43

trace where improvisation had gone

27:46

all the way back to and actually fed into many,

27:48

many different genres. I

27:50

did, I think it's called Madrigals or

27:52

Madrigals. I never know

27:54

what the actual word is. Madrigals. I

27:56

loved it so, so much. It was singing in seven part

27:58

harmony.

27:59

weaving counterparts and

28:02

it started to feed into how I wanted to

28:04

write for like jazz choir and large

28:07

ensemble and now there's

28:09

even traces of that in my small band writing.

28:12

The pianist plays on the top right hand and the bass

28:14

player's got his bow out and the drummer's just playing

28:17

with his hands on the snare and I can hear all those

28:19

moving parts and all the respect we

28:21

have for each other when the other one wants to take over

28:23

and go back and it's quite

28:25

fun. But there is

28:27

an association in the

28:29

sort of classical canon between it being a much more

28:31

academic and rigid and you need to be

28:33

trained to do it compared to the much more organic

28:36

and you know a music form

28:39

that has come not from the traditional

28:41

canon. No,

28:44

not really. I think that

28:46

there is all of that that's present in classical

28:49

music is absolutely present if not more

28:51

in jazz. It can be incredibly snobbish

28:54

and purest. You

28:56

know the people that love the bebop era,

28:58

myself included, will be very strict

29:01

with a time frame that they'll be checking

29:04

out and transcribing only people from that era

29:06

the same applies to swing, the same applies to post-bop.

29:09

Yeah,

29:09

it can be really pure. Errol and you're enthusiastically

29:12

nodding along. I had a short period working

29:14

with Courtney Pine and you know I

29:16

said please don't let me play any better. I'm a classical

29:19

pianist but yes

29:20

it's very, people

29:22

are sort of, there are many,

29:24

many rules. I heard that a few times

29:27

which is a bit boring. There's

29:36

kind of tribes within

29:37

the jazz world. I

29:39

like to

29:40

break the rules though. So

29:42

I really love the musical theatre era,

29:44

the Gershwin era and I

29:46

like to take that music and give it a bebop

29:49

treatment. Well you didn't give it a bebop treatment

29:51

but the tune that we heard at the beginning which is,

29:56

there's no business like show business. I wasn't

29:58

expecting that.

29:59

I would think of that as a very upbeat jolly

30:02

song about the joys of show business, but with your

30:04

sort of melancholic

30:06

take on it,

30:07

it becomes quite a sinister tune. Absolutely.

30:11

It's a really important piece for me. I've

30:14

been very touched that it's been very impactful

30:16

for so many artists of all different types

30:18

of art. Myself

30:21

and my long-time musical collaborator Jamie Sophia

30:24

gave that tune, that treatment, during lockdown,

30:26

sorry to talk about it, but it was very insulting

30:29

to our community to be told to retrain and that performing

30:31

arts was not a viable

30:34

work

30:35

forum. So

30:37

that tune, I pulled the lyric out, especially

30:40

when it says, there's no people like show people, we

30:42

smile when we are low. Another

30:44

lyric is, you got word before the show had started

30:46

that your favourite uncle died at dawn, your

30:49

mum and dad departed, but you still go on.

30:52

It really does encapsulate exactly

30:54

what we do as performers, no matter what's

30:56

going on in your life. People have paid money to come

30:58

and see you and that is an honour and you must serve

31:01

it. You're

31:02

serving the audience again, keep returning

31:04

to that theme. Lawrence, how do you feel

31:06

about jazz influencing what you do when you're standing

31:08

in front of your choir? Well

31:10

I love it if things can be spontaneous. I mean obviously

31:13

with staged

31:15

opera, there's

31:16

a limit to how spontaneous you

31:18

can be because if you throw too many surprises, people

31:22

just won't be together because you're relying on

31:24

certain things to being the same. But there is nonetheless flexibility

31:27

and the music's always breathing, that's

31:29

the most important thing for

31:31

me anyway, that you don't feel you're repeating

31:34

something, you're sort of reinvigorating

31:36

it somehow. But within a context

31:38

of saying within a rhythm,

31:41

you have to stay within

31:43

the line. Well I think rhythm, I'm glad you mentioned

31:45

rhythm actually because Handel's rhythm

31:48

was so precise really, I think

31:50

that's how he started his compositional process.

31:53

Looking at the text, deciding what the rhythm was

31:56

going to be, he was a great borrower

31:58

so he'd borrow music

32:00

from all sorts of people and there's lots of borrowings

32:02

in in Jepsa because borrowing

32:05

from other other composers was a huge

32:08

complement to those other composers it wasn't cheating.

32:10

Composers such as who did you borrow? Well Habermann

32:13

is a big influence in Gulluppi,

32:15

they're not very well known composers now but there's

32:19

a lovely duet at the beginning of towards

32:21

the beginning of Jepsa which is pretty

32:24

much straight out of Gulluppi's operas

32:27

and

32:30

it's handled sort of acknowledging that music

32:32

tastes have changed, it's Galant,

32:34

it's sort of later music if you like really

32:36

and it's him being very

32:39

au courant, he's really

32:42

giving something quite modern and yes of course giving

32:44

it his own twist. Emma,

32:47

your album that came out last year in his recent

32:49

work which is called Meshuggah Baby, explain

32:52

the title to us, you're borrowing a lot of sort

32:54

of cultural Jewishness

32:57

that goes into your work. Absolutely,

32:58

my Jewish identity is a massive

33:01

part of what I do, I always

33:04

found it a struggle to kind of find

33:06

a place to hang my hat in the jazz world because

33:09

you're always

33:12

paying homage to that black American

33:14

tradition of swinging and improvising

33:17

and I always had to tread incredibly carefully

33:20

whilst you know being respectful

33:23

and trying very very hard

33:25

not to appropriate and appreciate and

33:28

then I started digging really deep into

33:30

my Jewish identity and Jewish

33:33

immigrants in jazz and essentially

33:35

discovered that the entirety of the

33:37

great American

33:38

songbook, not the entirety but let's say

33:40

like 85 plus

33:41

percent is written

33:43

by Jewish immigrants and that it

33:45

warmed my heart and it sounded saddened

33:48

me at the same time, it's now become the

33:50

sort of biggest part of my mission is to elevate

33:52

those voices and really firmly

33:54

put them right in the centre of the

33:56

jazz idiom because those were the compositions that

33:58

then were improvised on top of the of and

34:00

that marriage

34:01

of cultures is really the

34:03

history of jazz. And the title? Oh

34:06

the title, yeah. Meshuggah baby,

34:08

it's a bit of a silly play on words really. Meshuggah means

34:10

to be senseless, crazy, it's

34:12

a Yiddish word if someone says, oh they're Meshuggah

34:15

now. I can feel a lot of people nodding along

34:17

right now. If someone

34:18

gets called Meshuggah now, it's

34:19

a bit of an insult but it's sort of tongue in cheek

34:21

like, oh that's that crazy person over there. And

34:24

so it's a kind of a comment

34:26

on what I've been called throughout my whole life

34:29

being an independent

34:31

young jazz woman going against

34:33

a lot of

34:34

the grain of what I was expected of. You've

34:36

mentioned in the past that your

34:39

ADHD has affected

34:42

the way you think about jazz and the way you

34:44

perform. It reminded me of that story

34:46

in one of the sacks about the jazz

34:49

drummer who had Tourette's and then when he

34:51

started treating him, he lost

34:53

the ability to improvise

34:55

within

34:56

the constraints of being a drummer. How

34:59

does your ADHD affect your performance?

35:01

Well, I wanted to be a pop star when I

35:03

was little and then

35:05

I got bored of pop music and

35:08

I didn't quite realise at the time because I was undiagnosed

35:10

with my ADHD and my dyslexia but I

35:12

just always needed to be challenged and my satiation

35:15

rate just got quicker and quicker and quicker. So

35:18

I found that jazz music is the

35:20

only home where I will

35:22

never actually get bored. So

35:25

I started checking out loads of

35:27

Oscar Peters and Solos and Dexter Gordon and Miles

35:29

Davis and Anita O'Day and Bill Evans

35:31

and there's just an endless plethora. I

35:33

could do this for about 100 lifetimes

35:35

and still be challenged

35:37

and entertained. The way, the

35:40

speed and the tempo of tracks like the one that

35:42

we heard and some of the other tracks on Meshuga

35:45

Baby

35:46

doesn't necessarily correlate

35:48

with my thoughts on what ADHD

35:50

and Tension Spanner is like because it's very slow

35:53

and gentle. You're missing hyper focus

35:56

which is a big part of ADHD

35:58

and in that moment when I'm singing

36:00

the introduction to There's No Business Like Show Business,

36:03

and I can feel the room's hair

36:05

standing on end that is giving me

36:08

as much satiation

36:11

and interest as if I was playing

36:12

something at 340 bpm and scatting

36:15

all over it. They're both sides of the same

36:17

coin. Errol and nodding again enthusiastically,

36:19

I'm thinking of how your personality comes

36:21

through into the composition. Yeah, well,

36:23

sometimes I was ADHD, but that

36:26

thing of hyper focus

36:27

is true with me, I think all of a sudden

36:29

it means it's so absorbing mentally

36:32

and physically, it's like the whole body and mind.

36:34

You have to concentrate, you have to be there.

36:36

You know, that's what we live

36:39

for. And Lawrence

36:41

Handel was losing his sight

36:43

as he was writing Jephto, this is his

36:45

last great oratorio. Yes, well,

36:48

there's a very poignant, he has to put the pen

36:50

down towards the end of Act Two in the middle of the great

36:52

chorus, How Dark Are They Ways,

36:55

O Lord, because his eyesight

36:58

and his left eye was failing. I mean, he

37:00

did manage to finish the score, but he later went

37:02

blind. And I think, you

37:05

know, he was an old

37:07

man by this stage, comparatively,

37:09

for those days. And you

37:12

can tell that in his score, really. I mean,

37:14

I've mentioned the fact that he was using modern music

37:17

as it were this sort of, because I think he wanted

37:19

to keep it fresh. But at the same time,

37:21

he was at the height of his powers. And then

37:23

also there's the frailty and the vulnerability

37:26

that you get from being older. So there's

37:28

a sort of beautiful mix. Throughout this conversation,

37:31

it's very striking to me that the similarities

37:33

between your different styles of music,

37:35

everything you're very diverse in your output,

37:38

but there's a lot of shared

37:40

DNA.

37:43

Why do we continue to use

37:45

these sort of classification systems where you're

37:47

a jazz singer, you're a handle

37:51

or a Torrio X-pose, and you're a composer in

37:53

the classical.

37:54

Erin, what do you?

37:55

I can find

37:57

that musicians don't

37:58

classify.

37:59

We're explorers, we're looking for something,

38:02

we're looking for the connections between things. So

38:04

we, you know, I don't

38:07

know, say in a merchant ship, musicians

38:09

would have been copying

38:11

from each other and then creating new music, which

38:13

is always a hybrid. So we're used

38:15

to hybrids. We make them, we make the hybrid

38:17

and don't classify them. That's the thing. It's often musicologists

38:20

or, you know, record companies.

38:23

Lawrence, you're performing at the Royal Opera House. That's

38:25

what it's for. Yes. Well,

38:28

I think I would totally

38:30

agree with what Erlen says. I mean,

38:32

the compartmentalisation is

38:34

frustrating in many, many ways because we're

38:37

all musicians. I mean, we're having such a lovely time. The

38:39

three of us sort of swapping

38:41

stories and having, you know, it's

38:44

all the same thing that we're doing because we're communicating

38:46

something to the people who want to listen to it.

38:49

And that's the most important thing.

38:50

And Emma, as a jazz singer

38:53

who trained amongst the classical

38:56

school, you see yourself

38:59

more broadly than just jazz.

39:01

Absolutely. I really do. And

39:03

I love the cabaret world, the pop world.

39:05

I still want to be a pop star, but you know,

39:08

and I'm so fascinated by all the classical tradition

39:10

as well. Yet I do think

39:12

that the classification is sometimes helpful for

39:14

bringing an audience in. So I'm not mad at

39:16

it in that sense, where people that think

39:18

they like jazz or think they like the musical theatre cabaret,

39:21

they'll come to my shows and then they'll go home with

39:23

a kind of different wider insight. And

39:25

I'm okay with that as an access

39:27

point. And the snorbery

39:30

opera, jazz, classical, how

39:32

do we break those barriers down?

39:34

Well, I mean, I like probably

39:36

paraphrasing here, but a quote from Erlen's book where

39:38

she says in music, there are no boundaries.

39:41

That's the best way to approach it because really,

39:43

it's, you know, opera should be

39:45

for all people. It's the most beautiful way of telling

39:47

a story. Music's there to heighten

39:49

emotions. And I think it's just very powerful. Well, that's

39:51

a perfect way to end the programme. We're out

39:53

of time. It's time for the curtain called Take a bow.

39:56

Erlen, Emma and Lawrence. Erlen Wallens

39:58

memoir becoming a composer. is

40:00

out now. Emma Smith's latest album

40:03

is Meshuggababy and the

40:05

London Jazz Festival is all over BBC Radio

40:07

3's in tune all this week

40:09

and Handel's Jephthor conducted

40:12

by Lawrence Cummings is on at the Royal Opera

40:14

House until the 24th of November and

40:16

it will be broadcast again on BBC Radio 3 on the 27th of January.

40:18

Many thanks

40:21

to today's studio conductor Bob Nettles.

40:24

Next week Tom will be exploring how

40:26

we see the world from Monet to machine

40:28

vision but for now thank you and

40:31

goodbye.