A n d r e w P o p p y

PERFORMANCE BIOGRAPHY DISCOGRAPHY WORKS LIST SCORES PRESS CONTACT

“Bewitching, beautifully crafted and highly addictive.” The Wire “Gloriously abundant in cascading cycles of notes and noises”

solo performance at Chelsea Theatre and Lewis Arts Lab 2009

Since the late 70s composer Andrew Poppy has made solo performances and devised different sized ensembles to perform his music. From recent solo club dates at Lewis Arts Lab and a salon in Düsseldorf to the large scale performance installations at Museum of Science & Technology in Paris these events explore different ways of presenting a unique brand of contemporary concert music.

As a solo performer he plays piano and keyboards, supported by speaking parts, electronics and video projection.

Sustaining Ensemble is the most recent version of work with other musicians which toured UK in the autumn of 2009

Andrew Poppy’s SUSTAINING ENSEMBLE

is

Andrew Poppy: piano, keyboard, bass guitar and voice

Genevieve Wilkins: marimba, vibs, glock and percussion

Jez Wiles: vibraphone, glock and percussion

Kate Halsall piano and keyboard

Martin Langthorne: Lighting

Julia Bardsley video

Oxford Contemporary Music Oxford Dec 09

performance and CD

‘. . . a n d t h e S h u f f l e o f T h i n g s ’ is inspired by Francis Bacon’s thoughts about the urge to collect things. Dark ambient grooves, Schubert and the funk, classical piano and some oscillators accompanied by enigmatic stories of lost submarines and the head of Orpheus as a football. Compositions, improvisations and songs without singing.

in previous episodes

Performance for the opening of the Ambassadors Theatre French National Museum of Science &Technology. La Villette Paris.

Voices : Sheila Smith, Udo Scheuerpflug Saxophone : Jo Pretzel. Trombone : . Percussion : Maritz Oswald Keyboards : Glyn Perrin, Schaun Tozer, Alex Maguire Piano : Andrew Poppy Voices : Sheila Smith, Udo Scheuerpflug Saxophone : Jo Pretzel. Trombone : Ashley Slater. Percussion : Moritz Oswald

Keyboard : David Owen Piano : Andrew Poppy Sound Engineer : Bob Krausar

THE LOST JOCKEY

Conductor: John Barker Voices: Sue Bickley, Frances Lynch, Jeremy Birchall, Mary Wiegold, Allen Belk, Angela Tunstall Violins: Elliet Makreel, Steve Jones, Ross Lorraine Viola: Julia Eisner Cello: Ali Robinson, Caroline Verney, Glyn Perrin Flute: Charlie Seaward Saxophones: Andy Blake, Martin Ashwell Bass Clarinet: Rory Allam Roger Heaton Marimba: Simon Limbric Piano & Keyboards: Andrew Poppy, Lucy Wilson, Schaun Tozer, Orlando Gough, David Owen,

Sound Engineer: Gareth Jones

ALMEIDA MUSIC FESTIVAL

A selection of chamber opera/music theatre productions

IMPROVEMENTS ON NATURE: a double act

AVALANCHE THOUGHTS

OPHELIA/OPHELIA

BABY DOLL

THE URANIUM MINERS RADIO ORCHESTRA PLAY SCENES FROM SALOME'S REVENGE

THE SONGS OF THE CLAYPEOPLE

MUSIC THEATRE 1983-2009

As an extension of his concert music Andrew Poppy makes an experimental music theatre somewhere between performance art and opera.

Since 1989 he has developed a collaborative partnership with visual and theatre artist Julia Bardsley

Improvements on Nature (09) Baby Doll (93)

This is a meditation on the double act. Bardsley and Poppy are semi- When business is bad; burn the competition Two males muster their stuff scientists who take the image of the heroic, benignly beautiful horse and using all available techniques fight to the death and a prize. The and in a derelict laboratory grow a new version of the animal both savage Charms of innocence: Baby Doll. Set up as a beguiling tale of revenge, and cannibal. The two performers are sandwiched between two sample Tennessee Williams screen play, wades into the minefield of sexual slides and through a series of acts, images, sounds, music and texts they property and power, ruthless competition and bigotry struggle with the mutations of a genetic code. For his opera Andrew Poppy distils the structure, drama and poetry from a Commissioned by Sacred 2009 Produced by Bardsley Poppy Projects detailed shooting script into a music theatre work for four characters. Music articulates the drama of a kitchen sink terrorism presented in hyper-real Avalanche Thoughts (02) style.

A hybrid and heterogeneous work which sews together the experience of Commissioned by National Theatre Studio and Leicester Haymarket the gallery, the theatre and the concert hall; balancing video projection, live and recorded music, photographic and sculptural books, text as The Uranium Miners Radio Orchestra Plays Scenes from Salome's object and sound. Revenge (89)

Commissioned by GAle GAtes New York & New Moves Glasgow 2002 The Salome Myth restaged and retold by a music theatre company of uranium miners. John the Baptist is an anarchic radio presenter obsessed Ophelia/Ophelia (94) with the (for-) telling of disaster. Broadcast from a mining disaster.

A fragment of Hamlet. Or a version of Hamlet where all the characters Commissioned as part of the Royal Opera House's Garden Venture accept Ophelia are ghosts. Ophelia as a double with an absent twin. A character expressed in fragments in the original text.. The Songs of the Clay People (83-87)

a work about fragments, and found objects and the creative process,. . Commissioned by ICA theatre London and Impact Theatre

IMPROVEMENTS ON NATURE: a double act

IMPROVEMENTS ON NATURE is a report on what happens when Mary takes Charles to her bed for true science and publishes the details of their union as a series of boxed amputations. For true science. Or what she thinks is the truth of science. And because it is for science that makes it all right; because science is real and everything, everything else is just the imagination. It’s the scientific enquiry of Charles Darwin incubated by the traumatised imagination of Mary a performance by Julia Bardsley & Andrew Poppy Shelly.

concept Andrew Poppy and Julia Bardsley costume, objects, video, settings Julia Bardsley Commissioned by Sacred 2009 Produced by Bardsley Poppy Projects text, music, electronics, toy piano, voice Andrew Poppy

AVALANCHE THOUGHTS

Concept by Andrew Poppy and Julia Bardsley Video images, objects and settings by Julia Bardsley Music, texts and electronics by Andrew Poppy Piano in New York and Glasgow Tania Chen

Commissioned by GAle GAtes New York & New Moves Glasgow 2002

AVALANCHE THOUGHTS is a hybrid and heterogeneous work which sews together the experience of the gallery, the theatre and the concert hall; balancing video projection, live and recorded music, photographic and sculptural books, text as object and sound.

AVALANCHE THOUGHTS are moments that teeter on the edge of disaster. Wilful and erotic thoughts that tease and tempt us into the abyss. Chaotic, statistical and overwhelming textures obliterate objects of security, moments of clarity and identity. They may be situations of fate or beds of our own making. Whatever, we lick the rim of a particular pleasure: the cusp between rational knowledge and the instinctive destructive impulse that put things into the danger zone and beyond control

THE SONGS OF THE CLAYPEOPLE

First performed at Leeds University Theatre Studio 1st May 1984. PART 1 THE AMUSEMENT Directed by Pete Brookes. PART 2 GOODBYE MR G Concept, music and texts by Andrew Poppy. PART 3 THE SEQUENCE PART 4 45 IS Performers: Heather Ackroyd, Niki Johnson PART 6 MORE AMUSEMENT Steve Shill Richard Hawley PART 7 THE PASSAGE PART 8 THE OUTRAGE OF THE FISHERMAN IS WIDELY SHARED Fairlight Mk music computer, keyboards and piano AP Some sections were later recorded in new versions for the CD Alphabed. Voice Elise Lorraine Musicians for these were as follows. Voices: Annette Peacock, Sheila Smith, Joie Favier, Dee Lewis, Production made in collaboration with Impact Theatre Co. Udo Scheuerpflug, Ashley Slater. Saxophone: Jo Pretzel. Trombone: Ashley Slater. Percussion: Maritz Oswald, Leroy Williams. Piano, synths and programming: Andrew Poppy

THE URANIUM MINERS RADIO ORCHESTRA PLAY SCENES FROM SALOME'S REVENGE

Presenter/Mr Baptist: Andrew Bailey

Herod/Minister of Education/Joe the miner : Peter Sidhom First performed at The Donmar Warehouse London May 17th 1989. Herodius/Wife of Minister : Susannah Self Salome/Joelle, daughter of Minister : Tamsin Dives Concept, music and text : Andrew Poppy Conductor : David Syrus Designer : Simon Vincenzi Oboe : Joseph Saunders Director : Julia Bardsley Saxophone : Edward Pillinger Trumpet : Julian Poore Trombone : Siggi Thorberggson Violin : Elisabeth Wexler A radio presenter and reincarnation of the prophet John the Baptist presents his radio Bass : Sarah Haynes show. A disaster-athone. Real distaster as voyeuristic pleasure. He invited sponcers to Harp : Isobel Frayling-Cork save Joe the Miner. Mr Baptists world is The Salome myth in a contemporary variation in Percussion 1 : Simon Limbrick which Herod’s court is the The minister of Education's incestuious and ruined family. A Percussion 2 : Martin Allen fictional strand also encloses the orchestra . Piano : Mark Daver

BABY DOLL

First performed at the R.N.T. Cottesloe Theatre 5th May 1993. Baby Doll : Fiona O'Neill or Margaret Cameron Archie Lee : Simon Masterton-Smith from a screen play by TENNESSEE WILLIAMS Silva : John Upperton Libretto in 9 Scenes adapted by ANDREW POPPY Aunt Rose : Diana Payne-Myers

Director : Julia Bardsley Banjo/electric guitar : Ben grove Designer : Simon Vincenzi Violin : Anna Hemery Conductor : Bernard Lafontaine Clarinet/bass clarinet : Sarah Homer Trombone : Bob Price When Business is bad, burn the competition.Two males muster their stuff and using all Piano : Dominic Saunders available techniques fight to the death for survival and a prize: the charms of the innocent Baby Doll. Meanwhile this young woman has her own agenda and ways of getting what she wants. Set up as a beguiling tale of revenge, Tennessee Williams screen play, treads the minefield of sexual property and power, ruthless competition and bigotry.

OPHELIA/OPHELIA

Theatrical Options

1. Ophelia/Ophelia is Hamlet played as Ophelia's memory at the moment of her death. Or as a premonition of her end. The weight of the present or past tense shifting from moment to moment and this shift expressed visually. The whole story told in shadowy dream images or a bald 'real- time' reality. All characters from the original play represented by non- speaking physical performers and/or dancers.

2. Ophelia/Ophelia is a moment of cultural memory, drowning in an abundance of almost unreadable images. A moment where everything is suggestion. Ophelia is the only performer in a designed environment over laid with projected images. An endless metaphoric and metonymic refraction attempting to make a meaning of Ophelia.

an opera for one voice against itself 3. Ophelia as virtue and vice; the singer alternating with a choreographic and for an unspecified number of mute performers double. The audience's desire revealed through the presentation of two based on the text of a character of Shakespeare's paths: 'the steep and thorny way to heaven' and 'the primrose path of dalliance'.

Mezzo soprano:: Margaret Cameron Combine and adapt options as necessary. Bass clarinet/clarinet: Roger Heaton Keyboards and processing: Andrew Poppy

The score of Ophelia/Ophelia was selected by the international jury of the ISCM for performances in Copenhagen 1996

During the 1970s he developed a strong interest in contemporary American composers Cage, Feldman, Riley, Glass and Reich. He attended a summer school with and Merc Cunningham and played in an B i o g r a p h y ensemble with Christian Wolff.

In the early 1980’s he was an accompanist at the Laban Centre for Dance and pianist and composer with The Lost Jockey, a large ensemble playing pulse based music that became known as Minimalism.

Particularly interested in the creative part recording plays in the music of today Poppy moves between conventionally notated scores and studio work influenced by pop production. He was signed as a contemporary composer and recording artist to Trevor Horn and Paul Morley’s Zang Tumb Tuum Records (ZTT) in 1984. His first CD The Beating of Wings includes performances of 32 Frames for Orchestra and Cadenza for piano and electric piano and was released in 1985. This was followed in 1987 by Alphabed which featured the Firelight music computer, the first Akai samplers and vocal ANDREW POPPY (1954) is a composer and musician. His performances from Annette Peacock. early musical life included playing bass guitar in an improvising rock band, playing Bartok and Debussy on After ZTT Poppy continued to record for independent the piano and making music concrete with his father’s labels: Recordings, includes 14 Poems and Toccatas for tape recorder. He went to study music at Kingsway’s violin and piano performed by Elisabeth Perry and College and Goldsmiths College, London University, Andrew Ball and premiered by them at the Huddersfield graduating in 1979. Festival. Ophelia/Ophelia, a chamber opera was selected by ISCM for the world music days in Denmark. Rude by The Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra, Last Light Bloom contains two contemporary dance scores (for recorded by The Smith Quartet, Revolution No 8: Airport Siobhan Davies/ Linda Gaudreau). Time at Rest for Joseph Beuys for orchestra and electronic delays. Devouring its Secret an electro acoustic installation More Matter Less premiered by Noszferatu at the premiered at NRLA and Tramway. Recently ZTT Records Cheltenham Festival 2003 have released a 3 CD box set containing all Poppy’s recordings for the label during the 80’s and including an His unusual body of work constantly explores different unreleased album Under The Son musical contexts There are scores for theatre, film & video, contemporary dance and art installation; writing An experimental music theatre, often based on the collaborations and arrangement for industrial rock and composer’s own texts has been part of his creative synth pop artist including Psych TV, Erasure, Claudia initiative. Songs of the Clay People was a collaboration Brucken and Bernardo Devlin with Impact Theatre in 1983. There are also three chamber operas The Uranium Miners (ROH Garden Recent concert commissions include for Darwin’s Sin Venture) Baby Doll (NTS/Cottesloe) Ophelia Ophelia Draw a violin concerto for Darragh Morgan and The Crash (ISCM). An oratorio Something In The Air (Levitation And Ensemble, Hatch for The Smith String Quartet, Playing Fall) was commissioned by the Estonian National Male the Pulse for CoMA ensemble, Periscope for prepared Choir conducted by Kaspars Putnins premiered in Tallinn piano for pianist Mary Dullea, Hoarding Flap for in January 2006. harpsichordist Jane Chapman and Definitely Disco commissioned by The London International String Since 1989 he has developed a collaborative partnership Quartet Festival as a competition test piece. BBC Concert with visual and theatre artist Julia Bardsley Projects Orchestra recently played 32 Frames for orchestra at the include Avalanche Thoughts a multimedia work QEH in London. premiered in New York in 2002. Almost the Same and Aftermaths have be presented in Brussels, Glasgow Poppy also performs: solo, with electronics and with his London and Lisbon. Recently Improvements on Nature own ensemble of various combinations. Its most recent was commissioned by the Sacred Festival at Chelsea form, The Sustaining Ensemble has just completed UK Theatre London. tour dates with music from the CD ‘…and the Shuffle of Things. Concert works include Horn Horn, a double saxophone concerto for John Harle and Simon Haram commissioned Discography

All recordings produced by Andrew Poppy. All ensembles directed by AP

ALPHABED

THE BEATING OF WINGS (8/87) ZTT Records CD 4509-94752-2 Dist. Warner UK (7/85) ZTT Records CD 4509-94751-2 45 is, Goodbye Mr G, The Amusement Distribution Warner UK

32 Frames for Orchestra,

The Object is a Hungry Wolf for large ensemble

Cadenza

Listening In

RECORDINGS

(9/92) Bitter+Twisted Records CD SPIN992 Dist. 32 FRAMES FOR ORCHESTRA Impetus

Poems and Toccatas piano Andrew Balll violin Elisabeth 12 INCH ZTT Perry Ember: String Quartet performed by Balanescu 32 Frames for Orchestra, The Impossible Net Quartet\ Movie Momento performed by Andrew Poppy

OPHELIA/OPHELIA

THE AMUSEMENT (95) Impetus Records CD19426

mezzo Margaret Cameron, b.cl Roger Heaton Keybds 7&12 INCH ZTT AP The Amusement ,/ Listening In

RUDE BLOOM ANOTHER LANGUAGE (05) with Claudia Brucken (95) Art Gallery Records CD07.Dist. Wotre Music There Music Dist. Mute Records France 1)Lipstick Vogue 2) White Noise Maker 3) Drive in Saturday Eight Movements for Piano Trio 4) Broken English 5) Nice Dream 6) Running Up That Hill 7) Melody Versus the Brittle Funk Amsterdam 1897 8) Breakfast 9) Die Nebensonnen 10) Libertango 11) You Do 12) Wooden Heart voice Claudia Brucken piano/guitar Andrew Poppy arrangements by AP

TIME AT REST DEVOURING ITS SECRET ANDREW POPPY ON ZANG TUUM TUMB

(00) Source Research Recordings Dist. World Serpent (05) ZTT Records

Disc one: THE BEATING OF WINGS The Object is a Hungry Wolf /32 Frames for Amplified Orchestra /Listening In Cadenza for Piano and Electric Piano /Inside the Wolf/The Impossible Net Listening In (re-modelled)

Disc two: ALPHABED (A MYSTERY DANCE) BLOOD SUGAR The Amusement/45 Is/Goodbye Mr G/The Amusement (12 inch) /King Kong (Bitter + Twisted Records, 2003) Presto/East Fragment/King Kong Adagio Last Light for string orchestra, Snowdronia for Disc three: UNDER THE SON chamber ensemble, Revolution Number Eight: airport The Sequence/The Passage (Parts 1, 2, 3)/Sometimes It Rains for joseph beuys orchestra and electronics, TARDIS electronics …AND THE SHUFFLE OF THINGS

(08) Field Radio Records Dist. Rough Trade/Mute Bank

Something Secret/Wet Fold/My Stress Mistress Balcony Scene/ Wave Machine part 2 and 3 RUNNING NAKED The Head of Orpheus Football/ What Else: What THROUGH THE GARMENT DISTRICT then Now My Fathers Submarines/Almost the Same Shame Perfprmed by AP Sustaining Ensemble (Bitter + Twisted Records, 2003) Drum machining/Double Stitch/Lining for a Desirable Latvian Radio Choir Kaspars Putnins Suit § 11 LIST OF WORKS

O R C H E S T R A L

32 Frames for Orchestra 1981 (9mins) 2 fl, 2 cl (b.cl) s.sax, a.sax, b.sax, vibs, xylo, pno, 2 trp, 2 hrn, 2 trmb, tuba, b.gtr., strings.

1st public perf. 11/11/06, BBC Concert Orchestra Charles Hazlewood QEH South Bank London

Revolution number eight: airport for Joseph Beuys 1991-3. (15mins) 2 fl, (pic/a.fl) 2 ob, 2 cl, 2 bsn, 2 trp, 2 hrn, t.trmb, b.trmb, tba., hrp, pno, e.key glock, timp, strings, electronics sampler or tape commissioned 1st perf Goldsmiths Youth Orchestra. Conductor. Rupert Bond. Goldsmiths 7/92

Horn Horn for two alto saxophones orchestra in 6 movements: 1997 (32mins)

1 That the this bout 2. A solution of preservative (a cadenza) 3 Fast Car Island 4 Steeplejack waltz (a cadenza) 5 Attempt at an ecstatic moment 6 Chewing the corner 2 solo a. sax. 1 pic, 2 fl, 2 ob, c. ang., 2 cl, b cl, 2 bsn, c. bsn, 4 hrn, 3 trp, 2 tbn, b. tbn, tba., timp, 3 perc, harp, piano, strings

Commissioned and 1st perf. by Royal Liverpool Philharmonic. Philharmonic Hall Liverpool. 3/97 Soloist John Harle and Simon Haram. Conductor Sachio Fujioka

HORN HORN for 2 Saxophones and Orchestra § 12 C H A M B E R Ember String Quartet 1990 (25mins) Commissioned/1st perf The Balanescu Quartet Leicester Phoenix Theatre. 5/91 Matters of theory 1981 (6mins) 3 treble voices, fl, a.sax, cl, b.clt, 2 pno, e org, mrba, 2 vln, vla., vc, 1st perf. The Lost Jockey Air Gallery. 6/81

Animal Behaviour and Crude Din 1981 (8mins) 3 treble voices, fl, a. sax, clt, b.clt, 2 pno, e.organ. mrba, 2 vln, vla., vc, 1st perf The Lost Jockey The Africa Centre. 11/81 Elvis Revenged 1982 (15mins) 12 roto toms, marimba, vibraphone, drum machine (1 player) commissioned/1st perf Simon Limbick Air Gallery. 11/82

The Object is a Hungry Wolf 1982 (14mins) 3 treble voices, fl, a.sax, clt, b.clt, 2 pno, e.organ, vibs/mrba 2 vl, vla, vc 1st perf The Lost Jockey City University. 3/92.

The Amusement 1985 (7mins) 2 treble voices, pno, 3 e key., trb., a.sax, 2 perc st 1 perf Andrew Poppy Ensemble Ambassadors Theatre. 5/85 Poems and Toccatas suite of 14 pieces for violin and piano 1990-91 45 is 1985 (35mins) (40mins) a. vox t. vox 2, pno, 3 e key., tbn, a sax., 2 perc 1st perf Elisabeth Perry and Andrew Ball Huddersfield Festival. 11/91 1st perf Andrew Poppy Ensemble Ambassadors Theatre. 5/95 Elevator Luxuria for chamber ensemble 1992 Listening In for ensemble and samples 1984-5 (13mins) fl, ob, b.clt, bsn, s.sax, b.sax, trm, hrn, trmb, vib/marimba, male voice, 3 trp, 3 key, gtr, 4 perc st celesta/key, e pno, pno, 2 vl, vla, vc, d.b Madrid Ensemble 1 perf. Madrid 95 Eight Movements for Piano Trio 1994 pno vln vc.(40mins) Melody Versus the Brittle Funk 3 movements 1989-95 (15mins) 1st perf Lurven Belguim 10/94 trp, t.saxophone, vib/mrba keys, tape st 1 perf. Andrew Poppy Ensemble Riverside Studios. 11/89 Sprung and Suspended 1996 (18mins) s.sax, b.sax b.cl, trp, trmb, marmba, vib, pno 2 vl, vla, vc, d. bass commissioned/1st perf Charlie Barber Band Purcell Room. 10/96

§ 13 Eleven Word Title 1995 ( 26 mins) How the Hammer Felt 07 (12mins) b. clt (cl) 2 perc, gtr (b.gtr) fl vibs, pno commissioned 1st performed Noszferatu commissioned/ 1st perf Roger Heaton Group Lillian Baylis Theatre. Playing the Pulse for large ensemble any instruments 07 (13mins) 3/95 st Commissioned 1 performed CoMA Warehouse cond Gregory Rose Snowdronia 1998 (25mins) 10/08 Pno (e.pno) vc, accord, t.sax 1st perf Andrew Poppy Ensemble Telegraph Hill Festival. 3/98 Darwin’s Sin Draw for solo violin and chamber ensemble 08 (17mins) Solo vl, fl, ob, tbn, vibs/mrba piano e.gtr vln vla vcl db st End Synch Sound for chamber ensemble 1998 (15mins) commissioned/1 performed by Crash Ensemble cond. Alan Pierson s.sax, a.sax, trp, tbn, mrba/vibs, pno, 2 vl, vla, vc, db vln Darragh Morgan Dublin 11/08 commissioned 1st perf Charlie Barber Band. Palace Theatre Newark …And The Shuffle of Things: suite of 9 pieces. 08 (60mins) 10/10/98 st voice 2 key 2 perc 1 perf Sustaining Ensemble Three Early Works Remodelled 1998 Matters of Theory for saxophone quartet Animal Behaviour and Crude Din for chamber group 32 Frames for chamber group Definitely Disco string quartet 09 (6mins) sop sax, alto sax (bari sax) vibs (xylo) 2 st . Commissioned Cavatina Trust for the 1 London International String vl, 2 vc, db, pno 1st perf Group 3/99 st Quartet Festival. 1 perf Poznansky Quartet 4/09 First Light Last Light Moon Light Bulb 97-99 str quartet/str orch commissioned 1st perf String Factory V O C A L & C H O R A L

Why Blink 12 pieces 01-02 4 e.key What to say when (Poppy ) 1997 a suite of 9 pieces (60mins) mezzo, bari voice, a.sax (fl) bari.sax (b.cl) f.hrn, perc, pno (e.pno) Win Win Lose for saxophone quartet 02 (14mins) accd (or key) vla, vc, db (b.gtr) sop, alto, ten, bari sax st 1 perf Andrew Poppy Ensemble Goldsmiths College. 11/97 More Matter Less 02 Another Language 12 song (various authors) arr. for voice & piano 00-3 vlin, alto sax, piano, vibraphone/marimba st Commissioned 1st perf Noszferatu Cheltenham festival (40min)1 performed Claudia Brucken Andrew Poppy The Space London 3/02 Weighing the Measure for ensemble of any number 03 (10mins) 1st perf The Sustaining Ensemble Trinity College of Music 29/5/54 Pessoa Fragments 2 songs for soprano and piano 03

Hatch sting quartet 06 On Another’s Sorrow (Blake) 03 SATB 03 Commissioned 1st perf Smith String Quartet Corsham Festival 4/05

§ 14 August Rough12 songs (Poppy/Devlin) 04-06 (50 mins) male voice st pno/key/perc 1 performed Fragil Lisbon Portugal Baby Doll 1993 libretto Williams/Poppy mezzo sop, ten, b.bari voices, female performer ,vl, cl (b.cl) trb, pno, Something in the Air (Levitation and Fall) an Oratorio 03-05 banjo (e.guitar) Commissioned National Theatre Studio/Leicester Pessoa/OHara/Poppy: (50mins) narrator, sop, tenor, bass vox solo, Haymarket Theatre. 1st perf Cottesloe Theatre. 5/93 st large male choir, perc. electronics commissioned 1 perf Estonian National Male Choir cond Kaspars Putnish Tallin 01/06 Ophelia/Ophelia 1994 libretto Shakespeare/Poppy (50 mins) mezzo sop, cl (b.clt) 2 key w samplers, perc, tape Selected by the I.S.C.M. for performance in the Copenhagen European City of Culture 1996

Improvements on Nature (libretto Poppy/Bardsley) 09 (1hr 15min) 2 performer’s electro-acoustic playback voice/electronics/toy piano/percussion commissioned 1st perf by Sacred Festival Chelsea Theatre 11/09

E L E C T R O A C O U S T I C / P L A Y B A C K

The Passage 1983-4 The Impossible Net 1988 Sometimes it Rains 1986 Listening In, Kink Konk Presto, Kink Konk Adagio, East Fragment 1984-86 Goodbye Mr`G 1986 T.A.R.D.I.S. 1989-99 (42mins) Installation at Tramway Glasgow 3/01 M U S I C T H E A T R E / O P E R A Running Naked Through the Garment District 3 pieces 02 The Songs of the Claypeople 1984 libretto Poppy (1 hr 15 mins) Drum machining/Double Stitch/Lining for a Desirable Suit 1 male 2 female performers, mezzo soprano, tenor, piano, 4 e.keys, Gursky Cage Gursky Berio 2 collages: 07 tape commissioned 1st perf. Impact Theatre Leeds University. 10/84 1. You Are Really Looking 2. Dirty Ear Edit of ‘You are really looking’ for ‘War on the Poor’( Ultra Red The Uranium Miners Radio Orchestra Play Scenes from Salome’s publication 08) Revenge 1989 libretto Poppy (40 Mins) sop, mzzo sop, b.bar voices, ob, b.sax, tr, trmb, vl, d.bass, hp, pno Almost the Same 08 (1hr 15mins) Commissioned and performed by The Garden Venture at the Royal st Opera House.1 perf Donmar Warehouse.5/89 Jelly in 5 parts 09 (60 mins) § 15

P I A N O / K E Y B O A R D Fruits and Shavings 23 pieces for piano 80-99 1stperf composer Cadenza 1980 for pno/e.pno or 2 pnos (15mins) st 1 perf Andrew Poppy/Helen Otterway X6 London. 10/80 Two Pieces for Piano: ‘I went down to the cross roads’ ‘you can run you can run’ 02 45 is 1986 pno 1st perf Tania Chen Jacqualine Duprey building Oxford

Movie Momento 1992 pno Swimming with the Stone Book 6 pieces 07 1st perf. Andrew Poppy Nottingham Trent University. 10/94 2 keyboards 1st perf composer

Corrosion of a Thing 1993-6 piano Hoarding Flap 07 harpsichord commissioned 1st perf Jane Chapman New York 08 Six Avalanche Thoughts 1998 Pno 1st perf Tania Chen Brooklyn New York 2002 Almost the Same Shame 07 pno 1st perf composer Karnart Lisbon 04/08

§ 16

Selected performances or presentations Theatre and dance commissioned scores

Aftermaths 09 (director Julia Bardsley) SPILL festival of performance …and the Shuffle of Things Andrew Poppy’s Staining Ensemble Kings Infinite Pleasures 08 (director Simon Vincenzi) Halle Festival Place, London, Oxford Contemporary Music, Almost the Same 07 (director Julia Bardsley) SACRED Chelsea Theatre Birmingham Conservatoire Nov/Dec09 Trans-Acts 04 (director Julia Bardsley) NRLA Glasgow Improvements on Nature Julia Bardsley & Andrew Poppy Sacred Burning Bright 01 (director Alison Peables) V.amp/Tramway Glasgow festival of performance Chelsea Theatre Construction 94 (choreographer Lynda Gaudreau) De Brune Hatch The Smith String Quartet NY/ Korea/ Company/Klapstuk Belgium Scandinavian Tour Family Reunion 93 (director Julia Bardsley) Leicester Haymarket Theatre Jelly (for Aftermaths) AP Spill Festival of Performance/ April 09 Coriolanus 93 (director Tim Supple) Renaissance/Chichester Festival …and the Shuffle of Things AP Karnart Lisbon Macbeth 92 (director Julia Bardsley) Leicester Haymarket Theatre Almost the Same AP National Review of Live Arts Glasgow Therese Requin 92 (director Julia Bardsley) Leicester Haymarket Theatre Hoarding Flap Jane Chapman NY NY Bath Festival Drawn Breath 89 (choreographer Siobhan Davies) Siobhan Davies Co. Playing the Pulse CoMA ensemble Huddersfield Festival Riverside Studios Darwin’s Sin Draw The Crash Ensemble Dublin Novemberr One Sided Wall 86 (director Nicky Johnson) Axis Mundi Prods/The Bush 32 Fames for Orchestra BBC Concert Orchestra Festival Hall The Price of Meat 85 Impact Theatre /Chapter Arts Centre, Cardiff Various works for piano Andrew Poppy Düsseldorf Midday Sun 84 (director Pete Brookes/John Ashford) ICA/Mikery Theatre, Something in the Air Estonian Male Choir & soloists Amsterdam Tallinn/Tartu/Parnu The Dead Moon 84 (choreographer Sally Owen) Netherlands Dans Last Light Zwa Zulu Natal Philharmonic Orchestra Theatre, Holland Durban Objects of Affection 83 (director Claire McDonald) Elaine Louden More Matter Less Noszferatu at Huddersfield Festival Prods/Tricycle Theatre Last Light Mostar Chamber Orchestra Bosnia On the Beaches 83 (choreographer Sally Owen) Northern Dance Theatre Poem & Toccatas Darragh Morgan & Mary Dullea Secret Gardens 82 (directors Tim Albery & Gerry Pilgrim choreographer University of Washington Seattle USA Ian Spink) ICA/Mikery Theatre Amsterdam Movie Momento Topology at Brisbane Power House, Australia More Matter Less Noszferatu at Cheltenham Festival Additional choreographed works Fruits and Shavings Mary Dullea at St Chrispins London Two pieces for piano Tania Chen at J. Dupres Building Oxford Poems and Toccatas Heidi Latsy 01 St Marks Places New York TARDIS Snow/Snowdronia D-Motion Konferenz Und Festival Fur Cadenza Heidi Latsy 99 Joyce Theatre N.Y. & US tour Interaktive Medien Neues Theater Halle Last Light Heidi Latsy 00 New York Germany The Object is a Hungry Wolf David Massingham 95 The Place/UK Tour Avalanche Thoughts Gale Gates 02 Brooklyn New York USA Listening In David Massingham 90 UK Tour TARDIS Tramway Glasgow 32 Frames for Orchestra Michael Popper 88 Place Theatre London Weighing the Measure The Space London Forth Fiesta title music Michael Clark BBC Scotland 89 Cadenza Gaby Agis 87 Oxford Gallery

§ 17

Film and video commissioned scores (tv not listed) Conference presentations

Una Giornata lunga Senzo Io 2004 (director Jacopo Benci) BSR Italy HARMOLODICS: thoughts this way and that Introduction to the School of Snow 1999 (director Julia Bardsley) Individual Artists, UK Harmolodics. Part of Ornette Coleman’s Meltdown, South Bank Centre Nuvem 1990 (director Anna Luisa Guimaraes) Tropico Films, Portugal London 14-20 June 2009 Mid-night 1988 (director Vitor Goncalves) Tropic Films, Portugal The Presence of Performance in the Age of Electronic Transmission A Girl in Summer 1986 (director Vitor Goncalves) Tropic Films, Portugal 20/4/97 Cosmopolis. A symposium exploring the cultural and social transition from post industrial to digital city. Part of Video Positive’s Escaping Gravity programmed by Manchester Telematics and Telework Partnership in Arranger/conductor for studio recordings by other artist association with the Foundation for Arts and Creative Technology.

If I Could/Spiralling /My Hear So Blue. for Erasure. Mute Records Twilight of a Champion/August and September/Lung Shadows for TheThe. CBS Records I will give to you for Nitzer Ebb. Mute Records Commentary More than the Sun for Black. CBS Records Perfect world for Simon F. Chrysalis Records. Ian Peel :Screenplay to Accompany the Music of Andrew Poppy ( ZTT The Beatles and the Stones for The House of Love. Sire/WEA records 04) Just Drifting /Terminus /Caress /Guiltless /Message from the Temple / Giovanni Antognozzi & Paolo Coteni La Musica Minimalista: Storie e Iron Glove / Finale / Eleusis / Eden 2 / Clouds without Water /The Altre Storie (Textus, 00) Orchid / Circle for Psychic TV Some Bizarre CBS/WEA Records 10 Lawrence Crane Counterpoints (BMIC, 1999) James Orr Street for Strawberry Switch Blade. WEA Records Leaders in Bruno Letort Musiques Plurielles (Editions Balland, 1998) 7th Heaven for Red Box. WEA Records Brian Morton Contemporary Composers (St James, 1990) Marc Issue Poppy Art (Blitz December 1986)

Publications

Introducing a Glass of Water to the Sea: Placing the Work of Glyn Perrin (National Review of Live Art Catalogue 01) 6 Happy Ideas or Killing the Vision Kid Coil - Journal of the Moving Image. Ed. Giles Lane (Proboscis, 1998) A Zeitgeist Thing: The Music Supervisor and Modern Soundtracks Variety: International Film Guide 98. Ed. Peter Cowie (Andre Deutsch 1998)

§ 18 PRESS

"The finest products of the minimalist mentality - Reich's ‘Music for 18 Musicians’, Riley’s exquisitely impure undertakings, Glenn Branca's tumultuous The Ascension - rise above the cold consideration of mechanics and draws the listener into the realms of ecstasy. Cadenza is the track in question, a mesmerising feature for two pianos that rise and dip like a tea clipper in a high wind. The effect is breath-taking; it’s superb enough to make me look forward with optimism to future releases. LYNDEN BARBER 1981 : MELODY MAKER

“The Amusement is The obvious successor to The Art of Noise in this modern composers forceful dynamic production. A captivating and impressive piece." DAVE HENDERSON : MUSIC WEEK

"The best things I heard (at the Huddersfield Festival) were a miniature by James MacMillian and Andrew Poppy's inventively spare and varied Poems and Toccatas” NICHOLAS KENYON : OBSERVER

"Noise of industrial labour is submerged in Andrew Poppy's music as tremendous gathering melange of piano then brass and synthesiser, finally electric guitar in great slabs of impersonal, repetitive throbbing sound. A scenario of mixed gestures, solo melancholy and frantic deshabillement.... The Songs of the Clay People remembered by a child, are lost, fleeting renascent in a grey metropolis of granite rooms.... where excitement is provided by music which really did strike me as being of exceptional merit" MICHAEL COVENEY FINANCIAL TIMES

"A ritual for three performers, offstage voices and musique concrete. The effect is one of animated hallucination on which Balthus and Francis Bacon might have collaborated: arrogant ascetic, utterly sincere. JOHN PETER : SUNDAY TIMES

‘Uranium Miner s’ "impressively full of emotional shrapnel." PAUL DRIVER : SUNDAY TIMES

"His music is consistently trenchant and telling". MEIRION BOWEN : GUARDIAN

2

"The ideal composer to turn Tennessee Williams screen play Baby Doll into an time/space and stasis/movement. Bewitching, beautifully crafted and highly opera would be an American Janacek and Andrew Poppy comes near to it in the best addictive.” moments: strong on atmosphere (a lot of sultry Southern blue notes) and punchily CHRIS BLACKFORD THE WIRE abbreviated in its story-telling." MICHAEL JOHN WHITE : THE INDEPENDENT Poppy first hit the scene as a composer of fierce electronic soundtracks for Impact, the seminal 80's theatre company. Later, a stint as the first classical act "A gift for creating atmosphere the scores virtue lies in the deceptively languid way it signed to Trevor Horn's ZTT label won him an underground pop audience. He can build up an insidious tension." never gained the exposure of a Nyman or a Reich, though, which is a pity, MARTIN HOYLE : because this is a first rank composer, bursting with ideas. TARDIS is a large scale piece, in which an endlessly growing melody is toyed with, split into multiples, " A gripping and unusual evening....not a moment of it is dull and several sequences played against itself in a random canon, and hung in the air to spin gently like a are startling. child's mobile. Time and space are suspended, as chiming, plunking and silk- GERALD KAUFMAN : THE SUNDAY EXPRESS smooth harmonies seem to progress forever upwards. The Doctor himself could be proud of this post post-modern, ambient, slightly kitsch, minimal machine " Poppy was never solely concerned with pure minimalism and he has now music. developed a style of enviable flexibility, fusing a range of so called 'serious' and RICHARD WOLFSON THE DAILY TELEGRAPH 'popular' sources and allowing each to emerge as appropriate. Avalanche Thoughts suggest Andrew Poppy and Julia Bardsley, are those KEITH POTTER: THE TIMES LITERARY SUPPLEMENT dangerous cognitive moments that beckon disaster. Before the audience enters the performance space, we are met with an exhibition of exquisite objects combining “Fulfilling all the Liverpool Philharmonics requirements of new music, Andrew the motifs of books and shoes enveloped in an understated sound installation. The Poppy’s Horn Horn was consistently entertaining as a study in the comparability video full of blues and whites, is deeply elemental, suggestive of gently blinding of two alto saxophonist. Harnessed together much of the time , John Harle and snow or a threat of drowning. The accompanying soundtrack is similarly Simon Haram were each allowed the occasional opportunity to emerge on a beautiful. Shifting like the tide, the piece finally opens up to piano music by turns comparatively thoughtful solo line from their joint virtuoso endeavours. They melodic and discordant, becoming entwined with secular incantations, intonations usefully offset the heavy industrial activity in the orchestra which, between the of passion and of danger. In spite of the "thoughts" of its title, this is essentially a deceptive opening and closing bars characterises the score as a whole. An sensory experience. But none the less a beautiful one. admirably high-energy all-or-nothing performance FIONA SHEPARD MARK BROWN THE SCOTSMAN GERALD LARNER: THE TIMES . “arriving at a distinctive and melodic approach he demonstrates an uncanny Time At Rest Devouring Its Secret “is a 35 minute single movement work of talent for spreading short melodic motifs over long distances without causing the "basically one texture" inspired by Riley's ‘In C’, Reich's ‘Drummin’g and mind to wander, using subtle development and barely detectable changes in Feldman's ‘For Samuel Beckett’ The light and lean grandeur of the orchestration orchestration. Several composers have adopted his approach since, among them recalls Takemitsu: an unpredictable drip-drop pizzicato of deep double bass and Michael Torke and Michael Gordon, but it's doubtful any of them have made a high pitched violin or harp, mingling with tintinnabulous percussives. Overheard, recording quite like the seminal Cadenza an almost transcendental piece of clouds of strings and electronics drift and repeat in a kind of bittersweet, music. What will surprise is the year of genesis of these pieces. Poppy joined the melancholy ecstasy that plays some fascinating psychoacoustic games with ZTT label some twenty years ago, hence this commemorative collection On Zang Tuub Tumb. The other parallel to draw with Poppy is Cabaret Voltaire, for some 3 of the music takes on an experimental form, fractured rhythms thrown around for Fischer-Dieskau and Brendel. But Poppy is wasted on electro. Give this man a big dissection. Nowhere is this more evident than Kink King Adagio…. an intriguing orchestral commission, now! listen. JOHN L WALTERS DEC 08 THE GUARDIAN BEN HOOGWOOD MUSIC OMH Echo & Decay, Spit & Crackle Recent Listening April 2009 "...and the shuffle of Despite his reputation as a minimalist, Andrew Poppy gives you plenty of bang things" Andrew Poppy's new CD starts with a spit and crackle of velocity that for your buck on his ZTT works. If you're into contemporary composition, the slowly moves toward a triumphant, almost pomp-like, classical-sounding burst of bargain of the week has to be Andrew Poppy on Zang Tuum Tumb (ZTT 3CD, sound. This is immediately hijacked by a voice which self-consciously £15.99), which collects Poppy's 1980s albums The Beating of Wings and undermines all our expectations by talking about the music it is interrupting. Alphabed together with a third, unreleased album and various odds and ends. Except of course, it isn't, because the spoken part is intrinsic to the score. Just You get plenty of notes for your money, too: despite Poppy's reputation as a when we come to terms with that idea a bell-like note rings and the music fades minimalist, his best pieces are gloriously abundant in cascading cycles of notes away as the voice continues its existential pondering. It's a fantastic introduction and noises, with satisfying, circular chord sequences, using very big ensembles to this 'cabinet of sonic curioisities' (as the sleeve notes puts it) and these kinds of and big-sounding virtual ensembles with keyboards and samplers. Poppy studied musical and verbal conundrums and subversions continue throughout another 9 music at Goldsmith's, where he co-founded Regular Music. Later, he was a key tracks. Much as I like a lot of Poppy's music, for me, it's a return to the kind of member of the Lost Jockey. By signing to Trevor Horn's ZTT label, Poppy made work I most like of his, which has previously appeared on his ZTT LP Alphabed some interesting lateral moves. For one thing, it meant that his music was and to a lesser extent the more difficult Ophelia Ophelia. Poppy is a master of beautifully recorded, using the state- of-the-art studios. It also promoted Poppy's hybridization: classical and contemporary classical music, orchestrated rock, oeuvre to a style-conscious, Face-reading audience, complete with detailed art chamber music, synthesizer rock, art rock, show music, avant-garde music and direction, enigmatic notes and Anton Corbijn portraits. This re-alignment cut both post-rock along with performance poetry and declamatory oration are all present ways, and may have distanced Poppy from the serious recognition now handed in the mix here. But why attach labels to what is in essence new and inspirational out to his less clued-up contemporaries. Yet what you hear in Poppy's music, music? Whether or not this CD is merely things shuffled, a kind of musical sleight particularly in key works such as 32 Frames for Orchestra and Cadenza for of hand, or not, is irrelevant. Poppy has made all these things anew, and I Piano and Electric Piano, is a keen ear for the large-scale, compositional use of recommend the CD to anyone interested in where music might be found in the timbre - the qualities that drew him to the cutting edge technology of ZTT's 21st Century and remain approachable, varied, dynamic and entertaining. studio-based culture. It's even there in his theme tune for The Tube, which always RUPERT LOYDELL 09 STRIDE MAGAZINE sounded huge compared to electro-TV music. What Poppy brought to ZTT - a label that didn't need much prompting to take itself seriously - was some genuinely good and serious work. His music's purpose is often revealed more effectively through the multi-tracked recording process. Younger composers may take this for granted, working out their masterpieces on PCs, but Poppy got there first JOHN L WALTERS JULY 05 GUARDIAN

Composer Andrew Poppy is good with large forces, and with small, intense ensembles such as piano solos and duos… Wave Machine renew the "tough minimalism" of Poppy's ZTT heyday. The radio-friendly track is Balcony Scene/Doppelgänger, which makes ingenious use of a Schubert sample from 4

Over the last two decades Andrew Poppy has steadily assembled a fascinating and unusual body of work which encompasses concert music, opera and scores for contemporary dance, theatre, film and television. Despite a certain amount of commercial success in the 1980’s Poppy’s work remains largely neglected by musical organisations in this country. At a time when many younger composers seem to achieve recognition by producing music which is safe and superficial this neglect of a genuine original is, to say the least, slightly scandalous.

Andrew Poppy is undoubtedly an original composer but paradoxically it’s extremely difficult to pinpoint that originality in terms of a definition of his musical style. This is principally because defining musical characteristics differ from work to work; each piece deliberately inhabits its own self-contained world, setting out with determination to explore strictly defined musical parameters and also non-musical and conceptual preoccupations. Poppy expertly fuses tonal and non-tonal harmonic worlds in such a way that the listener actually forgets about the polarity between them. Despite this diversity it’s clear that one composer is at work; one with a keen sense of structure and proportion.

This diversity is well illustrated by pieces on two of the five CD’s that Poppy has recorded. ‘The Beating of Wings’ was one of two CD’s released on the pop label ZTT during the mid 1980’s when pop musicians had become interested in what classical composers of a minimalist persuasion were doing; Poppy had excellent credentials in this respect as a founder member of the systems music big band The Lost Jockey. The four pieces on The Beating of Wings show an assured handling of facets of a post-minimal world, from 32 Frames for Orchestra, a majestic chaconne based on a simple progression of four chords, to Listening In , an hypnotic and muscular piece created in the recording studio. By further contrast Poems and Toccatas on his CD Recordings (released on the composers’ own Bitter and Twisted label in 1992) is a sequence of short pieces for violin and piano. The harmonic language is more angular and taut and the pieces are beautifully crafted.

Mention Andrew Poppy, and people will most likely recall a couple of More recent work, so far unrecorded , includes Horn Horn , a double saxophone concerto in six movements, written in 1996 for John Harle and Simon Haram and relatively high profile albums released on ZTT in the mid 1980’s, charting the extraordinary Revolution no. 8: Airport for Joseph Beuys for orchestra, a the British face of what was once called ‘Systems music’. In fact, Poppy’s desolate soundscape utilising tape delay which, for this writer at least, is possibly work has continued to develop in many and varied directions since then. Andrew Poppy’s finest achievement to date. Laurence Crane fills in the blanks. LAURENCE CRANE 1999 SOUNDINGS LIFEM: ANDREW POPPY STEPHEN GRAHAM THE JOURNAL OF MUSIC 1/10 Andrew Poppy, LIFEM (London International Festival of Exploratory Music), Kings Place, London, 4 November 2009

The London International Festival of Exploratory Music (LIFEM) seeks out music with a ‘proactive’ attitude. Its programmes spread out across genres; this year alone the artists were as diverse as DJ Scotch Egg and sean-nós singer Lorcán Mac Mathúna. The festival’s name places it in sympathy with the model of experimental music, but it has a wider perspective and offers something fresh to audiences.

Performing in the crisp acoustic clarity of Hall One at Kings Plac the performance by the Sustaining Ensemble of music from their leader Andrew Poppy was intriguing. The enigmatic presentation included subtle dusk lighting effects from Martin Langthorne and a back-projected video from Julia Bardsley that deepened every sinew of the music with quite direct visual notations. The opening Wave Machine was a minimalism-as-ambient meditation akin to some of the ‘landscape’ works of John Luther Adams. The performance created an impression of wide resonant space, extraordinary given the limited gestures of the small ensemble of glock, vibes, piano and keyboard. Wave Machine bled into My Father’s Submarine, which had Poppy priggishly reciting an obscure but evocative poem about patrimonial memory whilst ensemble gurgled away beneath. The video shimmered the text in close imitation of its subject.

The tone of the performance shifted for the last three pieces. First came the much crisper, staccato minimalist funk of What Else: What Then Now. Anchored by a spry seven-beat piano backing track, the group, with Poppy and Kate Halsall swapping piano and keyboard stools, weaved a pleasing dance of tight thrusts and limber syncopation. Almost the Same Shame was darker; the expanded percussive palette (drums and cymbals now key) and the drone-inflected sub-bass backing made for shadowy but vivid music. Bowed vibes and marimba led into Wet Fold. Again largely eschewing the earlier gestural clarity, the musicians here gave another low murmur. The piece oozed less than Almost the Same Shame, but its twilight visuals and darkly-funky electric bass foundations brought an inscrutable performance to an exhilaratingly murky end.

Title: Poppy Art Author: Marc Issue For plucky ZTT, flushed with commercial success to outshine their wildest fantasies: how to get people to forget about the popularly Source: Blitz Publish date: December 1986 perceived identity of the label long enough to hear Poppy’s work in its proper context? For Poppy himself, the problem was, and is, Andrew Poppy has no objections to being called a Post-Minimalist very clear: in musical terms. So how does he come to terms with releasing a 12” single that people can dance to? “A lot of people thought when I signed to ZTT that it was some sort of one-off Paul Morley joke, and I got very upset by that because Interview by Marc Issue. Photograph by Liam Woon. that attitude doesn’t consider my work as having any continuity — that kind of interpretation was entirely taken up with ZTT. Okay, “NO I HAVEN’T MANAGED TO THINK OF a term for what I do I’m involved with ZTT, but I don’t really want to talk about them, yet. Perhaps we should start the interview here? First quote: ‘I and if people want to read about ZTT here, then fuck off, basically haven’t managed to think of a term for what I do yet.’” — I can talk about my involvement with ZTT as part of the continuity in my work, not about me as a part of the continuity of This appears halfway down page five of the transcript, about their business ventures. The problem is that Jill, Trevor and Paul twenty minutes in. We have been wrestling, over our starters, with have such enormous profiles within the popular arena, and they the knotty problem of contexts and terms and categories, a central are signing people who are unknown to that arena, and so we’re conundrum of Andrew Poppy The Public Event. always going to be seen a bit as — you know…” Andrew Poppy, serious musician-in-residence at The Famous ZTT Yes, another wacky wheeze from ZTT… There are certain Label, is entertaining interested persons of the press in honour of fundamental concepts which we will have to get our thinking gear the release of his first album, The Beating Of Wings, on Compact around right here, otherwise we might just as well be talking about Disc. The more usual sort of record, in black vinyl, was released favourite breakfast cereals. There are terms to be defined, so we last year on Zang Tumb Tuum Records, in the wake of all that know where we are in all this. business that I shan’t trouble myself to describe all over again, but whose initials were FGTH. First, it seems that we should divest ourselves of the notion that Andrew Poppy composes systems music. Context is the big problem, for everyone concerned. For the pop press — who did not fall over themselves in the rush to proclaim “In terms of terms, minimal or systems music — I don’t like them, Andrew to be the new Sex Pistols — the question was a matter for and I don’t know of anyone who’s been put in this bracket who professional pride; how, after all, was any self-respecting music does like them. Mind you, Debussy didn’t like being called an hack to fabricate a context that encompassed what ZTT usually get Impressionist, you know? The word ‘systems’ implies a number of up to, and what Poppy might or might not promise? (presumably) mechanical procedures. This first came up in “You can’t deny that someone has to go and organize things in a something called Serialism, an idea invented by Schoenberg. His particular way, and in that sense there is an object. That’s why one system, which was taken up in the Fifties by Stockhausen and of the pieces on the record is called The Object Is A Hungry Wolf. Boulez, is very much Systems Music. It concerned the fact that I didn’t know how to avoid making an object…” “Minimalism, on the other hand, concerns the idea that the art object is not complete in itself, that it must be perceived in order But the music-objects produced here… post-minimally…? to be complete; it was an idea that took hold in the late Fifties and early Sixties with people like John Cage. The art object does not (I wait for some reaction, and titter self-consciously to drown the exist, right, it’s an illusion. What actually happens in the presence sound of terms being masticated, weighed, assessed…) of the art object is that your perception creates the art object. The classic piece of John Cage’s work is The Silence Piece — it denies “I think that’s a valid term,” ventures Andrew, at last. the art object completely, saying that if you can re-orientate “I wouldn’t object to being called a Post-Minimalist…” yourself to understand what is going on, you don’t actually need any work, in terms of making the object. The next stage is (Hey, it looks like we’re getting somewhere.) minimalism, which draws back from that position because it says, let’s face it, it’s totally idealistic to expect people to suddenly start They’re going to be different in some way to the music-objects listening to their own body rhythms and experiencing it on an made before. Aren’t they? aesthetic level, there’s just too much work to be done before we get there. What the early minimalists did — early and “ says in his book Music As A Gradual Process that you early Reich were very similar in this was to take simple structures should be able to watch the processes unfolding in the work. Now repeated over a long period of time. What happens is that because for me, the idea in that phrase completely sums up ; we are in time, there can be no absolute repetition, it is always music as a gradual process. If you look at it in film terms, you going to be different.” have a film with no edits in it — the camera is shooting one totally continuous movement. An edit, which tells you that what you are In other words, we will experience the seventeenth repetition watching is artificial, is very interesting. My work, which seems to differently to the fifty-first. be out of this minimal tradition, nevertheless contains this device that I use all the time — edit. Collage. So we have the technique of “In a sense, that is the phase we are still in, but a long way from gradual processes, which involves setting up different pulses or that starting point, and both Reich and Glass are now a very long whatever, and we have the other technique of going somewhere way from that starting point, they’ve moved further and further else, instantly.” towards the idea of making objects. Both these principals are at work in Andrew Poppy The Happy individual and if they reject it, then they reject it, but the present Medium. No problem there that we need to concern ourselves with. situation is that people are not aware of it, and so they are not being given the opportunity to reject it. I’ve always known, in Our tour of the rarefied zones of musical thought concluded some ways, that I’d have to get into the popular arena, even for the moment, we turn our attention to the selling of Andrew though some of the things that I’m doing are a very long way away Poppy The Desirable Commodity. from that, I also know that that is the only area where it can happen.” Herein lies another big fat dilemma. Problem right here… “I suppose it’s just asking people to think, and popular culture doesn’t want people to think, I think… well, I know it doesn’t. It’s “The radio and TV are the prime source of information for just difficult to talk about the relationship between popular culture and about everybody in this country, so you have to ask yourself why art. I’m not saying that all pop music is crap, because I don’t there are eighteen hours of chart material every day of the week, believe that, but at the same time, it is used to keep people from and if you should decide you don’t want pop music, you want thinking. classical music, and you turn to Radio Three, why there are twelve to fifteen hours a day of music written before 1900, and you start “You talk to people who are very disillusioned with what’s in the to think… Granted, there is Jazz Today, who play stuff by people charts and what’s on the radio, and they’re hungry for something like , but there’s an hourslot for that.” more — and there is so much more out there, but how are people to know what there is? If you listen to the radio, or buy magazines, This is familiar territory, of course — complaints about lack of or if you walk into a record shop, what hits you first? It’s the stuff airplay for interesting music. It is a fundamental problem for every that has had a lot of money spent on it, the stuff that’s gonna slip musician who happen not to sound like Phil Collins. down easy, the things that get played on the radio, they’re the only things that people are going to find out about.” “It’s even more difficult for the likes of me, because I don’t fit into any of the clearly defined categories. The art music world is even And what you don’t know about, you can’t think about. more reactionary than either the jazz world or the pop world — the preoccupation is with music before 1900, and somebody who’s on “There is so much out there to be experienced — I think people are a pop label, and uses drums and stuff — they can’t possibly take put off things they are led to believe are going to be ‘difficult’, or me seriously!” ‘not for them’, and I really want to explode that idea. I mean, music exists for everybody, even the most complex intellectual A mischievous question, perhaps: are you sufficiently sceptical piece, not that I write very complex pieces, but even the most about your chances of widespread commercial success not to be complex is for everyone who wants to listen. It’s down to each worried about the adverse effects of widespread popularity on your creative process? “I have a lot of projects that I’m waiting to get on with that I know have no commercial potential. I know it’s an old cliché, and I don’t There is quite a long pause. know whether it’s entirely true, but once you have gained some kind of access to that popular arena, then maybe it will be easier to “Yeah, I am pretty sceptical about that, I must say. Even when do other things. Maybe that isn’t true, maybe once you start you’re involved with a big company like ZTT, and even though they compromising in those particular ways then you are totally give me a lot of room, and I’m allowed to produce my own compromised all the way down the line. I am aware of that, and it material, and to an extent I’m allowed to do as I like, the most is a problem, but… Shall we talk about the music for a bit?” important thing has always got to be what I want to do, because as soon as I start trying to anticipate what They want to do, or It so happens that Andrew Poppy has done what might seem, what The Public would want me to do, then I’m lost, so far as from a respectful distance, to be a shocking about turn on his making any sort of serious contribution goes… I have to do what I academic principals and made a twelve-inch single you could feel I have to do, and I want to make sure that it gets enough almost dance to. More shocking still, the front side of the offending attention in terms of promotion, or whatever. That isn’t to say that vinyl is a reworking of a track from the album. There must be I’m not prepared to play the game, up to a point — I’ve just done something in the Contemporary Composers’ Handbook against one the music for The Tube…” or both of these, surely?

Indeed he has — this is described in a ZTT press release as “a turn “32 Frames was the piece that got probably the best reaction up for the books”. Quite. generally from the album. The A-side was an orchestral piece on the album, and now it’s the same piece with… well, drums, “Rather than try to write something ‘rock’n’roll’ — not that I think basically. And I knew when I was doing it that people were going they wanted ‘rock’n’roll’ anyway — I decided to take something I to say, ‘Hooked On Classics’ — and I just laughed, because it was had already written, and reworked the textures. It’s a piece from just a twelve-inch, just a bit of fun. The A-side was simply trying to the end of The Object Is A Hungry Wolf — that is me playing the take something I’d already done and make it somehow sharper, game, because I realise that if my music should become remotely glossier if you like. Thinking about the same piece in a different popular, then people are going to take it and do what the fuck they way led to The Impossible Net, the B-side of the twelve-inch. The want with it, you know. So this is also me saying that if everybody Impossible Net is much more what I’m interested in. The title, for else can do it to my music, then look, I can do it as well. For me, me, says it all about that process. I even thought about spelling it’s just like froth, something to do while I’m waiting to get on with Net with a ‘£’ for the ‘t’, like Ne£, but then I thought Jill wouldn’t my work, it isn’t something that I take very seriously.” like it…”

On the other hand… You can’t see his expression from where you’re sitting. This is a shame. You’d love it. But what about these drums? …consuming recorded music, one can wander around with it on a walk man, or one can… “It’s a horrible thing to say, but if you have that drum crack all the way through, that makes it easier for people to recognise the time “Have sex to it?” signature of the piece…” …have sex to it, or one can simply have it on in one’s living room Formatting your listeners, to borrow a term from computing… with the TV sound turned down, as I do with most music…

“Yeah, it is. It doesn’t compromise the piece to put the drums “I like that one. Having sex to it, or putting it on with the TV set there, so if it makes it easier, then, fine. I like the idea myself. I’m turned down, I like those two. Thumbs up for those two. Go on… not going to go back on that point about giving people what they want — hold on, I’m contradicting myself here… no, I like the I was going to say one can hear it on the radio, but we’ve already twelve-inch format because once you’ve done the album you’ve got gone over how one can’t hear it on the radio… Modern instrumental some room to loosen up a bit. In a way, I would rather have gone music, as yours predominantly is, tends to find gainful employment ahead and started the second album, but the way the commercial as background noise for announcements of forthcoming attractions world works… Hopefully I’ll be getting on with it next month and on BBC1 and grafted into documentaries on heart surgery… it’ll be coming out early next year, about February or March. There’ll be a single as well, The Amusement, which I did at the “This goes back to what I was saying about The Object Is A Hungry Ambassadors shows last year. That’s recorded already…” Wolf and the signature tune for The Tube you’ve only got to watch TV for a few hours to hear everything from classic Beach Boys Finally, consuming the music. Do the ways in which people use the tracks through Mahler, Beethoven, Mozart, Philip Glass — anybody music interest you? who has any musical credibility will be pillaged to advertise something. Yes, is my answer, I’ll do it. I’ll give you my number, “Let’s narrow it down. What do you think the primary ways of and you’ll find that I’m not that expensive. I’ve got to make a consuming the music are?” living, after all. What can you say? You know that kind of situation exists, you just have to deal with it…” Ooh, let me see now — in consuming live performance, one has a live audience standing or sitting in front of you, and they may Surprise, surprise. Serious musicians have much the same move parts of their bodies in time to the music or not according to problems as any other sort. Give it time, you may yet come around their disposition… to Andrew Poppy’s way of thinking.

“Mmmm…”

|ANDREWPOPPY

ONE OF THE UK’S LEADING CONTEMPORARY COMPOSERS, ANDREW POPPY ARRIVED AT ZTT IN 1984 HAVING STUDIED UNDER JOHN CAGE AND FOUNDED THE AVANT-GARDE COLLECTIVE THE LOST JOCKEY. HE WENT ON TO SUCCESSFULLY STRADDLE TWO WORLDS: ORCHESTRAL COMPOSITIONS ON THE ONE HAND AND LEFTFIELD POP COLLABORATIONS ON THE OTHER. AN INTERESTING MIX WE THOUGHT HERE AT QSHEET, SO WE DECIDED TO CATCH UP WITH THE BUSY COMPOSER TO FIND OUT ABOUT HIS LATEST CD, ‘ANDREW POPPY ON ZANG TUUM TUMB’, AND LIFE IN A CLASSICAL WORLD…

QS: How would you, categorise your music? university. Then, when you’re at university you get good, it did get me some of the basic things. I You’ve been labelled an ‘experimental artist’, educated – or indoctrinated, depending on how look back and I think that’s quite a good thing your music is classical but not quite classical. you look at it – into a whole other area of music, for me because I have two ways of doing things AP: Yeah, well, it is hard isn’t it, because a whole other area of music that’s actually not – one is quite a taught way, which is like the obviously I get asked this question, “What is it very well known. Contemporary classical music piano and is proper, I know what the notes are you do?” because it doesn’t seem like straight has a very, very small audience and while that and everything, and the way that I learned the classical music and although there are vocals music’s very interesting it’s very, very frustrating guitar was very intuitive. In some ways I still there’s never really a proper song there, and that it hasn’t got an audience, and I’m not work like that in that if I play the guitar I tend to some of the pieces are very long, and yet interested in that thing of playing to two people. be more physical with it, whereas if I play the sometimes there’s an orchestra and sometimes I’m always interested in the energy and the piano I tend to work with notation and I read the there’s a drum kit. It is a representation of all the excitement of pop music, so I’ve somehow tried dots. I think learning notation is a really useful things that I’ve been influenced by and the to find a way to bring the two worlds together, on tool. It’s not the only thing by any means history of my life in some ways. I wasn’t brought my own terms – I’m not trying to change the because some people can just play and they up with a lot of classical music, but the things I’d world or anything. can’t really feel anything or they can’t do heard I was really interested in as well, so I anything intuitively, they can’t do anything suppose all my life it’s been going between the QS: Do you think it was advantageous in the spontaneously, but what’s fantastic is if you can two things – listening to classical music, listening long term to get an appreciation of music from pick up a piece of music that was written in the to pop music – and the two have kind of come out a young age, learning while you’re young seventeenth century, and you can look at it and in what I do. I left school quite early and I was when it’s a bit more natural maybe? you can find out about it, you can play it to playing in a band. We were playing in clubs and AP: I do think being able to have an appreciation yourself. I still find great pleasure in that. I’m things, and very early I got bored with that and of lots of different types of music is useful. I’m not a very good sight-reader. I can’t just sit then I decided there’s something other than pop quite glad that my parents said, “Well we want down and it’s instantly perfect, but I can play music; being in a band can be really frustrating to give you something” in fact, because I’m one through something looking at the dots, and I and stressful because there are these four egos. of four kids and it was a principle of my parents’ can get something out of the library and I can I didn’t like the conflict there was in the band and that “You will have piano lessons. If you don’t play it, and it’s like people read a novel – you I decided I wanted to learn the piano properly. I like it after six months you can give it up, but can read a 19th-century novel or 18th-century went back to having private piano lessons, but we’re going to let you have piano lessons novel, you get a window on to a particular world then I thought, well, I need to study, so I went because that’s something we think we should – and so through notation and having a skill at and did an A-level and then eventually I went to give you”, and actually even though I wasn’t very the keyboard it allows you to have that. > ComposeYOURSELF

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QS: We ask a lot of people who have been QS: The album now is looking back at work you can remember?” It’s an interesting question, QS: No, not necessarily – it’s what makes around in the music industry for, say, 30, 40 from 20 years ago. Why now and why the third and thinking back it is probably ‘Wooden Heart’ people first aware of something they’re not years whether they have noticed a difference CD with the unreleased material? on the radio because it’s a classic track that I familiar with. To do something with TV or film during that time period because of the changes AP: Why now? Well it hasn’t been available for associate with that, probably early 1960s or is just perfect because it can either be nice in in pop culture, but if you look at something from about ten years. ZTT is a small label that has maybe late 1950s, I can’t remember. the background, supporting whatever’s the 17th or 19th century, or whenever, is there always been licensed to a major. I think when shown, or as a stand-alone piece. Again you’ve a vast variation in styles of classical music, ZTT and Universal hooked up, which was QS: What future plans have you got lined up? done a number of things for TV haven’t you? going through the different time periods? probably about ten years ago, they only decided AP: Well there’re lots of things. I’m making a AP: Yeah, well, there was a period of time when AP: There’s more difference between very to re-release Frankie Goes To Hollywood, which piece for the Estonian National Male Voice I did quite a lot of title themes for different experimental music in the last 50 to 60 years was obviously the most successful act on the Choir, which is going to be premiered in Tallinn programmes. So yeah, I know what that’s and popular music. Popular music and jazz are label, and everything else was unreleased or in February next year. I’m just working on that about, the 30 seconds or a minute, or a minute more connected to 19th- and 18th-century they didn’t re-release. So my recordings from the at the moment. That’s 52 male voices plus and a half, whatever. The first one I did was for music than they are to contemporary classical 1980s on ZTT haven’t been available for ten some electronics and some percussion. ‘The Tube’, the last edition of ‘The Tube’, which music, which is very, very abstract. I think years. A year or so ago the Universal deal I did when I was at ZTT and that was great fun. there’re lots of connections between music of finished, so that freed ZTT to look at its back QS: Do you think that this market segment – all areas. I think that’s the fascinating thing and catalogue again, and then I said to them, “Well it’s a very broad term, I know – needs to have that’s to do with the time we’re living in, which is obviously I hope that you would like to re-release somebody like a young figurehead to try and where recording technology has become so it, and if you do re-release it I’ll be totally behind bring the audiences in, because you’ve got “I’VE BEEN MAKING STUFF sophisticated, it’s dominated everybody’s lives it because obviously I stand by those records. It Joss Stone, Katie Melua, Jamie Cullum and FOR 25 YEARS NOW, AND since the 1960s. So everything that happens was a great time for me.” Initially it was going to now Michael Bublé who are bringing all the culturally is recorded and there’s an obsession be a two-CD package, and then they said, “Well new jazz audiences in and yet there’s been no THE THING IS, THERE ARE with recording, so if you go down to HMV or there’s enough for three, why don’t we keep it one for a while who’s doing anything UPS AND DOWNS. YOU GO whatever you can go and buy Gregorian chant neat?”, because the original album was called classical-associated. You had Vanessa Mae through to the latest contemporary composition, ‘The Beating Of Wings’, the second one was and Nigel Kennedy a while ago … THROUGH LOW PERIODS OF but you can also go and buy Indonesian music or called ‘Alphabet’ and I’d actually already titled AP: Well, you see the thing is, it’s an THINKING “SHOULD I BE music from Pakistan or wherever. We’re living in my third album ‘Under The Sun’, so on this box it interesting question. I think you’re right but a time when that seems really natural but, basically keeps those titles and that actually there are those young people like DOING THIS AT ALL?” I actually, it’s very, very recent. When I was a arrangement, even though what you have is Vanessa Mae, but they’re performers. This is student in the 1970s you’d go to the library and extra tracks as well for each of the first two one of the contradictions in a way, although I THINK EVERYBODY HAS there are one or two anthropological recordings albums. You have the 12” and the 7”. do play I’m primarily presenting myself as a THAT, HOWEVER BIG OR of non-western music, done for anthropological composer, which is a different idea. It’s about reasons, maybe African drumming or something QS: And what about more recent work that being primarily a writer although I do get out UNSUCCESSFUL YOU ARE” like that, but apart from that you didn’t really you’ve been doing? Again there’s such a there and I play on all my records and I control have much awareness of what was happening variety: writing scores for various people, my records, I produce my records, so if you outside your own little circle. whether for TV, film, individuals, orchestras … look at Nigel Kennedy he’s a player really and QS: What advice would you give to anybody AP: Well I try to keep busy. A project that came he made his reputation on the back of doing who wants to start as a composer or musician? QS: Who are your influences, and have they out at the beginning of the year was a recording Vivaldi, and Vanessa Mae, she’s a very good AP: I think the one thing you need over and above split you in two to a point, because you have of songs I’d made with Claudia Brucken. She player but she plays, she probably does write everything else as an artist is tenacity. It has to rock and pop influences as well as classical? was the lead singer with Propaganda, who were things, I don’t know. I’ve heard some of the be on a level. You meet some people really young AP: From the turn of the last century, there’re on the ZTT label. We knew each other back then things she’s done but they’re all arrangements that have a kind of arrogance and in some two composers: Stravinsky and Debussy. They and I was going to work on a track of hers, but of pieces. It’s a tricky one really. senses that’s great, because you have to be are big figures really; I listened to a lot of that never happened, but we met up again about confident, but you can go through life and be Stravinsky when I was a student and I played five years ago and we started chatting, became QS: If everything is cyclical musically does it really horrible to a lot of people being like that; Debussy on the piano, because he wrote a lot of friends. We started talking about maybe doing just need something to make people aware, to the thing is, you do need to manage your doubts piano music, because he was a fantastic pianist, something together but something really simple get these things in the public ear? somehow. The doubt process is quite important and then, more recently, people like Philip Glass without any real pressure of, well, it’s got to be a AP: It’s probably a big discussion. For instance because if you don’t doubt I think you’ve got no and Steve Reich and , the Americans. hit. So it’s an album of different songs that we we’ve got, Claudia and I, this record we reflection on your work, so you do meet these They were classically trained people but again like. I’ve made some arrangements either for released beginning of the year – OK it’s a very people who think they’re absolutely great and we they wanted to do something that wasn’t to do piano and voice or guitar and voice, so it’s really small release and it’s been ticking over because all know they’re not. So you have your own doubt, with that world. They wanted to have something simple. That’s all there is – either piano, on we’ve both got our fan base, which is very loyal. which modifies what you do and I think that’s a that had a different energy, and a lot of that is to some there’s two electric piano tracks and voice Then my partner, who’s a film maker, video good thing. I’ve been making stuff for 25 years do with the way the pulse works, the way the or guitar, and there’s an electric guitar – but maker, made a video for us for one of the now, and the thing is, there are ups and downs. rhythm works. If you hear non-western musics that’s all it is, just one instrument and a voice, tracks because we were going to do a little You go through low periods of thinking “Am I they’re usually very rhythmic and that’s and we released that at the beginning of the special, one-off version of one of the tracks. doing the right thing?” or “Should I be doing this important. That’s why jazz and pop are so year and it seems to be going very well. Then Mute Records saw it and immediately they at all?” I think everybody has that, however big or successful because rhythm really connects with saw it they said, “We want to release this as a unsuccessful you are. You just have to keep going people because it’s so physical. Composers like QS: It’s got ‘Wooden Heart’ on it and, reading single” and, to me, it’s a classic case of if you because I think that’s the important thing, and Glass and Reich and Riley, they want to bring your biography, it says that you used to listen have that kind of visual representation you’ve then somebody will turn round and say, “Yeah, that back into the music. That’s what we’ve done to Elvis on your transistor, so in effect you’ve instantly got access to all those TV programmes that piece that was really great. It was so good in terms of pioneering the work that you use. It’s come full circle – from young child listening to and you have access to a market. Trying to pick that piece. I was so glad”, and that makes the what maybe myself and a few other composers Elvis coming back to doing a revised version up what you’re getting at – is it to do with the day. It was something that you did at a particular are trying to do: trying to make a sort of art of ‘Wooden Heart’ … fact that music is not enough on its own? It has time and somebody’s got something, and that’s music that’s got the energy and the rhythmic AP: Well, yes, it’s interesting because somebody to have some visual representation, or are you what being an artist is about – it’s about creating excitement of pop music and some jazz. asked me a long time ago, “What’s the first song saying it’s all about sex? a musical experience for somebody.

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