BY JOSEPH ASQUITH, LEAD WRITER (UK)
The New Music Biennial is an initiative by the PRS foundation. It aims to provide a platform for music makers who challenge artistic conventions to share their craft with wider audiences.
As it reaches the milestone of its 10-year anniversary, NMB celebrates with 20 pieces of music. Half were composed specially for this event, half are handpicked from previous years, and all come together to span genres of classical, jazz, folk, and electronic.
Elizabeth Sills from the PRS Foundation is the curator of New Music Biennial, and she joins us now to talk about how the initiative first started, and why it continues to support new composition today.
Hi Elizabeth, thanks so much for joining us at CutCommon! Looks like music performance is back and running after a gruelling two years of social distancing. How does it feel to have New Music Biennial live again?
It feels great to be running NMB. It was originally planned for 2021, but everything was obviously put on hold. It has been really exciting to see this program come together, and new works created as well as reprising pieces from the past 10 years of NMB.
Tell us a little bit about the background of the PRS Foundation, and how the idea of New Music Biennial was originally conceived.
NMB started life in 2012 when former PRS Foundation CEO Vanessa Reed — together with Marquee TV’s director of partnerships Susannah Simons, director of learning and participation at the Royal Opera House Jillian Barker, and director of music at Southbank Centre Gillian Moore — came up with the concept of a festival presenting bite-sized pieces of new music, across all genres, to be accessible to audiences of all backgrounds to enjoy.
The festival at the time was called New Music 20×12, and formed part of the Cultural Olympiad that surrounded the London 2012 Olympic Games.
The success of the festival led to the idea of it becoming a regular festival on a biennial basis, and it has now been running for 10 years.
I love the multi-genre approach to music events like this. To have musicians from different backgrounds and expertise join together in one event is, for me, wholesome and satisfying. What prompted you to make the decision for this to be a multi-genre celebration of music?
At PRS Foundation, we want to support music that is representative of the music creators living in the UK.
Pieces are selected by an open-call process, and it has been amazing to see the works that were submitted and selected in the program.
The festival is also free, and it is important that it is open to all audiences.
The theme of this particular program is appropriately related to the universal experiences that the past two years have brought — not just with the pandemic necessarily, but also global conflicts, social injustices, and natural and civil disasters. In your view, how do you think music remedies the trauma that we have all, in some way or another, experienced in this time?
Music is universal and important to so many different people, and the great thing about NMB is that there is something for everyone to relate to and discover.
Do you have any particular highlights of the festival thus far?
We love all the pieces programmed this year. It has been amazing to see the range across styles. Seeing programmed pieces such as Philip Herbert’s Towards Renewal, and Gazelle Twins’ Power of Glory, in the Coventry Cathedral was really spectacular.
NYX Electronic Drone Choir was equally epic, and there was a very unique quality to the pairing of the sitar with the piano for Roopa Panesar’s The Crossing (pictured below), which we are looking forward to seeing performed in the round at the Clore Ballroom in the Southbank Centre.
We are, and have been for a long while now, living in very uncertain times. How do you think events like NMB provide hope for the future?
We want music creators to keep creating new works, commissioning organisations to provide opportunities, and for audiences to experience this new music without barriers across different cities in the UK as well as in NMB’s spiritual home at the Southbank Centre.
It is incredible how important music has been in these difficult times, and the hope it brings for the future.
What are you most looking forward to with NMB this year?
This is the first time we are having previous NMB works with new NMB works. This worked really well in Coventry, and we are looking forward to seeing it come together at the Southbank Centre.
Catch the 20 compositions that span classical and chamber, opera to jazz, folk and electronic at PRS Foundation and Southbank Centre’s New Music Biennial. It will take place for the second time this year in Southbank, London, from 1-3 July. Free tickets are available to this 10th anniversary festival weekend.
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Images supplied. Credit Jaimie Gray.
