As a kid, I would file through my dad’s record collection, and disappear into worlds of rare beauty and adventure. Much of the classical universe I immersed myself in was centred around that transcendent organism, the string orchestra.

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I was to add to the collection with quite a few more modern composers a couple of years later, but that emotive, familiar sound - just getting a string orchestra to play a C major chord can send one over the edge - vibrates in me to this very day. My dad being a cellist and lover of ballet (how many rugby players do you know who cross such a divide?!) gave my upbringing a regular sonic backdrop of classical strings. The same turntable, however, also played jazz-rock, improvisation and groove music thanks to my siblings and I, and it never occurred to me as anything but natural.

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I became a composition student at the Guildhall School Of Music, but by the end of my first year, I missed the balance of improvised rhythmic freedom and pastoral classical - and, to be honest, I was bored of writing everything down! I asked to change my first study to saxophone, an instrument I had played around with as a teen. That swap became the beginning of a fairly unbroken journey into mixing and matching every musical influence that had shaped my childhood.

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Much has been written about how real interest and intrigue often exist where the edges of different things touch. With The Forever Seed, a sort of customised violin concerto I wrote for Thomas Gould, the famous trope of The Seasons became the theme, but crucially it was the changing of one season to another that got me excited. Each main movement is linked with a sort of interlude which is mainly improvised. On the recording, important parts for piano, cimbalom and percussion act as Thomas’ improvising companions (it does help when the pianist is Gwilym Simcock - who had a large role to play).

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Perhaps one can approach the mystery all the more keenly when some of the time, nobody knows what is going to happen. That dynamic has had me hooked for forty years! Just as good poetry can make you aware of feelings you didn’t know were even possible, there is something about the blending of approaches that can trigger deep emotion and empathy. My live concerts coming up at the end of this year and beyond go one step further, displaying behind the musicians the fine art of Turkish painter Esra Kizir Gokcen, who has created ten paintings on the subject of The Forever Seed.

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This is a time when the multifarious worlds of music and art are beginning to meet and blend and create a whole new species.

Stephen Nachmanovitch

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To keep a good balance between all that's written down and all that’s not has been crucial, so there are pieces on The Forever Seed where every note is precisely notated and there is a joy in this, just as there is a joy in the improvisers holding the composition like a piece of plasticine and saying “right guys, let’s see what else we can make outta this!”

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For us control freak composers, the condition must be that we love the players that we entrust our work to. It is a collaboration with high stakes, simultaneously containing deep seriousness and childlike play.

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Here is a link to the Forever Seed’s final piece, “Praise”, which is completely notated, and harks back with some nostalgia to those early ‘dad’ records. To hear the spontaneous interplay springing from this piece, however, you’ll have to join me this November, with The Lighthouse Trio and Britten Sinfonia with Thom Gould, when I shall no doubt be as surprised as the audience at what the moment will bring!

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In deep gratitude to my collaborators, let's go co-create!

Tim

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