“Before I was yearning to fit in and belong, but actually, being me is finding comfort and joy in being an outlier… I took the idea of double consciousness and strove to playfully explore it.”
Bobbie-Jane Gardner
Bobbie-Jane Gardner is a composer and arranger based in Birmingham, UK. Her music, described as “harmonically subtle and rhythmically agile”, often takes as inspiration the sound worlds of jazz, soul and funk. Bobbie has been commissioned by Heart n Soul, Spitalfields Music, Onyx Brass, City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra, Persona Arts, Wild Plum Arts, Vivid Projects, Grand Union, London Symphony Orchestra, The Stringcredibles and Tom Kerstens’s G Plus Ensemble. A keen arranger, Bobbie has created bespoke arrangements for various ensembles including the BBC Concert Orchestra and Netflix. Her work has been performed by leading ensembles such as Psappha, City of London Sinfonia, Bozzini Quartet and Ethereal World. Bobbie’s music has been performed at Cheltenham Music Festival, Frontiers Festival and the London Jazz Festival. Bobbie works as a practice-based researcher, having previously worked as a lecturer at Leeds Conservatoire; she currently works as a visiting lecturer at Royal Birmingham Conservatoire.
Patrick Ellis caught up with Bobbie-Jane Gardner, talking about community-building through music, DJing, visual artists, “double consciousness”, and arranging for Netflix…
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Patrick/PRXLUDES: You mentioned to me that towards the end of your PhD in 2019, you were beginning to re-evaluate who you were as a composer. I understand that for much of your career, your music was centred around community, culminating in the for-Wards project that took place between 2014-18. Do you think the end of two large scale endeavours made you feel as though it was time to change direction?
Bobbie-Jane Gardner: Yeah, I feel it was something that I really had to grapple with. Especially with ‘for-Wards’ — where it was about this juxtaposition of artistic voice and community voice. I really struggled with that because I was so used to being of service, and using my musical skills as a conduit to help others to channel their own creativity; I was so used to sharing. I had a deep respect for my participants and collaborators’ ideas; I would really try to honour their materials, and I kind of lost myself a bit in the process. I wasn’t clear about what my artistic contribution could be.
With ‘for-Wards’, I was really trying to involve my collaborators with many aspects of the writing process, which included the pre-compositional process. Like the instrumentation: what were we going to use? What best depicts the ward [in Birmingham] in which we are based and the message that we are trying to convey? They were central to the process. I was also creating and producing this mad project… -laughs- When I completed it, lots of people said to me “I didn’t think you would finish it”. I had a supportive and hardworking small team that helped me and I’m so grateful to them.
As I was having to spin so many plates and support all of the composers and the team, and trying to have a place to think critically about the process… I got a bit lost. I was doing a lot of experimentation, especially during my Masters — trying things conceptually and failing. Doing all kinds of improvisation, almost like free-jazz style stuff, working with a chef with an orchestra — basically like Ready Steady Cook… -laughs- But I hadn’t really given myself enough time to sit and let my ideas settle. During my Masters, I was also working practically full time, so there was a sense of urgency to get material completed.
So in 2019 [towards the end of the PhD], I thought “I need to look into who I am as a composer”. Even though I don’t really subscribe to the idea of having a voice — Stravinsky had a Neoclassical phase, etc. So it’s not about having this rigid or myopic version of what I can do; it was about becoming more confident in what it is that I want to say.
Was it almost a longing to return to that? Where you had more of a singular involvement in every step of the process.
It was a very gradual thing. ‘for-Wards’ was the apex of that happening. I did my undergrad in English and music performance (clarinet). After my undergrad, I had time out of education, I lived and taught English in Japan for three years; and then when I returned, I explored a career in participatory arts. It was always service juxtaposed with the creativity and the making — as well as wellbeing, confidence, community building. I noticed that other animateurs or workshop leaders had bands, like James Redwood. They had an established sound, or a thing that they could trial stuff alongside that, and I didn’t.
Through running workshops, I actually got some of my first commissions. It was through a second commission — that came off the back of the first one — where I felt that I was stuck. I felt as though I was doing the same stuff. And that led me to go to Royal Birmingham Conservatoire and do a Masters, and the experience opened my eyes to so many different approaches to music making — things that I was snobby about when I was doing my A-Levels… -laughs- But I was ready to really absorb as much as I could and then take from what I connected with.
Were those techniques things that you used in your community music?
A lot of the writing was based upon improvisation. I would set up exercises and games to make it seem less scary to the participants. I would give them a brief and encourage them: “This is what I can do, what can you do? What are you interested in?” So in terms of techniques, we would create asymmetrical grooves and encourage participants to have almost an “instruction” style of playing with arrangement, orchestration and structure. I think so much of the community work had happened up to the Masters, I was starting to do less of that work at that point, but some techniques definitely fed into the for-Wards pilot.
I guess there were tools that you would learn, or had tried out in other works in your Masters: “oh, I’m going to apply this into my community music, because I know this will work in this context”, or “this will work with this youth ensemble”.
Yes, applying things, but also making things to go with it. Around the time of the Masters, it was the ‘for-Wards’ pilot. Actually, due to the amazing tuition and support at RBC, some techniques were actually created especially for the session: things like turning maps into notation; superimposing staves on top of things. I was really inspired and influenced by peers such as Joe Cutler, Andy Ingamells, Howard Skempton, and Michael Wolters. They showed me how experimentation could be playful and fun. How through experimentation, play and fun — as well as techniques and ideas such as transposing — connecting things to a place, and translating them into musical ideas and processes. I also had some private tuition too.
Once you had completed the PhD and the ‘for-Wards’ project, did you set out to pivot your practice into new directions? You’ve mentioned before about wanting to concentrate on technique a bit more…
I felt at the time that some of my ideas were pretty cool, but I wouldn’t necessarily realise the material in a way that was satisfactory. So I wanted to have a stronger sense of control of how I was able to handle the musical material. I reread books on compositional technique, dusted off harmony and species counterpoint workbooks… -laughs- But also had some private tuition too. In Julia Cameron’s book The Artist’s Way, she talks about being a blocked creative — which sums me up during the 5 year period after I completed my undergraduate degree.
During this blocked period, I did a lot of DJing, and as a result did a lot of listening and was always reading the audience. Dancefloor audiences talk with their feet! I was playing a lot of funk, soul, afrobeat and Hip Hop in my sets — and in particular, the sampling culture of Hip Hop led me down a rabbit hole of collecting rare funk 45s. I was often dissatisfied with the duration of the samples — “why’s that so short!? It’s beautiful, where is it from?” — and as a result of that, I was learning about some highly sampled composer-arrangers like Charles Stepney. These “straighty” classical composers who were then struggling to get into the music academies — so through chance, they got snapped up by the pop music industry and were incorporating avant-garde techniques into their collaborations and productions.
I love how Charles Stepney is so inspired by experimentation. Despite not being able to afford to study at Berklee, whilst he was working as a grocery bagger to sustain himself, he found the reading list for the course and did a lot of self-study — which included a notoriously difficult composing programme by Schillinger, who actually laid the foundations for the Berklee College of Music. So I’m connected to that aspect of looking at the experimental world; making it accessible and lyrical and adding a splash of soul and jazzier harmonies. It has to move me — I have to feel something.
You mentioned there that DJing influenced how you wanted music to be when going into your masters?
See, the DJ thing happened after my undergrad. Then, when I started my Masters, I was in DJ retirement because I was teaching and running music workshops during the day. You can’t DJ until 2 or 3am and then begin teaching a few hours later -laughs- However, when I was doing the Masters, I was incorporating turntables into some of my works at the time — for example, a piece for Birmingham Contemporary Music Group — and I was interested in composers like Nicole Lizzée and Bernhard Lang. I love Lang’s ‘DW 8’, that’s an amazing piece; he sampled the orchestra and then has the turntablists improvising using the pressed recordings of the recorded orchestra whilst the orchestra performs live! Wowzers!
So there were all of these aspects that you were inspired by in the past. And you wanted to bring them back into your music after your PhD and ‘for-Wards’?
Yes, in 2019, towards the end of my PhD, I was beginning to look again into the nuts and bolts of my composing. It was to have someone there really looking at my work and saying “you keep doing this thing!” It was also really great to have time to go back through my notes and read through things from my studies — [to] have these epiphany moments. During my masters when I was doing all of these conceptual experiments, I had a few hours with Howard Skempton and he told me, “Bobbie… you’re a melody writer.” -laughs- And I think years later, I thought to myself — you are right.” I told him as well. -laughs-
Where am I right now? For me, harmony is important; and because of my DJing background and the music that I often played, it’s got a jazzy feel — and sometimes it gets quite folky, too! I also think that asymmetry is important — probably influenced by my studies with Joe Cutler, who has lots of wonky grooves in his music, which I really like.
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This year, I’ve been majorly inspired by Khyam Allami — a British-Iraqi composer who created two amazing apps that explore different tuning systems for his PhD research. Basically he is striving to decolonise tonality and music tech. And that just blew my mind. Not in a malicious way per se — but 12 EDO [Equal Temperament tuning] has almost stifled creative approaches to tonality, you could argue. I get why it happened, the development of piano and for instruments to play in tune alongside it but, some musicians have stopped using tuning systems from their heritage and tech has not necessarily enabled the incorporation of global tuning systems; or when musicians from other musical cultures collaborate with musicians from Europe and America, they are the ones to adapt to the European 12-EDO tuning system. Even before 12 EDO landed in the West, composers and musicians used other systems — such as just intonation, which has beautiful sonorities.
And all of that to me is really fascinating. That’s not to say 12 EDO is bad or wrong, but recently I’ve been drawn to do experiments with different tuning systems using Khyam’s app and incorporated one into my latest piece. It’s funny, because my ears are like “what, this is weird” — it’s such a challenge when you are writing a piece with new tonalities because [of] the time that you need to immerse yourself in that soundworld. It’s also difficult because all the equipment and resources that I have are centred around equal temperament. So I’ve been getting frustrated with that. -laughs- But I have managed to commit myself to using it a little bit. With microtonality, you can know it abstractly, but it is a different matter to really implement it, notate and use it. That’s a different kettle of fish.
As mentioned before, harmony is important to me, so exploring these different tuning systems has been interesting. I’ve been reading Harry Partch’s Genesis of a Music and also the Schillinger System of Musical Composition. It’s interesting with the latter, because there are quite a few spiritual ideas in there — which some academics have looked down upon.
When you got your first project after your PhD, you really decided to focus on being the “artist” side of your practice and take more free reign over community work. Did you have any challenges that you had to face during the creative process?
I recall the composer who was a mentor when I was a trainee animateur for Spitalfields Music — John Barber — saying that the beauty of collaboration is that if you get stuck, you’ve got someone to talk to and offer ideas. I like that I can talk to Year 5 Primary School students and ask them — “what shall we do next?” Working alone, I felt more pressure. During my studies I had obviously written pieces by myself, but when I got commissioned by Onyx Brass in 2019 [up on the toes (the slippery stair dance)], I almost felt it was like it was time to dig out a little artist manifesto: “okay, so I say that I want to do these things, so let’s have a go, let’s have a butchers.” -laughs-
In up on the toes, I examined the music of Neo soul artists like Erykah Badu and D’Angelo, whose work often references and has deference to rhythm and blues of the 1960s with artists like Marvin Gaye. That kind of sound, but then it has this slinky digitised aesthetic that includes aspects of Hip Hop in it. However there is a real respect to the OGs from back then — even with things like the vocal inflections. I was listening to some of the harmonies from that period, but also included improvisation and a canon. The harmony in this piece is speaking directly to a Badu track that I love. I responded to the sound and created my own harmonic progressions.
With that piece, as well as the Neo soul elements, it’s also a very playful work. I’ve noted that also with true self [for the CBSO], there is a lot of ornamentation and cascading passages. When you write compositions like that, how do you begin constructing that kind of material?
It depends on the commission. If I’ve got almost complete control to do whatever I want, where I have at least the instrumentation and a deadline date, I start with the idea and then harmony. With the brass piece, I had been talking with trombonist Amos [Miller] about where I wanted to go stylistically and he said “just do you, write us a five minute piece, off you go!” So when composing I told myself: “This is where I want to be, I’m at this pivotal point, let’s examine a Neo soul soundworld.”
Back when I studied with Howard Skempton, he shared one of his compositional approaches (there are many), where he starts with triads, forms progressions and forms lines with an effective notational shorthand. I wrote that piece using that technique. I was able to map out the progression of different sections and it was amazing; four harmonic progressions had the potential to write a whole piece. -laughs- I could come back to things, I could displace them, I could rearrange them.
So once I had the harmony — which was subject to change, depending on where the material was taking me — I began to make adjustments; it was all quite intuitive. When I got to more challenging points, that was where I would go to my composition diary; inspired by two composers — Andrew Hamilton and Naomi Pinnock. Naomi did a seminar and shared screen grabs from her beautiful Moleskine sketchbooks. So I would write stuff in my composition book when I got stuck and would write things like “I want to do this” or “it’s not doing this”; I would also listen critically to the material, scrapping it or reordering it as well. I realised that the piece was going to be about a dysfunctional relationship in some [ways] — but not as a narrative. A dysfunctional dance… -laughs-
What was it like transforming those triads into the final material that you had with the piece in the end, with all of the playfulness and the cascades?
It was fun! I think it’s because I love melody… I enjoy singing or improvising along [with the triads]. This may sound weird — but during the wee hours between 2 and 5am, ideas will come to me, and it’s like: “Mate, I’m tired!” The tunes won’t stop flying or a passage obsessively whirls round and round my head so I surrender to it. I mumble a[n]:“okay, let me write this down, thank you, thank you”, and try to go back to sleep. -laughs- The transformations also come from the joys of listening, the joy of sound, and so I trust that.
You don’t brush aside that gut feeling anymore…
I follow my intuition. If something really does sound like something else if I hear it, I’m like “no” — but if I’ve got something, I’m not going to do research or message a friend and ask “does this sound like Vaughan Williams?” -laughs-
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You’ve said before, regarding your piece tapeworm (2014), that you don’t really see yourself as a conceptual composer. You also talked about using gradual process structures — and comparing this to your more recent work, true self, it also does that. Are gradual processes devices that you gravitate towards?
That’s interesting. It’s definitely a technique that has stuck, creating pointillistic textures, often at the beginning of a piece — but I think it’s getting a bit tired now. -laughs- I am experimenting even more with texture in my current work ‘storm ending’; a piece that I’m currently writing for mezzo-soprano Lucy Schaufer, Trio Klein, and pianist Ben Dawson. I’ve been wanting to foreground texture in my music for a while, so I have been playing with different sorts of ideas — including side stepping the [American and European] minimalists (who I love) and connecting more with the African music [that] influenced them.
I’ve been listening to music cited by the scholar Kofi Agawu in a chapter called ‘Tonality as a Colonizing Force in Africa’. He describes the African music he presents as containing a minimalist aesthetic, and when I listened to these musical examples he cited, I was amazed at how “influenced” the European/American avant-garde were by this music — how much they “borrowed”. I really got into Ghanaian polyphonic music and loved the hockets produced in community settings — aha, community! I also listened to lots of Indonesian music and other musical cultures to learn about their approaches to texture.
Will this new work build on that idea of a gradual process, but it will examine a different take on it if you will?
It is gradual, but some sections aspire to connect with forms of African music I mentioned earlier. I created pointillistic textures in tapeworm and true self in order to represent a nebulous object that takes shape, but because I used aleatoric forms of notation the movement throughout these passages feels freer — musicians have the choice to interpret text instructions as they wish. Whereas in this new piece, the textural sections will be fully notated but also nod to the African minimalist aesthetic.
When you do have these gradual cyclical processes, do you have a very impulsive or methodical way with how you tweak and adjust each thing?
With tapeworm, it was definitely more methodical. I even made a grid to outline processes to execute the piece — for example, note values, number of pitches and the density of each music object — because it was exploring parasitic relationships. The “host” idea had a very limited number of pitches and had to diminish, and then the “parasite” idea had to utilise material from the “host” in some way and get bigger and gets out control or becomes wild. I think I used grace notes to show this relationship. But whilst having those pitches from the host, the parasite could morph into a musical object that felt wild, freer and gnarly.
On the other hand with true self, for each cycle, it takes inspiration from one of the four virtues of the Buddha. It talks about how all living beings are basically all part of a cosmic ocean. We’re all transient and short term expressions of this wonderful cosmic thing, but we forget and we can often become deluded to how wonderful we really are. So every cycle was about clouding, obfuscating this freer idea, moving away from a naive, childlike, jolly idea to something darker and austere.
Reflecting on all of these compositions that you’ve written so far post-PhD — what have been some of the most important lessons that you’ve learnt in the past four or so years?
That it has to be all killer and no filler… -laughs- What I mean by that is: being a critical listener, and ensuring that everything that I commit to notation is something that serves the piece. It doesn’t have to give goosebumps every time, but I’m striving to ensure that the material is of quality; the listener is important to me. And I suppose my relationship to the music is that the first listener is me anyway. I want the listener to feel something — even if it’s for a minute of the piece, or ten seconds — and that it’s been worth their while rather than them missing out on watching Strictly [Come Dancing] or something. -laughs-
Another thing is to take time during the initial stages to play and work with the material; which is why I like to use sketchbooks and write stuff down by hand. To me, the labour of working with handwritten scores means there’s a kind of psychology, where there has got to be something there for me to put it from pencil to paper. It takes more effort to pen the notes than playing it into Sibelius notation software.
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I’m also striving to experiment more. At the moment, a composer who is really inspiring me is Kristine Tjøgersen, who wrote the piece Between Trees. It’s a really playful work and there’s lots of humour in it; there’s a lot of [Helmut] Lachenmann influence with the way that she looks at sonic texture and noise, you can hear there’s a curiosity about sound. For me, it’s using the avant garde and the experimental practices as a springboard whilst still having a kind of soulful aspect to it.
I listen to all kinds of music — grime, classical, reggae, pop, rock — it just has to be well-crafted. I enjoy the music of Alfa Mist, Flying Lotus, Matana Roberts. J Dilla is a massive inspiration; I love his approach to microtiming. Because he was not using quantisation, he understood from listening to soul records the importance of the human aspect, the imperfections, drummers are fluid in their approach to accuracy and timing, musicians are not automatons.
Then we have Andrew Poppy as well! 32 Frames is a banger. -laughs- It’s clever with the way that he closes every cycle, it has this unfinished aspect to it — which keeps you on your toes. I think it was Prokofiev that inspired him in terms of orchestration, but the orchestration of it [32 Frames] — the colour, the fullness — it’s beautiful. I’ve also been listening to Morton Feldman, and his piece for mezzo soprano, Neither, where the performer sings on that one note for yonks and the colour in that is incredible. So I’m ingesting all kinds of things.
Certain sonorities, human errors or production choices, are like these non-scored subtleties.
During my masters, when I wrote a piece for turntable and BCMG [that] was a nod to J Dilla… Because I hadn’t understood his approach to micro-timing, it was notated in a traditional way, and the performers were used to playing in the classical tradition. So I didn’t accurately convey that unwritten approach to timing. With Dilla-time, it’s not swung, but it’s not straight, it’s in the middle — you’ve got this constant, but then you’ve got things that are consistently off, how do you write that down? I’ve read papers on it and the jury’s out. Questlove has done Red Bull Academy lectures on it, and he’s had to unlearn everything as a drummer; sit in a room for hours and practice it.
I don’t think this will be as difficult to comprehend for this next generation of musicians. They’ve got a broader approach to listening and a wider taste. I do wonder — perhaps because of streaming sites and algorithms — if younger people are coalescing with different types of music in a quicker way because of that; they can come across more obscure artists. I remember buying CDs and so I would listen to a whole album of Radiohead — whereas now, I don’t listen to a whole album when using a streaming service. I do listen to a whole album on a turntable because I can’t be bothered to move… -laughs- But with streaming sites, I listen to playlists from my mates, and when that runs out, sometimes the algorithms try and play me more of the same stuff — and sometimes music that would have taken time to locate. I think I’ve noticed that with younger players in new music ensembles: there’s a flexibility in what I’m seeing, but I also think it’s where we are in terms of music and creativity in this day and age. It’s free reign — anything goes — and it’s been like this for a good while! It’s amazing and overwhelming at the same time. You have to be your true self, whatever that means. -laughs-
People can definitely have more varied reference points, which can be unexpected. Do you have any major influences outside of music that have had an impact on your work?
Most of my close creative friends are visual artists, actually. Marlene Smith and Beverley Bennett are two artists from the West Midlands; Marlene Smith was a pioneering member of the Blk Art Group, which was a massive movement in the 1980s, to express the heritage of the African diaspora through art, which back then was a big thing. They are a major influence for other artists now who may take this aesthetic and creative approach granted; they were the pioneers.
Another one of my friends, Ian Sargeant, is a curator specialising in Black Arts and the last solo show he curated was Cut n Mix. He often drags me along to art exhibitions. I was majorly impressed by the In The Black Fantastic exhibition by the curator Ekow Eshun and I was entranced by the bold and luminous works of Hew Locke. I loved his piece, How Do You Want Me? — an amazing set of studio portraits where he uses himself as the principal figure. He examines the victors or colonisers and playfully questions their status — often celebrated though statues and plinths adorned in their garments with medals. And in this work, he has done that, but it’s like a juxtaposition of the grotesqueness of the tyrant and the victor. So I like the playfulness of it, but also the fact that in terms of global history, it’s the fact that they are one sided and erase important narratives.
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I was thinking about my piece dis-place; the fact that I wrote it for a mixed ensemble — flute, trumpet, vibraphone, violin, viola, and double bass — and it did not work so well so I binned it. However, a few months ago I decided to dig it out and re-orchestrate it. Mid-process I recall saying to myself “this piece is actually alright, there’s something there” — and it was really affirming that I could take the material, re-orchestrate the piece, and swiftly problem solve: progress! It will be performed by a full orchestra next year.
It was inspired by another West Midlands artist — Hurvin Anderson — and his work called The Barbershop Series and in particular a piece called ‘Jersey’. What I love about this work in particular is that it speaks directly to the lived experience of the African and Afro-Caribbean community. The UK barbershop symbolises a space where you have your hair or crown adorned, but also engage with your dual heritage. There’s a lot of meaning behind Afro hair — because in terms of colonisation, our hair was shaved off because the hairstyles would tell you about your culture. Removing our hair and hairstyles was a painful way of stripping away culture from displaced and often stolen Africans.
Also — in the UK at least — barbershops are generally a space that have the potential for men to be vulnerable. That [is] important when I think about all of the bullshit toxic elements of masculinity that are ingested by young men. The barbershop is a space where men can talk about home in the UK and back home in the Caribbean, so those spaces connect to this notion of double consciousness; you’ve got your British identity, you may have your Irish identity, your Caribbean identity. I connect with this idea because heritage isn’t always clear cut; genetically I trace back to West Africa and Europe. I’m here because you came…
So that really inspired dis-place, where I was poking fun at the idea of the question “so where are you really from?” That can come from all kinds of places. Obviously, white people who don’t see me as really belonging here, or sometimes innocently via newer communities in the UK asking me “where are you from sister?” -laughs- So in dis-place, I explore two musical objects: one is a straighter, more British, stiff upper lip idea and another that’s trying to be Caribbean but not quite hitting. When I go to the Caribbean I’m called English, and charged double because my UK heritage stands out. The piece is about being in this mezzanine of feeling like an outlier, but I’m at peace with that now. Before I was yearning to fit in and belong, but actually, being me is finding comfort and joy in being an outlier — which is what I was aiming to do in the piece. I took the idea of double consciousness and strove to playfully explore it.
So embracing all parts of you in essence; going back to the lessons learnt from the last five years with trying to be all parts of you, the community, the classical training, the interests in neo soul and DJing.
When I was DJing Hip Hop music, it was the jazz and classical samples [that] gave me chills. That’s a major aspect of what really made me connect to the music — I hardly listened to the words! On reflection, what’s kind of funny but also a bit cringe is… My sister said that when we were kids and shared a room, I would always make her turn off Hip Hop and put on Classic FM. -laughs- Erm, that was humbling. I might have been snobby when I started classical music studies and not appreciated the beauty and virtuosity of other musical cultures, but I certainly don’t connect to that aspect of my teenage years now — thank goodness!
Last year, you created an orchestral arrangement of Alicia Keys’ If I Ain’t Got You for the Netflix series Queen Charlotte: A Bridgerton Story. I wanted to talk about some of your arrangement work — do you view composing and arranging as something that’s intertwined, or are you one to see them as separate facets of your work?
With the last academic year just gone with some of the fourth year undergraduate composers at RBC, we looked at some composer-arrangers and what that meant. There was a PhD titled The Invisible Artist: Arrangers in Popular Music by Dr Richard Niles, which I had read and then later had arranging lessons with him. I think that composing and arranging are intertwined; the challenging thing with arranging is that in terms of visibility historically, there is not much — unless you are a name and conductor like Jules Buckley. Another incredible arranger and composer is Dr Patrice Rushen who taught me loads and affirmed me in our similar broad musical tastes. I felt seen for the first time.
I don’t see much difference, really. I have different approaches to arranging and composing depending on the brief. When I was working with the BBC, they encouraged me to move the tracks in a different direction and experiment (within limits), but keep the essence of the original. Whereas with other songs I have arranged, it could be orchestrating the material for different forces. Almost like problem solving: thinking about the registers, colour, the limitations of the instrument, who can hold a spot, who can carry a line and the players, who’s it for, is it an amateur orchestra? etc.
In 2022, I co-ran the Music of the Unseen tour — an interdisciplinary partnership with Academy award-nominated filmmaker & photographer Brian Cross (B+) celebrating the legendary musical contributions of composer-arrangers Charles Stepney & David Axelrod. There were quite a few arrangements where I felt I could include some of my own musical ideas. I figured a lot of the audience would be Hip Hop “heads” — I was confident those in attendance would share similar tastes, and most likely be into 1960s soul or RnB. I knew that the audience would be interested to hear the source material of the samples they love or hearing studio recorded albums played live. So I mucked around with some pieces, like Stepney’s arrangement of California Soul for Marlena Shaw — one of James Brown’s singers — almost in a minimalist way. The arrangement connected to Hip Hop artists Gang Starr and their sampling of California Soul in the track Check the Technique. I loved their use and transformation of the material into stabby chords. And with some pieces in the arrangements, I sampled the refrain for about 30 seconds, then glitched it and then did my own response to it. Hang on, I’m noticing I’m a bit of a two trick pony — with my arranging intros and compositions: pointillistic beginnings and quotes… -laughs-
There’s so much creativity in arranging. Firstly, it is key to have respect for the composer and their initial intentions — so it’s tricky, too. What can be difficult is: when I have written something that is really beautiful and that’s really embellished the original piece, it’s kind of sad that you don’t get any royalties for it. What is great about arranging though is that the piece is there, so you’ve got something formed. It’s not the first stage of composition, birthing or generating and stripping clay to find the form of something — it’s already there. It’s more like the Hew Locke: what are you going to put on it? How are you going to adorn it, which costume are we gonna wear tonight? Which aspect of the music would you like to reveal? Is there something new that you can spotlight?
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Learn more about Bobbie-Jane Gardner and her practice at:
References/Links:
- Julia Cameron, The Artist’s Way (Jeremy P. Tarcher, 1992)
- Alexis Petridis, ‘‘What he was doing was like nothing else’: the secret recordings of genius producer Charles Stepney’ (2022), The Guardian
- Bernhard Lang – ‘DW 8’ (2003)
- Apotome, dev. Khyam Allami and Counterpoint
- Harry Partch, Genesis of a Music (University of Wisconsin Press, 1949)
- Jerome Gross and Bert Henry, archives of The Schillinger System, Berklee College of Music
- Kofi Agawu, ‘Tonality as a Colonizing Force in Africa’, in Audible Empire: Music, Global Politics, Critique (Duke University Press, 2016)
- Kristine Tjøgersen – ‘Between Trees’ (2021)
- Andrew Poppy – ’32 Frames for Amplified Orchestra’ (1985)
- Morton Feldman – ‘Neither’ (1977)
- Questlove – Red Bull Academy lecture (2013)
- Hew Locke – How Do You Want Me? (2008)
- Hurvin Anderson – ‘Jersey’ (2008)
- Richard Niles, ‘The invisible artist: Arrangers in popular music (1950-2000): Their contribution and techniques’ (2007). PhD thesis, Brunel University
- Marlena Shaw – ‘California Soul’ (1969), arranged by Charles Stepney
- Gang Starr – ‘Check the Technique’ (1990)
Header photo by Brian ‘B+’ Cross
