“I feel like a lot of my material does come from getting into a place where I’m very free; and that freedom, I feel, has to come from the stillness in my own improvisatory practice. I think a lot of my electronics also come from this improvising-space.”
Nneka Cummins, Nonclassical 2023-25 Artist in Residence
This is the second of two articles in collaboration with UK-based record label, club night series, and contemporary music organisation Nonclassical, celebrating the 20th anniversary since their founding by composer Gabriel Prokofiev. These articles serve to shed light on the history of London’s Alternative Classical scene through the lens of Nonclassical, track their influence on the most cutting-edge artists in today’s contemporary music circuit, and celebrate a group of artists and organisers who’ve been a massive source of inspiration to us here at PRXLUDES.
Read our previous article with Nonclassical founder Gabriel Prokofiev here.
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Set up to support composers looking to take the next step in their career, record label and contemporary music organisation Nonclassical have been running their Artist in Residence programme (Nonclassical AiR) since 2016. Formerly known as the Associate Composer programme, the scheme offers two paid commissions, opportunities to showcase their music through Nonclassical events and releases, and workshops and mentoring to further their professional development. Having supported composers such as Emily Abdy, Blasio Kavuma, Atefeh Einali, and Laurence Osborn, Nonclassical’s Artists in Residence have gone on to receive commissions from Huddersfield Contemporary Music Festival (hcmf//), LA Philharmonic, London Philharmonic Orchestra, and Philharmonia Orchestra, and received prizes and fellowships from the Royal Philharmonic Society, Tanglewood Music Center, and Snape Maltings.
The current cohort of Nonclassical’s Artists in Residence consist of Nneka Cummins, Beatrice Ferreira, Harry Górski-Brown, and NWAKKE. Their involvement with Nonclassical has seen them commissioned to write works for Contemporary Music for All, release their music on Nonclassical’s compilation album Outside the Lines Vol. 7, and compose new works for Sinfonia Smith Square and Her Ensemble — slated for premiere in early 2025.
Ahead of the culmination of their time on the programme, we sat down with two of this year’s Artists in Residence — Nneka Cummins and Beatrice Ferreira — to discuss their experiences on the programme, big-picture strategies, new approaches to voice, improvisation, pseudonyms, and finding space to play…
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Zyggy/PRXLUDES: Hi Beatrice, hi Nneka! Thanks so much for joining me today. We’re talking towards the culmination of your time on Nonclassical’s Artists in Residence programme; I thought I’d start by asking how you first heard about Nonclassical — and what it was about the programme that appealed to you?
Beatrice Ferreira: I was recommended to apply by my friend Sasha [Scott]. I hadn’t heard of Nonclassical’s AiR program, but I had just finished up a Britten-Pears residency — Sasha and I were in the same year — and was looking for opportunities that would keep me in London a bit longer.
Nneka Cummins: I was drawn to Nonclassical’s brand, and the artists they’ve generally worked with. I’d seen Elischa Kaminer’s stuff — what he did last year. Knowing there’s a freedom to experiment with electronics and live [instruments] was really important to me, because I feel not enough schemes encourage that and embrace that. That was particularly exciting for me.
I feel like I have different “strands” to my work, but one part of it is definitely blending glitch electronics with live and the boundaries of this. I quite like exploring different timbre combinations to take the listener beyond to a different sonic world.
Beatrice: I had come off a period of two years of writing for vocalists, with Guildhall Opera Makers and Britten Pears Contemporary Ensemble. I was working with a Canadian vocalist there, who was trained as an opera singer. I kind of knew that I needed to move in a “post-opera” direction, but I didn’t know exactly what that would look like. So since being on the Nonclassical scheme, a lot of my work has been experiments with process and practice; new ways of writing for voice, and new ways of understanding the relationship between composer and singer.
Nneka: Do you feel like that’s come from this programme?
Beatrice: In a way, the things that have been the most helpful have been collaborations with performers — successes and failures — alongside Nonclassical’s coaching sessions, which keep me accountable.
You’ve been receiving one-to-one mentoring as part of the Nonclassical programme — have there been any particular aspects of the mentorship that have been useful for you?
Nneka: For me, it’s a lot of big-picture thinking about strategy, confidence, and taking up space. Having space to talk through the ideas that I’ve got. I feel like that creates a barrier for me, [and] I feel like that’s where my coaching seems to lie; not necessarily talking about the “work” itself, but how I relate to the work. Being bold to follow my own intuition.
Beatrice: The coach has helpfully been Franco-British-American; I asked her to talk me through some of her experiences navigating different musical cultures. Different expectations, I would say. That’s something that has been surprisingly beneficial for me to have a little bit more perspective. I realised that some of my ideas about aria, song — and associated ideas of disclosure and authenticity — have been received differently in different contexts.
Of course — I think we take the “culture” of working in one place for granted. And then suddenly you work somewhere else and the cultural associations are totally different…
Beatrice: I’m American, but I haven’t lived in the US for about twelve years now. I bring with me certain cultural markers to London — a North American accent, a regional music tradition — but I also don’t feel like a local when I fly home. It’s now more of a third culture, expat thing… Becoming aware of how my differences are perceived by others has been an important part of my growth.
Nneka: I think my main points of discussion are because things have happened for me relatively quickly. I was self-taught before studying at Trinity Laban, [and] I only finished Trinity in 2022. A lot’s happened really quickly. I’m still working to build my confidence.
Let’s talk about some of the projects you’ve done this year: the first commission Nonclassical gave you was with CoMA Ensemble. Beatrice, I remember you wrote for the CoMA Singers in London…
Beatrice: They were mad. -laughs-
Nneka: And I worked with CoMA Bristol. It was nice to work with players in a different city — it’s always nice. I had a very eclectic mix of players — what you’d expect from CoMA — which actually suited me quite well. The open score thing was new to me; I hadn’t really done much of it at college, but it’s a very helpful skill. Especially in the workshops with Sinfonia Smith Square, I was drawing upon things I picked up from CoMA. It was a helpful learning experience.
Beatrice: I really enjoyed working with my ensemble; they were really, really open. When I heard them at their first concert, someone had written a piece about cockroaches on the walls — [seeing] 20+ singers, several in the 60-plus [age] category, rolling on the floor like cockroaches… These guys were down to do anything. That came at a nice moment, because it contrasted against some of the formalities of the opera rehearsal room — it was great to be working with singers who were up for anything.
Tell me a bit about how you approached each of your pieces for CoMA…
Beatrice: For my piece for CoMA, I wrote a book of graphic scores. They were made up of primary shapes that came from shape-note textbooks. It was an interpretation of shape note singing that kept some of the communal elements of the tradition — while twisting other expectations around harmony and devotion.
Nneka: I had three movements in my piece. The first movement had a lot of extended techniques and was text instructions on a staggered timeline; they really threw themselves into that, and the output was really effective. I had a similar experience [to Beatrice]; they lacked inhibition, it was very loud. My instructions at the end of the first movement were “make noisy chaos” — and they really did.
I had a mild audience participation [element], where the audience were generating a few sounds in the first and last movement (paper crinkling and “shhh” noises respectively) in collective with the ensemble playing their parts. That was something I hadn’t done before, and I was excited to see what happened.
It’s really great to work with ensembles where they’re open to try anything — where there isn’t that kind of baggage of classical/contemporary traditions, I guess.
Nneka: I think it’s just, I really enjoy play. Having space to try things and see what happens. I feel like that really was the opportunity there. What you [Beatrice] were saying in terms of age — there was such a range of people in that room. The fact that we were all able to experiment was something really fun.
Beatrice: I was thinking, as Nneka was saying, about the age element… There were timbral elements that would only be there in an amateur choir — not an amateur girls’ choir, or amateur boys’ choir, but an amateur choir that had a mix of genders and ages. That was a point of interest sonically — not just socially.
Towards the beginning of the scheme, Nonclassical released a compilation album featuring a piece from each of you, Outside the Lines, Vol. 7. Tell me a bit about your contributions to the record?
Beatrice: Because some of my vocal writing is in such an early stage, I ended up releasing a track as a performer under a pseudonym — an alternate project. -laughs- During covid lockdown, there was a lot of free improvisation in Montreal; my friends and I would play outside in parks and temporarily shut venues. I had recordings from these sessions saved on my laptop, and ‘Vitrola’ came from an improvisation with a pianist at La Vitrola, a Spanish restaurant in Montreal’s Mile-End. It was actually the first time my friend and I had played together, so you can hear us searching for a common vocabulary, using mimicry and gradual transformation.
That’s something that I often do when I’m composing: I improvise, then transcribe the notes later. As I work through early prototypes of new vocal music, I find myself going back to recordings of things I’ve made spontaneously, probably because improvised gestures feel more linguistic to me than formalist.
Nneka: How did you feel about putting your improvisation in such a “concrete” release? It feels like a very concrete thing to release it…
Beatrice: Even though the track is instrumental, its poetics felt right. We both decided to use pseudonyms, and although we felt it was different from our typical work, we were quite happy to have it out in the world. Neither one of us are ambient or “found sound” artists, but we appreciate those genres a lot.
Nneka: Mine is a track from my Sound and Music New Voices project called ‘[Track 1]’. Sound and Music is such an amazing organisation that helpfully funded the period of development when it was created, but I’m releasing it through Nonclassical. ‘[Track 1]’ is the first of three which is going to be on a small release called Saplings… Although maybe don’t hold me to that title. Saplings are three tracks, or seedling ideas, exploring glitched samples and liveness. They are for small ensemble and fixed electronics.
The Outside the Lines release is such an eclectic mix — which is interesting. None of us had any idea of what anybody else was gonna do which means it is so stylistically varied. We didn’t try and find connections or coherence, we just put out what we wanted.
There’s something fun about that, though — right? It’s an honest snapshot of what was happening in that moment…
Nneka: I suppose if we’d been able to be influenced by what each other were putting forward, then we might have self edited [or] proposed different tracks which may not necessarily have been what we wanted to say at that time.
Beatrice: When Nonclassical had our initial meeting, I think they did have an eye towards curation in the four of our practices. So I’m not sure even they were expecting us to be as eclectic as we were. -laughs- But Nonclassical collaborates with so many different types of artists; I think eclecticism is actually part of their model.
One thing that I really respect about Nonclassical’s scheme is how they welcome in artists from outside of “traditional” composition circles — and expand the definition of what constitutes the term “composer”. At the culmination of the Artists in Residence programme, all four artists on the scheme (including both of you) are being commissioned to write a large-scale orchestral piece…
Nneka: We had the very initial workshop yesterday! I did very much take a load of chords, extended techniques — different combinations and colours — and a vague title and statements for my piece. But I feel like my work slowly reveals itself, in a sense. I know I’m starting here, but it’s very much an evolving thing. The full workshop with Sinfonia Smith Square is in January — so that’s when those strands [will] come together. I’m expecting electronics, as well — but used in a different way to how I previously have. Previously, it’s been quite rhythmic, and dense; and I feel like [this] will probably be more sparse. I think I’m gonna write for organ, which will be new for me in this blend.
I don’t know if I want to give the working title. -laughs- Sometimes, I literally change the title at the end; I can be writing to a title, aiming in one direction, and what I’ve actually written feels more comfortable as something else. That’s not to say I haven’t achieved what I was doing — it was more a very helpful guide, at that point in the process.
Let’s talk about some of your upcoming work following the Artists in Residence programme. Beatrice, you’ve mentioned a focus on developing vocal writing as a core component of your time with Nonclassical; do you have any other projects exploring this, as well?
Beatrice: In opera, I’ve been exploring the way method acting is brought into the genre. The project came about as I noticed that singers were trained, in their dramaturgy classes, in Lee Strasberg’s ‘The Method’. Yet the process of expressing is quite a bit different for a singer than an actor, because it’s mediated by a composer, who acts as a sort of emotional ghostwriter.
I can’t say too much on a project that isn’t finished yet, but there are a lot of voices involved; sometimes it’s interviews of singers, sometimes it’s source material from famous voices. And I use recordings of my own voice, too. I have an aria about “fundie baby voice” — a term used to describe a voice Evangelical Christian women put on when they’re in public spaces. -laughs- Their voices get really soft, and light, you can find examples of recordings on YouTube… -laughs-
Nneka: It’s so funny that I literally recognise that voice.
Beatrice: It had its moment this past year, when Katie Britt, US Senator of Alabama, gave her rebuttal to the State of the Union address.
What role would you say the voice — or your voice — plays in your practice as a composer, and performer?
Beatrice: I suppose, in really simple terms, my voice is coming in by having the lyrics, or rhetoric, of working with the words being of equal importance to me as determining the music. That’s a process that’s split in the traditional composer librettist relationship. I guess the roundabout answer to your question is: I’m letting myself be a songwriter. Sometimes a songwriter, sometimes a ghostwriter — depending on who I’m working with.
It’s complicated, because in opera, we [composers] haven’t studied the “craft” of writing in the same way. I’m not sure if I am so interested anymore in the differentiation between “performer”, “lyricist”, and “composer”: I’m finding performers who are desperate to be more musically evocative, but they have to perform what the composer has written for them; I’ve met composers who have been wanting to write words; and I’ve met lyricists who are closeted performers, or have their own [songwriting] practice. I’m interested in intermingling those a little bit more.
Nneka: I haven’t done a lot of performances. I did do one at Kings Place, for the Trinity Gold Medal — and I’ve done other small ones — but I do a lot of improvisation. Similar to you [Beatrice], I feel like a lot of my material does come from getting into a place where I’m very free; and that freedom, I feel, has to come from the stillness in my own improvisatory practice. I think a lot of my electronics also come from this improvising-space. So I do feel like a performer, but not necessarily a public one at this point.
Of course — what kinds of projects are you working on at the moment?
Nneka: I’m gonna be doing more playing next year. I’ve had a piece recorded by the Marian Consort, as part of Choir and Organ. I haven’t really written for voices, so this is a nice new medium for me; something I’ve avoided for a while. -laughs- It felt quite vulnerable, writing for voices. I know I should be like “the voice is another instrument” — I should treat it the same way — but it felt quite vulnerable in a way. I enjoy the different timbres of the orchestra, and that’s something I really do play on; obviously, there’s different timbres of voice, but it’s a different palette.
Beatrice: It also sounds different when you hear a group of singers singing certain notes. I think string players playing a bunch of cluster chords sounds so good — it can be a different vibe with [singers].
Nneka: I feel like as time goes on, I can really understand why the “emerging composer” bracket [goes on] for so long — do you know what I mean? I feel we’re considered to be emerging forever… Obviously, there’s a lot of politics around that — that’s a different argument — but I can also see [that] there’s so many things I feel I’m doing that are new. It’s gonna be like that for a while. I think I’m trying to be a bit broader, aesthetically… -laughs-
Beatrice: It’s hard, in an industry that does reward a brand. That rewards what they see as your “sell-ability”. When Nonclassical talked to me about what they liked about me… I did grow up as a fiddle player in the US, but that feels a bit pigeonholed — as I was talking about it more, I realized I didn’t want to be labelled as “that girl”, basically. You hear some of those sounds in my music, because that’s part of my ear — but that’s not necessarily where my curiosity is right now.
I have wanted to consider what visibility looks like, now. One of the ways I’ve been dealing with that is separation; using a pseudonym, another name for each type of project. That’s embraced so much by electronic artists, hav[ing] four or five pseudonyms — a downtempo pseudonym, a jungle pseudonym, etcetera — depending on the context. For me, using a different name helps me commit; not to a fixed sound, but to the creative energy I feel for an idea at a given time, without becoming self-conscious about how this new thing might “fit” into other things I’ve made in the past.
Nneka: It’s interesting. There will be a world, within the next few years, that I do some electronic stuff under a pseudonym. But to have a pseudonym in the classical world, as well… I feel that’s quite interesting, as an approach.
Beatrice: Looking back at people who’ve had successful careers, they do have that breadth to their work. And that’s true in so many of the arts. A painter I love, Joan Miró… I went to visit his museum in Barcelona, and there are several rooms full of his sculptures, not well known, which he made at home — Miro was a perfectionist and sculpting helped distract him from [the pressures of] painting — he’s like, “I do this when I’m stuck.”
Nneka: I suppose it’s different when you’re given a platform to do the thing. It’s a statement, what we put out with Nonclassical — what we’re doing, what we’ve chosen to present now.
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Learn more about the Nonclassical’s current Artists in Residence:
Learn more about Nneka and Beatrice at:
