“As humans, we own weight, and knowledge, and history; why not utilise that embodiment on stage? With chances to improvise for a performer, and be creative using this history, this knowledge, you have. Restructuring that knowledge, too.”
Ryan Morgan
Ryan Morgan is a composer, performer, and educator currently based in London, renowned for his commitment to pushing musical boundaries. Ryan’s work questions traditional notions of virtuosity and confronting the dichotomy between the “sacrificing” performer and the “gaining” performer; through practice research at Goldsmiths, Ryan discovered a passive resistance within his work, leading him to re-evaluate established Western compositional frameworks. Recent commissions include works for Birmingham Opera Company, London Sinfonietta, Terra Invisus, National Youth Choir, and London Mozart Players, being the first recipient of LMP’s Samuel Coleridge-Taylor Prize. Ryan studied at the University of Birmingham, specialising in electroacoustic composition under Scott Wilson, alongside solo vocal performance at Royal Birmingham Conservatoire with Jonathan Gunthorpe; Ryan subsequently pursued a MMus in Creative Practice at Goldsmiths, University of London.
Ryan is currently a composer on the National Youth Choir’s 2025 Emerging Professional Artists programme, writing two new pieces to be premiered and recorded. While composing his first work for the choir, we caught up with Ryan to discuss performer-centric approaches, immediacy, transparency, passive resistance, and leading with compassion…
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Zyggy/PRXLUDES: You’ve recently had a workshop with the National Youth Choir, as part of their Emerging Professional Artists programme. Tell me a bit about what interested you about the National Youth Choir, and your experience on the programme?
Ryan Morgan: It’s been really amazing, really impactful — for multiple reasons. I studied singing at the University of Birmingham and Royal Birmingham Conservatoire — all my vocal lessons were at the Conservatoire but assessed by the university. In general, theory and composition were taught with a more rigid pedigogy than I would have liked. I wasn’t doing the experimental things, that I do now; but I did dip my toes into choir.
My first formal choral experience was at the University of Birmingham. I didn’t like it. I had a really bad experience… -laughs- I hated sight-singing — I was terrified by it. I was singing the wrong voice part; singing tenor when I was a baritone, and should have been singing bass! I have lead children’s choirs for the past 2 years but returning to be a singer and participant in the choral scene now, with that little bit of trauma… I have realised that choirs are a really pleasant thing. And that’s what National Youth Choir are; they’re really inclusive. So it’s been a nice healing experience.
In terms of what they have taught me… A lot. -laughs- There’s a lot about the voices, and age-wise of voices — how to keep voices, and performers, safe. Which was always thought about before, as a teacher; but it is now specifically focused. That’s had a really positive impact on my other work and commisions for children. But also, in terms of talking to musicians, managing a rehearsal room as a composer, engraving… That’s something I’ve gotten more confident with my recent workshop of my piece.
How does the recent piece you’ve written fit in with what you’ve been learning as part of the EPA programme?
I’ll talk about the mentorship first. That has been interesting, because I’ve been hyper-aware about the concept of publishing. This work could be published, so I’ve had that “hat” on. I’m learning how to make a really well engraved nice looking score with traditional notation — that’s something I don’t usually do. But my tutor has been telling me not to think too much about that! Which is weird to me. But at least I am aware of it — and I can forget about it, and it’s still in my embodied knowledge.
I get that — focusing on some of the practical aspects of composing.
My work before was very performer-centric: focusing on the interaction, their embodiment of the piece, in the music too. I was so focused on that, and didn’t think about the audience. So now, with the National Youth Choir this year, i’ve just really thinking about that. Obviously, it’s for myself — it’s the thing I need to do, I need to compose — but also thinking about it as a business. How do I get repeat performances, how do I get a choral director to be like “yeah, let’s do that for my choir”? It’s thinking much more strategically about the bigger picture, and this career I am now beginning.
The year before last, I had a commission with Birmingham Opera Company, for a 15-minute piece — and that was quite divisive for the audience. I don’t think lots of people liked it; or didn’t understand it on first listen. One person had a visceral reaction — I don’t know if it was good or bad, but I did love that — he screamed after my piece. Not a “wahoo” or “wahey”, just like “aaaaaah”… -laughs- One person came up to me saying “Why on earth would you write something like this? What’s the point?”. But that was my first experience with audiences — paid audiences — coming to see my work. That’s an additional stakeholder in this.
Tell me a bit about this first piece you’ve written for National Youth Choir — what’s the context of the work?
My piece… It’s not sad, but it’s about slavery — it’s quite heavy. It’s about my personal connection with slavery, about a particular island my grandad is from — he’s from Montserrat. It’s nicknamed the “Emerald Isle of the Caribbean”, after their celebration of the Irish culture. They were colonised by the Irish during the slave trade — but at the same time, they have the biggest St. Patrick’s Day celebration in the world, outside of Ireland. Lots of people from around the world go there. And it’s confused me. It has confused scholars, too; actually, there’s some recent literature about why Monsterratians worship the Irish so much, considering their history.
So the piece evaluates that, in a way. And evaluates magic in the Caribbean, and its banning — it’s still a banned thing. Through research, I realised that magic was banned because of a revolt during the slave trade, in Jamaica, called Tacky’s Revolt. The slaves were empowered by magic, and they managed to overthrow and kill quite a lot of people. And that’s when magic was completely banned — because of the empowerment, and confidence, it gave. So it’s really challenging this idea; not in a depressing way, not even in a oppressed way — I think it’s restructuring the power of magic into music, with a bit of cathartic screaming. That is the general overview of my piece.
How do you feel the choir responded to the concept and your writing?
The R+D went quite well. I think my writing style is particularly transparent, and overt. My compositional processes are quite overt; it is what you get, nothing is really hidden. So there’s a certain immediacy I saw from the choir in the R+D. They were able to understand the piece easily; it uses very few words, too, it’s quite repetitive in its literature. So they were able to connect, and find their own connection with it — using a tool for resistance and power. And I hope audiences can connect to that, too.
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You touched on employing this kind of transparency and overtness in your compositional process. Where do you feel like that first came from, for you — in your aesthetic or your performance practice?
It’s always been in me, in my embodied knowledge. But it all started in my Masters, during my practice research module supervised by Mira Benjamin and Pete Furniss. They were paramount in me restructuring my knowledge of my own musical practice and connecting the treads with my educational practice. At the time, I was a PPA teacher — a music teacher visiting for a few days while teachers were planning. I saw how as soon as children have a novelty — as soon as they have a new instrument, without any training, that weight of technique — they were able to be really open, communicate and express. And I really loved that, the pure joy of making music. I wanted to find a method of composition that had that aspect as well, for myself; having this novelty, this immediacy, to composition. Just doing. Lots of improvising, too.
That’s fascinating. I’d love to hear more about how you developed that immediacy in your compositional practice — what do you mean by that term?
I like to use the word immediacy, because it’s about my connection with the now and novel. During the second year of my masters, I focused my research on how creativity is developed, how children gain it. It’s very early: parent-child interactions, mouth sounds and vocalisations. I also research the initial functions humans have to create. These innate and immediate processes have become the building blocks to my pieces. To think of a specific example, my Birmingham Opera Company piece was created during that research: babies’ babble, Meredith Monk’s extended technique. No words, just sounds and numbers. The whole piece had that. Again, it’s that immediate thing — it doesn’t use “language”, just core creative sounds I’ve heard children using.
Historically, looking back… I think my music is quite in line with the school of new simplicity. Which has a lot of baggage and weight — I don’t mind that. -laughs- I’ve always been resistant to new complexity; I’ve been taught it, and I’ve resisted it. I want to make music which is more accessible. I want to make music where I have pleasure making it; and that pleasure, for me, comes from doing things immediately, keeping them new. Improvising, notating my improvisation, improv, edit, improv, edit. If I am going to put notes on a page, it has to come from my improvisation. That’s a bit of my process.
You talked about resistance — do you feel like the resistance of what you were taught at university played a large role in developing your style?
So, do I resist? Every year, things change — and my understanding of words change, too. I think it comes from my education, as a Black musician. My mum got me piano and keyboard lessons, but I didn’t really learn classical music until GCSE-age. Once I began secondary, I was mostly playing pop songs on the piano — not because I wanted to, but because it was assumed that’s what I would prefer. For A-Level music, I didn’t have a teacher; my school dropped it, and I had to self-learn. I didn’t gain most of my compositional knowledge and technique in school; instead, I got that from Sound and Music Summer School, and from Centre for Young Musicians (CYM). These were now post-“core” techniques, I guess; I didn’t do Bach chorales for my A-Levels, instead I was writing graphic scores and experimental stuff. -laughs-
So early on, it wasn’t resistance. Now, having learnt more traditional and dominant techniques at the University of Birmingham — and a bit at Goldsmiths — I guess resistance did come from the lack of innate knowledge I did have. There were some discrepancies at Birmingham between what they thought I should know, and what I do know. I think it does also come from a place of not understanding, which has led me to try to make music which people don’t have to understand directly, if that makes sense; or if they do want to understand the compositional structure, or processes, it’s right bang in your face, very transparent. Nothing is hidden — you don’t need to use your ears to understand the harmonic movement of my pieces. You know there’s a tonal centre; it goes away, it comes closer. It’s very much these simple, broad strokes, and purposely.
I use the term passive resistance. I think that’s a really key thing. It’s resisting something I don’t know I’m resisting, if that makes sense. It was never an active thing of “oh, I hate new complexity, I’m not doing that”; I realised I was using so much energy doing this experimental stuff after seeing new complexity. “Oh, why am I using so much energy to make it simple?” — it probably is this passive resistance.
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I love this idea — resistance of something that you’re not necessarily conscious you’re resisting. For you, do you feel like this idea of passive resistance also applies to the more practical sides of your practice; developing audiences, working with performers?
That’s a tricky question. -laughs- It’s contemporary music — there’s always a barrier to that… Things like dissonance are in a way, not the most accessible; people can get turned off by that, it’s not what people are used to. Especially for demographics of people who haven’t had access to classical music, understanding the broader context, I’m not sure going to a concert of my music is the most accessible for them.
But again, with my processes, I try to get a reaction out of my audience. I don’t like throwing this term around, but my music, my practice, is also transpersonal — transpersonal being the idea of connecting to something bigger, or the idea of transcending. You know, mystical holy minimalism, the Arvo Pärt stuff; I guess that’s God and spiritualism. I’m not spiritual in that sense, but it is this idea of presenting yourself, gaining knowledge, restructuring the ego. This feeling of transcending. That’s what I strive for my audiences to react to. My performers do react to that; for example, in duet works I’ve composed for myself and friends at Goldsmiths, or Birmingham Opera Company including meditation and improv within the rehearsal setting. “What’s your connection with the piece, let’s just improvise around that, lay on the ground…” — but that process is for the performer to have transpersonal experiences.
My aim is to get audiences to feel that way, too. I don’t know if a barrier does need to be broken because of the tonality. But again, my music isn’t focused on atonality; again, it’s these broad immediate strokes. Whatever dissonance there is, it’s in-your-face, easy to understand — there’s no hidden context. I’m not requiring them to understand the function of dissonance within my pieces, but to experience and engage with its effects.
I read somewhere once — though I don’t entirely remember where — that particularly Gen-Z hyperpop fans are becoming more attuned to noise and dissonance in pop music. Look at SOPHIE or Charli XCX; I’m not sure whether that barrier is as firm as we make it out to be.
It’s funny you say that. Cause people who like hyperpop usually like my music… -laughs-
I host some open mics; I go to open mics regularly, too. I love communities, I love singing in that setting. Being able to really experiment with my practice. Do some heavy metal screaming… -laughs- The thing in common is, a lot of people there really does love and apprecitate hyperpop — and when I do sing my own music, or some contemporary operas, dissonance is received well in those settings. In terms of the communities I would love to connect to — Black communities, global majority communities. Like, in Soul music and R&B, non-functional dissonance is less prevalent, so there is a disonnect. Again, I would love the opportunity to see more audiences, with colour, to see how they react. I haven’t really experienced that yet.
Of course. We often like to paint new music as this massive field that encompasses so many styles and aesthetics — but if we actually look at the demographics of our audiences, it’s often a very different story…
I am a Black composer whose music does not sound “of colour” — but my music is still Black to me. It has my own personal experience. I’m not a musician who grew up in church, I don’t sing gospel music. I grew up listening to garage music, some R&B and a lot of UK pop… singing loudly to the Pussycat Dolls. -laughs- That was my childhood, my sonic influence. But a lot of my influence also comes from dance and movement. My music education was not the most ideal — or, at least, I got the quality education external to state school — but I went to a secondary school that specialised in movement, art, and drama. Lots of physical theatre and Butoh, the Japanese dance theate, early in the morning, one or two hours before lessons… So movement, dance, embodiment, is a really big thing for me. How performers react, how audiences’ bodies react, too.
I understand. Influences come in different shapes, right?
There’s a concert series I saw — I don’t remember the name of it. But it had events of all Black and ethnic minority composers. It was about trying to hear voices of Black composers who don’t sound “Black”, typically; because there isn’t just one sound. They use a term: multiplicity, or mosaic… they had a cool word.
I do have another commission coming up, with the London Mozart Players — for Samuel Coleridge-Taylor’s 150th Anniversary. I don’t want to talk about anybody else — it’s not particularly common to one person — but I feel like there is expectation, sometimes, of me. Especially with this commission coming up, part of me is like, I have to be influenced by Samuel Coleridge-Taylor… In one way, I do really like that his music does sound really “classical”; he was called the “African Mahler”, because there’s really romantic gestures in his music. I don’t compose like him, but to have a stimulus of some sort: do I go for a spiritual of his, and have that harmonic sound of American Black culture, or go with something more Euro-centric? That’s a decision I am currently thinking about.
And that often feels like something we need to reckon with, as composers. That certain organisations will be placing expectations on us — regardless of how well-meaning they might be.
Exactly that, yeah.
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In working with movement and embodiment, do you feel like there’s a kind of method acting present in your practice?
That is something I reject — method acting. I like aburdism. I don’t connect with Stanislavski’s stuff; naturalism, intentional or method acting, the “Magic If”. I am not a very subtle person… -laughs- I was heavily inspired, in my artistic practice, by Samuel Beckett, Eugène Ionesco, a bit of theatre of cruelty as well. Meyerhold — I love his directing for Prokofiev’s operas. I’ve acted naturalistically, I’ve done naturalism and method acting, but I feel it’s very self-sacrificial. It’s also why I don’t do theatre of cruelty-esque performances anymore; It doesnt align with my current practice. It’s a lot of giving to the audience, and not receiving anything for yourself. As an audience member, it’s quite weighty too — in terms of exploiting your senses, getting hyper-stimulated, or triggering trauma through good naturalism acting.
I don’t necessarily need art to be “in” the real world. This transcendence, or transpersonalism, is bigger than just the “now”. So even in my piece that exist in the theatrical domain — I like to go more with a theme, feelings, the effect and intention for the performer and for the audience, rather than trying to connect with one narrative. As humans, we own weight, and knowledge, and history; why not utilise that embodiment on stage? With chances to improvise for a performer, and be creative using this history, this knowledge, you have. Restructuring that knowledge, too. For an audience member, you hear a scream on stage — or what you think is screaming — and being able to be like “this sounds like screaming, but it’s with vibrato and a wonderful melody… it sounds like this beautiful cry, it’s not somebody in pain”. It’s restructuring my embodied knowledge for both audience and performers.
There’s something you touched on that really interests me. Instead of what you were talking about in terms of theatre of cruelty, and giving so much to the audience, you’re allowing space for them to experience and give back.
I would like active audience members, whether that is for them to think, or restructure. They’re not passive — they’re not just receiving — and the performer is, again, not just giving. It really did start from thinking about what a performer can gain within a classical concert, within a recital space.
And it was through improvisation I found that performances can be healing. It healed for me, it was positive; I got something positive out of performing when I was improvising, versus really strict scores. Now, in my own performances, I bring that idea and approach in. Does that mean I practice maybe a little bit less? Yeah — it’s this immediacy, this finding out what will happen on stage, that I like. At the open mic I sing at twice a week, choosing the song as I go up on stage… Immediately learning something on stage, when I’m performing.
It feels like a really kind practice of music-making, something rooted in a kindness to oneself.
It has compassion, I guess. I interviewed Jennifer John for my Masters, two years ago; and she was talking about being really compassionate for performers. Especially in my teaching practice, you have to lead with compassion for everything; and that did make me realise that I am being quite compassionate in my musical practice, too. So her words didn’t influence directly, but it sparked that in my brain of “oh, that’s what it is” — leading with compassion rather than exploitation.
My music doesn’t sound particularly “friendly” for a singer, or for the audience members. You may listen to it and be like: what’s the difference between theatre of cruelty — music which could fit that explotative dramatic style — versus mine? It’s more that the performers are doing cathartic expressions in order to achieve a beautiful transpersonal experience: if a performer is screaming, that is them being releasing energy. It’s not for shock value or purely for musical effect.
I don’t know if you’ve come across Elischa Kaminer’s ‘GRAPHIC LOVE’ — but I feel like that piece has a great example of this.
That’s really cool. Laura Bowler — she was my music inspiration, and who I’ve worked with for Sound and Music Summer School — she wrote a paper about methods of acting, and about theatre of cruelty; these different representational characters being a toolkit for emotions and actions in performances. This was back in my Goldsmiths days, when I was first deriving this musical approach… Her music, and act of music theatre, is very giving, giving, giving. We’ve had discussions before, and we haven’t agreed about everything… -laughs- Which is absolutely great, because I do still love her music. I think being obsessed with somebody’s music, who is sort of different from me, and seeing this pulling away of different aesthetics, is actually really cool. I started from a place of real direct influence on my practice — and now I guess at times its similar in sound, but a totally different approach to get there.
I resonate with this. There’s a lot of musical influences I have, where I absolutely love what they’re doing, musically… But then they explain their approach and it’s so different to how I think.
One composer I can’t listen to before I write a piece is Prokofiev. Still love him — I went to uni basically to study Russian musicology. I don’t want to do that now… -laughs- But I can’t listen to his music, because as soon as I do, I get obsessed; and then I start to compose really poorly. This really mismatched style of “ooh, I want these lovely melodies that modulate constantly”… That’s not me, I can’t do that — stay away.
I do still have inspiration from Sofia Gubaidulina (RIP). I listened to her piece for accordion, ‘De Profundis’, last year, and I was like “oh my god, this is amazing!” — but this is quite similar to my work, or what I want to do. Again, it’s nice seeing a similar sound, but completely different approaches: a woman who was extremely religious, where everything was a message to God, and me… I am atheist, not religious at all. -laughs- But then seeing the effect our music have on performers in a space — constant movement when playing, carthartic expressions — “oh, actually, we’re trying to say quite similar things”. Now, it would be great to find composers who have the same approach, ethos — a process aesthetic, rather than an outcome.
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We’ve talked about the idea of transparency and embodiment in your process, and where that came from for you. How do you feel that these aspects of your work are connected?
Before thinking about compassion, the deeper reason… I was trying out the idea of the artification of the everyday — making everyday stuff into art. The thought processes; thinking about that in terms of pace. I wrote a lot for my own voice through Covid, and lockdown; with my own voice, listening to what sounds I made during the day. I recorded myself all day for a good month and a bit; how many times do I tut in a day, what’s the proportion? What the most common type of words and sounds that precede my tuts? I wrote pieces really based on that, really engrained in the everyday but heightening it through pitch, or changing rhythms. I then realised that I didn’t have to look at the “everyday” in that sense. I am a musician, I already have embodied knowledge. When I yawn, my yawns are musical — I don’t glissando from a top note — it’s already music, so just improvise. Nowadays, that’s why I do improvisation; it’s still grounded in the everyday, in myself. I don’t need to record 24 hours of video footage to see the everyday.
I like to sometimes think about terms — even though I don’t like to label my music. In this day and age, do we label this music? Not as much as in the past, right? I used to describe my music as this “maximal-minimalism” or “maximal simplicity”, where there are lots of gestures happening, sometimes at the same time; there’s broad overlapping strokes of musical paint. It is frantic at times! So my music being transparent isn’t purely about being simple, and having two layers — there can be lots happening simultaneously — but that “lots happening” repeats many times, and then you go and process it…
What does that term — transparency — mean to you?
Like, every six months, I see a new term, and go like “ooh, that defines a little bit of my practice”. These terms describe an element, but it’s multi-termed. It’s not a word, my practice; it’s more of a sentence.
I use the word transparency, because it’s the only word I currently understand. Is my music honest? No, honesty comes from a place which is superintentional — sharing something that I am aware of, and aware of the consequence of it. Is it my music that? I’m not sure if I’m totally aware of this embodiment I’m giving. It just happens, and then you have a reaction — which lines a lot more with transparent, rather than honest. I don’t know what audiences will specifically gain from my music, I don’t want to dictate what they gain either — nor do I want to influence it as much. I guess it’s just my music giving a space for those beautiful things to actually happen.
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Learn more about Ryan and his practice at:
- https://ryansfmorgan.com/
- https://www.instagram.com/driftssounds/
- https://soundcloud.com/driftstar123
References/Links:
- Laura McAtackney, Krysta Ryzewski, and John F. Cherry, ‘Contemporary ‘Irish’ Identity on the Emerald Isle of the Caribbean: St. Patrick’s Day on Montserrat and the Invention of Tradition’, in Heritage, Diaspora and the Consumption of Culture (2014). London: Routledge.
- Samuel Momodu, ‘Tacky’s War (1760-1761)’ (2021), Black Past
- Paul Mroczka, ‘Stanislavski Method: Magic If and Illusion of the First Time’ (2013), Broadway Educators
- Dacy Lim, ‘What Is the Theatre of Cruelty?’ (2023), Backstage
- Elischa Kaminer – ‘GRAPHIC LOVE’ (2022)
- Sofia Gubaidulina – ‘De Profundis’ (1978)
