“If we are thinking about having an impact on our industry, and improving the representation of the composers, performers and sound designers, then we really do have to meet people where they are at, rather than asking them to come to us.”
Jasmin Kent Rodgman, Manchester Collective
Known for their imaginative programming, daring collaborations and engaging performances, the work of Manchester Collective has expanded at breakneck speed since their formation in 2016. The Collective’s vision is to reshape the future of classical music by creating radical artistic work that reflects, challenges and changes the world we live in, from their base in the north of England.
The shape-shifting ensemble performs cutting-edge contemporary music, classical masterpieces, and staged work nationally and internationally, in spaces ranging from concert halls to warehouses, nightclubs to festivals. In 2021, Manchester Collective made their Royal Albert Hall debut as part of the BBC Proms, and in 2023, they won the Royal Philharmonic Society’s prestigious Ensemble award. They are currently artists-in-residence at the Southbank Centre in London, and they have released three albums on Icelandic label Bedroom Community, along with featuring on recordings by Hania Rani, GoGo Penguin, and Abel Selaocoe.
New music is of vital importance to the Collective. In recent years they have commissioned major works by composers including Ben Nobuto, Alex Groves, Mathis Saunier, Jasmine Morris, Laurence Osborn, and Nabihah Iqbal, alongside more established composers such as Edmund Finnis, Oliver Leith, Hannah Peel, and many others. They also run the EXPERIMENTA programme, amplifying underrepresented voices in music in the North of England. Recent projects include Papillons with cellist Laura van der Heijden, featuring a new commission by CHAINES (Cee Haines); and they recently announced the first volume of their 2026/27 season, featuring work by Luke Mombrea and new commissions by Cassie Kinoshi and Sasha Scott.
Over video call, Patrick Ellis chatted with the co-artistic director of Manchester Collective, Jasmin Kent Rodgman, discussing their approach to programming, “casting” composers, drawing in audiences, the architecture of performance, and advice for composers about authenticity, curation, and “thinking outside the box”…
Header photo by Nat Urazmetova
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Patrick/PRXLUDES: Thanks so much for taking the time to chat with us, Jasmin. Over the ten years Manchester Collective have been together, you have worked with so many composers — some of whom we have interviewed ourselves, such as Alex Groves, Mathis Saunier, and Jasmine Morris. Could you tell me a bit about how you tend to discover new composers, and how your working relationships with them first come about?
Jasmin Kent Rodgman: It can be a bit of everything. We first began working with Alex Groves before I became co-artistic director. Some of it comes from working relationships; Rakhi [Singh] has her own solo career and meets collaborators along the way. You get this sense of the current artistic scene — you get to meet all of these people and see where they are in their practice. Of course, you can conduct extensive research sometimes, but you never know until you actually meet the person and collaborate with them to see what they are like and their writing process. This is really exciting, and any suggestions from other Collective members are always welcome.
Personally, whilst I am not a performer, I am a composer, and so [one way I discover artists] is by going to concerts and, at this stage of my career, mentoring emerging composers. There are even mid-level composers that I have never heard of; and when we come across them, it’s really about going out and attending gigs to discover their music and their way of working.
When I think about a contemporary programme, there are all of these exciting British voices who are not only doing something differently, but also speaking to the world that we live in — the culture that we consume as a generation. Mathis Saunier really stands out here: there is an incredible integration of all of these different musics, forms and cultures, and it is presented in this purely musical experience. But he is also an artist in the wider sense of it all — he goes across lighting, staging and all of that stuff.
Because the Collective has all of these projects and tours, I feel that we are a bit like a production house. You naturally gravitate and cast the composers that you think speak to what you want to say. Rather than approaching a composer with a theme and trying to impose that on them, we think of who can really work well with us because of what they say and how they say it. Of course, you never know until the final piece lands — but it is quite rewarding, because you are meeting the commission where it should be.
You’ve recently been on tour across the UK with a new show, Papillons, featuring music by Kaija Saariaho, Imogen Holst, as well as new work by CHAINES (Cee Haines). How did the repertoire and new work for the programme come together?
We had been talking to the dance duo, Thick & Tight, for quite some time. We had recently just done one movement of Saariaho’s ‘Sept Papillons’ in our Rothko Chapel show, and through a conversation with our players, we decided that it would be gorgeous to do the whole set. When we started talking to Thick & Tight, there was something really amazing with the way that they engaged with music. We had previously performed Cassandra Miller’s ‘Warblework’, and just from hearing it, they took it on board for their own show and choreographed to the whole piece. To see them interpret that was amazing.
Thick & Tight’s ability to really zone in on the intricacies of a piece of music… I’ve never quite seen that level of detail in choreography. Thick & Tight’s work is all about presenting different perspectives: their recent show, Natural Behaviour, is all about presenting alternative queer perspectives on the natural world, and making a comment on it, and sometimes not.
And so thinking about the beautiful intricate textures and lines of Saariaho’s ‘Sept Papillons’, we began to think about what it meant to us — what the notion of a butterfly means, with all of its shifting states and the process that it takes to go from a larva to a grown butterfly. Of course, people will think of the beautiful sprawling creature, but it is really the product of its lifespan — it’s all about the process, and there is such diversity within that. It really felt like that was a really wonderful pin that was a central, core concept for us to shape a wider programme around.
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What was it about CHAINES’ work that particularly excited you?
When it came to thinking about who would be an amazing composer and collaborator to work with us and Thick & Tight… We wanted to explore the move from the acoustic to the electronic, and that sort of sonic journey and evolution — and CHAINES was the first person that popped into my mind. Their work is unbelievable, and they have such an incredible philosophy and sensitivity behind their work which I find so striking. Even when I watch their work and don’t read the programme notes, it speaks to me quite clearly.
We wanted to co-create with this team. It wasn’t going to be a concert where we programmed xyz; we knew that we wanted this project to have a collaborative process — looking at music meeting with theatre and choreography as equal stakes, rather than having one art form leading over another. When we invited the cellist, Laura van der Heijden, to work with us, we had a programme fleshed out — but we stripped it back to featuring CHAINES’ new work and Saariaho’s ‘Sept Papillons’. Then we asked Laura if she had any ideas using all of the themes that we discussed, and instinctively Laura suggested that we include Imogen Holst’s ‘The Fall of the Leaf’.
‘The Fall of the Leaf’ is so programmatic when you listen to it. You could literally feel the wind. That’s also a beautiful take on nature with its fragility and its temporality — it’s such a fleeting moment in time.
When we try to come up with programmes, it doesn’t always come out like that; most of the time, it is just me and Rakhi throwing ideas. But with this programme, it feels good to have asked for inspiration from the wider creative team.
How does CHAINES’ new work — ‘oysters sing of silkworms’ — interact with the Saariaho and Holst?
What we’ve been saying internally is that Papillons is a bit of a CHAINES club sandwich. -laughs- Their work is split into three movements, and they are the pillars of the programme. We begin with CHAINES’ first movement, we then investigate the Holst, have CHAINES’ middle movement, then go to Saariaho and wrap up with CHAINES’ final movement.
In response to the theme that we came up with as a creative team, CHAINES has come up with a piece that moves from the acoustic through to its most electro-acoustic and processed. It took a long time to come to that. It sounds so simple and easy to say it all now, but it was exciting to watch CHAINES internalise these perspectives and give us and Laura material to workshop; and ask Laura to send over a recording and process interactions of the music, and vice versa. That’s how CHAINES has really interacted with the piece. You can really hear the evolution within that commission.
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As a group, you also run the EXPERIMENTA music creator residencies, which amplifies underrepresented voices and offers creatives a first pathway into working within the classical music space. It’s such a unique and an important programme to have; why did you start the programme and what do you hope it will achieve over the coming years?
Through the history of the Collective’s programming, it has always been important to commission music creators that don’t necessarily come from a classical background, like Nabihah Iqbal and Lyra Pramuk. The results of those commissions had been so amazing — not only for the music generated, but also for the processes that each artist brings. That was one of the inspirations for EXPERIMENTA. I think that when we talk about classical music, and we talk about diversifying it — not just on a human level, but also on an artistic level as a living and breathing art form — it feels wild not to try to reach new artists and find new perspectives on creating music.
I think there was also a desire and a need to realise that there are a lot of music creators out there who would love to work with classical musicians, but haven’t due to their past relationship with it. Whether that be [not] studying it whilst at school because there weren’t lessons, or didn’t think that it was a viable career… Those are all socio-economic reasons, which are really important to talk about.
When you look at the learning of classical music in schools, and then the intake in universities, being on the decline, then that is an impetus for EXPERIMENTA. We want to look at creators who come from different backgrounds, because we can learn just as much from them — if they are at the start of their career, or in the middle of their career, or even in the late stages of their career. There is no cap on what stages they are at; it’s more about their relationship to classical music and what they want to achieve in their time working with us. One of the things that we look at is if you don’t have an education in scoring and notation, which is fine: there are things like graphic scores that you can look at, which are just as viable in the classical world — and that’s a language which is accessible.
In this second year, we’ve made the decision to really commit to the North — we have a responsibility to celebrate and develop the voices that are around us in Manchester. It is an incredible privilege to read all of the applications.
It sounds like a bit of a cliché, but it’s good research into why creators feel that they couldn’t keep their working relationship with classical music going, or why they hadn’t discovered it before, but are really excited by it. Take Mica Levi for example, who moved from Micachu and The Shapes, to film score, to the concert hall. We do live in a porous world, which is a real benefit I think to my generation and younger. There is this elasticity to it; there are really exciting ways where people are finding classical music. I do think that the Collective is such a great vehicle to allow people to take a peek [into this world].
It’s so important that these kinds of initiatives exist to bring more artists into the contemporary music space. How are the current cohort of EXPERIMENTA artists engaging with this at the moment?
We’ve got four artists who are working across art forms. That is really feeding into the score and the concept that we are seeing. Some of the works are really theatrical, game-based, sometimes visual art-based; there are also different concepts of modes and score and communication with the players. That’s also really exciting; all of these things can spark ideas. I think with any talent development scheme, meeting it with a bit of humility, and with an openness to also absorb them, is super exciting.
EXPERIMENTA is now in its second year. What have you as a collective discovered so far about running an artist development programme?
With EXPERIMENTA, and programmes like Papillons with Thick & Tight, access is something that is incredibly important to learn about. By access, I mean how you can embed access into creative work — not just out of necessity (although that is also important if you think about the audiences you are bringing in), but [to bring together] perspectives of hearing, seeing, and experiencing musical events of happenings, which is something that we have really learned from people.
Another thing is to see crossover into the visual art world, and how that can create a bit of a feedback loop. Showing ways in which we can present the score. When we did our Black Angels show, the score was presented and audience members could come and see the score — I think that does enrich the experience. I definitely know that one of the [EXPERIMENTA] participants is thinking of creating a bit of a visual installation for us; that is the score, but also part of the architecture of the experience. It opens the doors to all kinds of these exciting possibilities, or just reminds you of what’s out there.
Sometimes, composers are just in their room in their own four walls staring at an idea — but to get out of that, you need to be collaborative. It’s people, places, and things that get ideas going. I think that being in a room with incredible people just sparks an immeasurable number of ideas.
Since the formation of Manchester Collective ten years ago, there have been a lot of political rollercoasters here in the UK — both on a more “macro” political level, and in terms of the arts industry and arts funding as a whole. How have you, as a group, managed to navigate that?
What was really exciting about the Collective is that there is a vision that we had in the early days to try and dismantle the status quo of classical music, in terms of how it was presented — for example, having Bach next to Vessel [Sebastian Gainsborough], who’s doing a synth set in the middle of that concert at the White Hotel in Salford. That was ten years ago, at a time when there was definitely this sort of need to shake things up. I think that incoming generations are really annoyed by some of the gatekeeping that the institutions have of the art form, and finding ways to push against that.
But it’s not just the younger generations. As I mentioned earlier, there is a real porousness in the world now. If somebody said to you twenty years ago “you should go and see this tap dancing with a brass ensemble in a nightclub”, people would say “no thank you” — but we’re at this exciting time where people are open to that. I do think that it actually comes from austerity. During moments of trying times or conflict, the thing that is so beautiful about humanity and the arts is that there is always resilience. It’s always incredible to see that.
I understand this was before your time as co-artistic director — but how do you feel the covid pandemic impacted the Collective’s work?
At the heart of the Collective is collaboration and doing things differently. At the time, I wasn’t co-artistic director, nor had I written for them either; but I was watching this group respond to the pandemic with these incredible music videos from the heart of Manchester. They were these short films — Dark Days, Luminous Nights — and they were incredible. It just reminded people of the music and the space that it’s in. Across the ten years, I would say that we really put emphasis on that. It’s really important for us to think about our audiences, our proximity to them, and what we are trying to say to them.
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You’ve also worked with another artist that we have covered, Jasmine Morris… What stood out about her work, and some of the other composers you’ve brought in recently?
I had already listened to Jasmine’s beautiful record with Nonclassical — Astrophilia — but during the LSO Soundhub [2024 Showcase], she wrote for double bass trio and had this beautiful juddering down the neck of the instruments by using found objects and extended technique. Even though other composers may have used those techniques before, nobody has done it in that way with these incredible sonics. In Jasmine’s music, you can hear how DJ’ing and her electronic practice feeds into acoustic writing and vice versa; you really hear the granular detail and the process behind both sides of her music.
Cassie Kinoshi is another composer who we are about to work with. I have been to see loads of her gigs before and caught a lot of her music live. There is such an openness and beauty in the way that she also lets you take a sneak peek into her life; I love her social media, you see these little snippets which invite you to hear her music, her process. Her music is very much of the body; whether that’s music from either her Caribbean or West African heritage, or just general dance music, with a background in Jazz as much as classical.
And later this year, you’ll be working with Luke Mombrea on your upcoming Black Gold programme…
I was lucky enough to mentor Luke Mombrea during LSO Soundhub 2024, and we are programming him in an upcoming show called Black Gold. He has such an epic, cinematic quality to his work.
The core of that production is inspired by Luke’s piece [of the same name]. I had mentored Luke as he wrote the work during LSO Soundhub, and then Rakhi came across his piece through doing freelance and panel work; she approached me and said, “I have come across this piece by this incredible composer who has got his fingers in concert and film music, and he is a really exciting voice”. The piece was written for quite a rare ensemble line-up — featuring cello, double bass, flute and percussion — and so we thought that it could be a chance to do something a bit more bass-heavy.
Luke’s piece is an audiovisual work, and so at the moment, we are thinking about exciting ways to project that work into the space. We are talking to Nate Mohler — Luke’s collaborator and [a] visual artist — about ways to extend that visual language into the rest of the programme. It’s not just Luke’s piece: it’s the fact that his piece has had this impact on the design of the performance.
There was a James Tenney piece [‘Glissade’] that Rakhi loved and wanted to do. Musically, that came together all very quickly; it was very sub-heavy, and really exciting in a space where you could turn up the subs and really enjoy some of the textures.
We felt that a new work by Sasha Scott would be an incredible pairing with Luke Mombrea. [She] has a voice that works with electronics, acoustics and has her own sonic sensibilities — and would be someone who would rise to the challenge of writing for a bass-heavy ensemble.
That’s where we are at with Black Gold at the moment. It’s quite an exciting time because the programme is set, but we are still figuring out the final bits of production that would elevate and transform it into a more rounded experience that you can step into. The production is quite earthy, and there is something quite epic about it.
As a collective, you’ve performed and created work in many different spaces and contexts; in your events, how important is the production side of things?
I tend to think of work as an experience. Obviously music being at the heart of it — but I do think that the architecture of a performance is as powerful as what you are performing, as well. You could play something in a church, a warehouse, or in an open-air field, and all of those come with slightly different inherent issues and contexts. Those things are interesting and feed into the discussion around the project. It’s also why we talk onstage: we want to encourage people to talk about how they feel, how they received the experience, and the music and the space that they are in. That was a conversation from the get-go.
We thought about how we could draw on these inspirations and make shows feel like installations, and the set — as well as the architecture — being something that can be enjoyed alongside the music.
If we are thinking about having an impact on our industry, and improving the representation of the composers, performers and sound designers, then we really do have to meet people where they are at, rather than asking them to come to us. You can give all of the free tickets you like in the world, but if you are holding it in a traditional concert hall — which may or may not be perceived to be a space that a certain group would not think of ever going to — then in a way, you’re never going to get too many people from certain communities through a door.
If you are wanting to think about a generation, or culturally curious people who are really excited about classical music, but maybe are not sure… Saying that you are trying to also present an installation that might be in a gallery space, or something that looks at electronic music — like Mathis Saunier’s piece at the White Hotel, [which] was the most incredible and visceral experience — then you are going to get a community of people who come through who might not have if it was in the Bridgewater Hall, for example. I think that’s how you also respond to the politics of our time.
We always talk about how austerity is crap, and the bad knock-on effects of everything being slashed. And whilst that is all true, I think it’s also a time when the way in which we digest culture has completely changed and democratised that consumption. Even though streaming can present problems (that’s because of the systems in place to properly remunerate artists).
We are seeing — really interestingly — that younger generations are consuming classical music much more than we thought before. It’s the live events where we need to think about how we can bring more people in. On the one hand, you’ve got streaming that’s changing how we listen to recordings of classical music (and all the better for it, the numbers and stats are there); but then the live presentation is just stuck in one mode. It’s not that the mode is a bad one — I enjoy going to concerts as much as the next person — it’s just there are so many exciting ways in which we can present that and draw in different audiences.
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Given that many of our readers are composers — what advice do you feel you can give to today’s early-career artists as they develop their practices?
In this day and age, composers and music-makers are asked to do a lot of things all at the same time. I myself have gone through that journey. I enjoy producing; I enjoy fundraising for a project, trying to get it on its feet, trying to get calls for funds, etc. I’ve done the LSO Jerwood+ scheme in my time and that was incredible. I also applied to Chinese Arts Now (which is now named Kakilang) to look at my own South East Asian heritage in a more theatrical, promenade piece where we took over The Ditch in Shoreditch Town Hall [TRIPTYCH]. Think about the things that you apply to that are not just in your lane, but sometimes beyond that.
I would say to think outside the box. I know that fundraising is hard, and producing is hard, and it’s work on top of work. But if you enjoy doing that, then it’s really empowering that you are not beholden to an organisation telling you whether or not you can do something. You can instead actually go out and be like, “I’m doing this over here, I’m curating it and I’m producing it”. Even if there are only ten people in the room because you are just starting out, or it’s a sold out show, you will stand out to people because they see your name putting on these cool experiences.
If composition is a production, then you would essentially be in control of the whole production. You are a creator. It’s actually really exciting to think about if I gave someone like Mathis Saunier £30,000 and said “go away and build an entire show”… Can you imagine? -laughs- It’s thinking about [the right] funding and opportunities — the PRS Foundation, for example, for composers — their support allows you to sometimes sidestep. Those things allow you to catch people’s eye, as well.
Of course, the other piece of advice, which is a really obvious one, is to be true to what you want to do. Trying to emulate a trend is not going to work. If you are a composer who likes writing choral music, then go for it; don’t try to do something really experimental or leftfield for the sake of it, unless you want to. When we think of composers we admire, they are people who are devoted to what it is they like and who they are — that devotion is always seen and heard.
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Learn more about Volume I of Manchester Collective’s 2026-27 Season, featuring work by Luke Mombrea and commissions by Sasha Scott and Cassie Kinoshi:
Learn more about Manchester Collective’s work:
Learn about some of our composers that Manchester Collective have commissioned and supported:
- https://prxludes.net/2022/06/27/ben-nobuto/
- https://prxludes.net/2024/07/15/alex-groves/
- https://prxludes.net/2021/11/22/mathis-saunier/
- https://prxludes.net/2022/05/02/jasmine-morris/
- https://prxludes.net/2025/04/21/nabihah-iqbal/
- https://prxludes.net/2025/03/17/luke-mombrea/
- https://prxludes.net/2024/01/15/sasha-scott/
