“I felt this enhanced passion for bringing people together into different kinds of spaces; not only in performing music, but in talking about why we play this music, and talking about why we work with these people. How we work together as a group.”
Michelle Hromin, standard issue
Emerging ensemble standard issue has rapidly made a mark on London’s contemporary music scene, with a focus on repertoire that pushes beyond convention and transcends the performer-audience divide. Formed by artistic director Michelle Hromin in 2022, the ensemble comprises her, Tilly Coulton, Carys Underwood, Archie Bonham, Matilda Sacco, and Toril Azzalini-Machecler, and frequently collaborates with composers from a diversity of aesthetic and background.
Since two debut concerts in June 2022 at St. Giles Camberwell and the Royal College of Music’s FestivALL series, standard issue has made a name for themselves in London, performing at the Institute of Contemporary Performance, Café OTO, and Avalon Cafe, with future appearances including the Barbican Centre’s Classical Pride series in July 2024. Alongside working with established composers such as Mary Kouyoumdjian, Catherine Lamb, and Nico Muhly, the ensemble are committed to supporting the work of younger voices through commissions, calls for scores, and performances.
On 9 May 2024, standard issue are presenting their inaugural Call for Scores concert at St Mary-at-Hill, London, featuring commissions from composers Mathis Saunier and Anna Disley-Simpson. Ahead of the concert, Finn Mattingly caught Michelle and Mathis at the beginning of the rehearsal stage, and discussed the ensemble’s history, interactive compositions, transcending performance boundaries, and creating intimate spaces…
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Finn Mattingly/PRXLUDES: Michelle, could you give us a brief overview of your upcoming concert?
Michelle Hromin: The concert’s on the 9th of May, and features the 2023 call for scores winners Mathis Saunier and Anna Disley-Simpson — who will be writing two new works for standard issue alongside Viet Cuong’s ‘Electric Aroma’. We’re playing a new arrangement of it for flute, clarinet, piano, percussion, and a piece that is very near and dear to the ensemble, which is Mary Kouyoumdjian’s ‘2 Suitcases’, which is for ensemble and audio playback. The programme itself feels very close and comfortable while also pushing us in a variety of ways; [it] feels like a kind of celebration for the ensemble itself and how far we’ve come, but also [of] the different kinds of collaborations we’ve had as a result of our growth in the past two years.
That’s very exciting! standard issue kicked off in June of 2022, and in your mission statement you talk about a focus on music that extends outside of convention — what was your motivation in starting this ensemble?
Michelle: It actually goes a little bit further back. I started to realise my love for contemporary experimental music during the pandemic — and really before then, when I studied at Mannes for my undergrad. I was surrounded by lots of new music and lots of people doing really exciting things, which when you’re first about to enter conservatory, I don’t think you’re really primed for in a lot of ways. And I knew in my heart that I wanted to work with living composers — that I wanted to go outside of what I was being expected to do.
In my career as a performer, I had always thought I was gonna be an orchestra clarinettist, and that was it. But I felt a shift inside of me when I started to explore and worked really closely with a lot of my friends on new pieces. I started at the RCM [Royal College of Music] in 2021, went home for Christmas, ended up getting COVID myself, and had some time just to sit and think about what I wanted my career to look like and the kinds of things that I wanted to be doing.
And [this was] based on a previous conversation I had with a friend when I started at the RCM. They were like, “oh, you should start an ensemble” — and I was like “that’s a fun idea,” but I didn’t take it fully seriously. But then when I thought about it… I had jotted some notes down on my phone and I wrote “standard issue, pushing boundaries,” and I wrote down some composers that I wanted to do, some works that I wanted to explore. And I didn’t think much of it. But when I started the new year in 2022, there was a call from RCM to curate one of their Catalyst concert series, and I was like, “okay, I’m really interested in that.”
What were the early stages of the ensemble like, and how did you get it off the ground?
Michelle: I’ve had a lot of strong ties with my heritage — with both my parents being from Croatia and having this dual-identity aspect of my work — and I wanted to be able to carry something that reflected that. I paired a lot of contemporary female composers who had left their home countries, and I was thinking about what kinds of sound worlds went together and what pieces I felt ergonomically worked. So I brought together a bunch of people that I really liked working with. I did that at the end of February 2022, and we finished on ‘2 Suitcases’ by Mary Kouyoumdjian — which is going to be the last piece of our call for scores concert. And Mary is a friend of mine now — I knew her from my undergrad, from working with some of her students and everything.
We all worked really well together and I was like, “oh, this feels really good,” but I didn’t think this is what’s gonna turn into a group. And actually, on that day, I almost cancelled the concert entirely. My grandpa had unfortunately passed away, but I was like, “actually I still want to do this.” And I did it, and we went to the pub afterward and everyone was like “we should do that again!” And I kind of stopped back in my chair and I thought “really?” — and everyone’s like, “yeah, this is great.” And everyone was throwing out ideas and thinking: “oh, we should get this person to write for us,” “oh, we should play here.”
So I guess the group really started a little bit [earlier] in 2022, but the “official” debut concert was that June. From that point, I felt this enhanced passion for bringing people together into different kinds of spaces; not only in performing music, but in talking about why we play this music, and talking about why we work with these people. How we work together as a group. It kind of just all evolved from there.
You’ve done a lot of work as both a composer and performer throughout the past few years. I’m wondering how you consider these two artistic identities and how you go about bringing those two aspects together — do you see them as two sides of the same artistry, or as two separate things that you’re approaching in separate spheres?
Michelle: I basically wake up and ask myself this question everyday. I think for me they all affect each other. I say “all” being my work as a composer, my work as a writer [ed. Michelle writes for I CARE IF YOU LISTEN], and as a performer — both interpreting works by myself and by so many other people that they don’t feel separate. It kind of feels like it’s all encompassing the same being that is me. For as long as I can remember, I have loved being someone who does multiple things — I was always like writing stories as a kid, I was always playing, etcetera — and I knew that while there was a part of me for a while that wanted to go down the orchestral route, I had this fire within me that I knew I wanted to be pursuing multiple things and I had multiple creative outlets, but they don’t feel separate. Sometimes one will come into the viewpoint more, but I feel like even when I’m composing or writing, it affects how I go about playing — and anything that I do in terms of playing — [and] makes me think, “how would someone write that?” and “how would someone approach that?”
Mathis — kind of jumping off from that, tell us a little bit about your background and your identity as a composer and how that’s forged throughout the years.
Mathis Saunier: Well, I’m a guitarist — I used to play electric guitar, and I grew up in a sort of punk-influenced family where no one in my family played an instrument. But my dad is a huge fan of punk rock music, which is very experimental. I think he’s much more into experimental music than I am. I started a band when I was a teenager (as every rock guitarist does), and discovered Radiohead, and I found out that Radiohead was also into classical music. Which got me to discover Steve Reich, Philip Glass. And so discovering composers alive through Radiohead was a very good transition.
Then I decided to move to London. I studied at the Guildhall and learned how to write for strings, how to write for orchestra, and then found out that I really wanted to embrace this rock influence. And I’m still very much active with my band, actually. [I] like doing punk and techno with ensembles as I do with Mauvais Sang. I think that’s what I like about standard issue, that’s what attracted me to get in touch with them: that they very much looked like a band, like friends together. And it’s often not the case with ensembles. I think that’s something that I found very powerful with them — seeing them perform live, but also as human beings.
Michelle — there’s this quote that I love in your mission statement, that standard issue “seeks to eliminate the barrier between performers and the audience.” How does this liberate you as both an artistic director and ensemble member?
Michelle: I remember a couple years ago, I had thought about the time when a friend of mine did this concert where they moved around different rooms within a space. And I was like, “oh, that’s really cool, I don’t know how people do that, but that’s a really cool idea.” I just put this idea in the back of my head. [So] we did this gig at the Institute of Contemporary Performance in Blackfriars; we started on the roof, and then we did some solo pieces — and there’s this amazing view of St. Paul’s. Then we went downstairs into this sort of smaller performance space; we were all on the same level, and we kind of had everyone in a sort of semicircle around us. There was a sort of intimacy that we all spoke about afterward. That was really special.
When I think about concerts, I try to avoid the stage being raised and that kind of thing. I’d really like to experiment with how we’re laid out and if we’re within the audience. At our recent gig at Café OTO, we got a lot of really positive feedback about playing Catherine Lamb’s ‘Parallaxis Forma’, where we formed into a very large semicircle curving inward — so that people could be within us and within what we were doing.
Every time I go to a concert now I notice how I feel. If I feel like I’m stiff, if I feel like I can’t move, or I feel like I can’t go to the bathroom or anything, it’s an indicator of if I may be having a good time. I think there are moments where it’s really nice to feel that sort of stress of “oh my god, this is so delicate and fragile” — and I want to be within that, and explore the stillness within myself. But then there’s also the part of it that’s “I feel uncomfortable, I don’t feel welcome here.”
Are there any specific concerts that you think really embody the spirit of delineating the classical music hierarchy?
Michelle: Actually, a great example of this is Juliet Fraser’s Eavesdropping Festival. I went to one of the gigs last night, and it was a double bill with one artist doing a piano septet and another having a big percussion setup. And we were all within the space and it was just so intimate. We were all squished in and sitting and standing and everything, but it kind of just felt like we were right there with the performers. That has been one of the moments both as an audience member and as a performer that I want to feel. I want to feel like, “yes, I’m here and I’m playing with these people” — but like I’m also with the person that’s a couple rows back.
And maybe it’s just because of me. I wouldn’t say I have a huge public speaking background, but I feel like I’m really aware of if people are having a good time or if they feel connected. I feel like a lot of the talking that we do during our gigs is really important as well. Not as a “here’s what you’re going to hear and this is the sort of experience you’re going to have,” — [but] more “we’ve put together some pieces by people we love, we’re interpreting styles of music that we really love, and we want to be able to share that with you,” and “we want to be able to hear your experiences afterwards, please come and speak to us, let us know what you thought and what you want to see more of and understand more of.”
For both of you: can you talk a little bit about the collaborative process with the two Call for Scores winning pieces? Michelle, how do you see the role of the composer in the rehearsal room? Mathis, what has the process for working with this specific ensemble been like?
Michelle: We’re about to have some initial workshops and rehearsals in the next couple of weeks. When we decided that we wanted to do a call for scores as a group, we’re like, “we don’t want this to be the sort of [thing where] we’re handed a piece, and then we go and play it and then we do the gig and that’s it.” It should feel like a collaborative process. So with any sort of collaboration that we have, it’s really important for everyone to be present in the room and for there to be that experimentation, and then for everyone to go back and do their respective things. And then it’s important for us to come back and see what’s working and what’s not. It’s important for everyone in the room to be heard.
Mathis: It’s very much a similar attitude — but I think that we’re so used to writing the score, sending it over, receiving feedback, sending it over again, and getting it played, and sometimes you’re not even there for the premiere. And also [that] it’s performed once, and then that’s the piece and that’s it. I think that’s what’s quite enjoyable with having such a collaborative approach. As Michelle said, we’re just about to start so I can’t make assumptions — but once again, it’s about that band format where it’s not about just being the composer, but it’s about being together.
I feel like having a sort of neutral attitude to be fully into the piece is important. It’s not just about “respecting the score”, but about having your own personality in what’s happening. And I think it’s no surprise, but that very much changes the music itself. Although we, as composers, are the ones writing the notes on the paper, I think it’s like a script: at the end, it’s the actors bringing it to life. I think there’s nothing better than finding that the piece is not yours anymore, but that it’s the musicians’. We’re very lucky as composers to have that thing where suddenly the piece is completely independent from us, and it’s not ours anymore.
Mathis, can you tell us a bit more about the piece you’ve written for standard issue?
Mathis: It’s a piece called ‘Lava Cycle’, that’s actually sort of an arrangement from a previous piece I’ve done — which was also named ‘Lava Cycle’. To just jump back on this idea of the audience: I thought it was really interesting — this idea of the “intimate space” — and how we can break this context of the audience having the seats, not applauding between movements and applauding at the end. I think that these traditions [get] more and more broken because of younger generational attitudes, and what the consideration of the audience is inside the whole concert setting.
I wish there could be a concert where people would stand and they could actually dance or jump. There’s so much contemporary music within techno with strong beats, and people sometimes just get to dance or to jump or to sing. You go to some concerts and people just sing the whole way through. There aren’t many pieces of concert music where suddenly the audience gets to sing with the ensemble. There’s this one piece by Laurence Crane that was premiered at Café OTO on the day of Brexit, and the whole audience started to sing along to a sort of theme. And that was one of the most fascinating moments ever because suddenly there was this very communal perspective — and that was on the day of Brexit! It was just a very strong moment.
To come back to the piece: no one’s going to jump, unfortunately. But it’s a collaborative piece with the audience where every member can access an app on which there’s a specific design. So you go on this app, and then you get [this] design with different colours — and then you can click on the different colours and it creates a sound. For instance, you touch on red and you’re gonna have a note, or some kitschy sounds. And basically, [as] the musicians start to play, and there are projectors that display these different colours. When red appears on a musician, you can click on the red in the app, and it matches with what the musicians are playing. So you get this sort of chord-harmonic progression between the musicians and the audience. What’s nice about it is that the sound is everywhere, so there’s sound waves inside the audience and the performers.
We’re going to try to develop this further. I think what is going to be interesting in working with standard issue is discussing how much [sound] is made by the musicians, so that there’s a balance between everything — so that the sound isn’t always constant — and there’s time to breathe and focus [on] what’s happening to the musicians. And also, we’re going to try to create some liberty on what’s happening because it’s a very open score. Although you get some notes, I think having a collaborative approach on what we want to use this app for is important. It’s a very simple app, so we can make it our own somehow, and I’m looking forward to that aspect.
Michelle, one last question: thinking as a performer and ensemble director, are there any unique challenges that this piece presents that might be new to the ensemble?
Michelle: You know, I would love to be more technologically advanced. I’m still learning, and I love it — I love performing with electronics, and I love performing with different technologies. I think I always get the tiniest bit scared that I won’t be able to do it, but I feel like having so many people in our network and having this amazing piece adapted for us means that it doesn’t feel as daunting. I think actually immersing ourselves in the technology behind it gives us a new perspective on how we’re creating sound. I really like the whole approach of having light and other mediums interacting with sound, so I think while it may seem like the tiniest bit daunting at first, it’s also really amazing.
To speak on Anna [Disley-Simpson]’s piece: she’s working with a librettist [Olivia Bell] on it, though there’s not a strict voice part. Our voices are interacting with the libretto we’re provided, and it’s a different thing that we’re being asked to do as performers. It definitely goes outside of the normal convention: when we think libretto, we think, “oh, there’s going to be a singer involved” — but no, there’s the intimacy of our own personal voices, in addition to the voices of our instruments.
So I feel like we’re being challenged in a really great way. And it doesn’t feel daunting; it feels more exciting. Like there’s stuff for us to learn as opposed to it feeling like there’s a separation between it and us.
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standard issue’s Call for Scores concert takes place on 9th May at St. Mary-at-Hill, London – you can find more details at:
Learn more about standard issue and their practice at:
Check out our previous interviews with Anna Disley-Simpson and Mathis Saunier:
References/Links:
- Viet Cuong, ‘Electric Aroma’ (2017)
- Mary Kouyoumdjian, ‘2 Suitcases’ (2010/17), electronics
- Catherine Lamb, ‘Parallaxis Forma’ (2016)
- Michelle Hromin, ‘eavesdropping 2024 Provides an Intimate Space for Artists to Experiment’, I CARE IF YOU LISTEN (2024)
- 840 Fifth Birthday with Juliet Fraser and Strings, Café OTO (2020)
