Twenty Years of Alternative Classical: a conversation with Nonclassical founder Gabriel Prokofiev

“Our continued presence has created confidence, reassurance, encouragement, inspiration; you can totally put on classical music in a non-traditional venue, in a non-traditional way, [and] you can do it on your own terms.”

Gabriel Prokofiev, founder of Nonclassical

For the 20th anniversary of UK-based record label, club night series, and contemporary music organisation Nonclassical, we’ve put together a collaborative article featuring an interview with Nonclassical founder Gabriel Prokofiev, with a foreword by Marcella Keating. We wanted to shed light on the history of London’s Alternative Classical scene through the lens of Nonclassical, tracking their influence in today’s contemporary music circuit, and celebrating a group of artists and organisers who’ve been a massive source of inspiration to us here at PRXLUDES.

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March 17, 2004. A string quartet performs a new work by composer Gabriel Prokofiev in Cargo nightclub, housed in a disused railway yard. Nonclassical is born.

Cut to twenty years later, and Nonclassical is still – despite the odds – going strong. Having hosted concerts in clubs and pubs across the UK, as well as in unconventional spaces like the Barbican Conservatory, 2024 sees them turning their focus to their 20th birthday. Upcoming anniversary concerts include putting a percussion quartet in a nightclub in Tottenham, ft. music by Ben Nobuto, Klavikon and Jlin. Nonclassical – along with their contemporaries (organisations including Through the Noise, Tantrum and more) – continue to push the boundaries of what might be expected from a contemporary classical concert.

Alongside their concerts, Nonclassical has released to date 71 genre-spanning releases, from electronic works by six Black and South Asian sound artists, to classical works engaging with Iranian heritage, to chaotic trombone improvisations and compilations.

What ties all of Nonclassical’s work together is a desire to support artists, to give them a home for their artistic expression and introduce them to new audiences, both digital and live. It’s incredible to witness who has had some connection with Nonclassical over the years: from Artists in Residence (formerly known as Associate Composers) like Laurence Osborn, Emily Abdy, Atefeh Einali, Nneka Cummins, Beatrice Ferreira, and more, to artists who have released on the label including Jasmine Morris, Alex Paxton, Dushume, Juice Vocal Trio, and Quinta. Audiences hopefully come away from Nonclassical events and releases with a new experience, or at very least something to think about.

foreword by Marcella Keating

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Zyggy/PRXLUDES: I understand that Nonclassical was first conceived in the early 2000s, around the recording and release of your String Quartet, No. 1 by The Elysian Quartet. Tell me a bit about the musical environment you found yourself in at the time, and how you felt about that contemporary classical music circuit?

Gabriel Prokofiev: I was quite disillusioned with the contemporary classical scene. My Masters had mainly been [in] electroacoustic music. It was this familiar thing of: whenever there was a contemporary concert, the only people who’d come to the concert would be the other composers, some of their girlfriends, there’d be an old couple who live round the corner who liked to support — and often, that would be it. The university — with a lot of young people, supposedly interested in culture — not even the other music students would come.

Then I moved back to London, I was going to some amazing electroacoustic concerts — but [there was] not an amazing turnout, but I felt the music definitely was relevant, and could be of interest to a much wider audience. So I was frustrated with the inward-looking nature of the contemporary classical scene. It seemed like [there was] an almost disinterest in the audience — I’ve sensed — a fantasy that “no-one really understands us, but we’re gonna keep doing what we’re doing, and one day someone will discover this amazing music and we’ll be proclaimed as these wonderful, talented geniuses.” But when you look back at history, [at] a lot of the composers we still play, and love: their music was greatly appreciated in their lifetimes. Some of them maybe slipped out of fashion for a while, but even Bach — who got rediscovered — during his lifetime, his church was packed.

So I actually went back to playing in bands. I used to play in bands as a teenager; that’s how I got into composing, that’s where my love for music came from. I had this idea of bringing electroacoustic sounds into an electro, club-oriented band. I formed this band called Spectrum, and I thought we were gonna revolutionise dance music, but my idea of what was gonna be successful on the radio, in the clubs, was still very left-field. So I’d do a track, and I’d be like “this is gonna appeal to a broad audience”… and people would be like “this is just weird music, mate.”

From there: tell me how you first came across the Elysian Quartet, and how that collaboration developed?

After a while, I realised I really want to write classical music, still. Then I bumped into Laura Moody; she, at the time, was playing in a cello octet, and I was like “that sounds absolutely awesome.” But then I met her a few months later, and she said: “I’m now in a string quartet, and we’re quartet-in-residence at Trinity College of Music — why don’t you write us a piece?” I’m a very pragmatic person — if I’m gonna write a piece of music, I don’t want it to sit, be written, and never be heard.

So I wrote them the quartet, and it went really well. Because for the previous three years, I’d been immersed in dance music, electronic music — that was the early days of UK garage, grime, electro — all of that stuff I was making in my studio, and some of that appeared in the quartet. But alongside a celebration of getting back to classical. And I thought “god, I really want my friends to hear this, I really want the producers I work with [to hear this].” The premiere was in Blackheath Halls, in November 2003. But when I invited my friends, none of them came. All of these people who were in music, [who] I thought would be interested… Who in their 20s, or early 30s, wanted to go to this dry concert hall? It just wasn’t part of peoples’ lifestyle. That concert was the moment that I had a personal revelation: I’ve got to get this out of the concert hall.

How did you go about organising that first concert, getting the quartet out of the concert hall?

I knew this club, Cargo, where Spectrum [had] played several times. I’d done quite a few gigs there, I knew the people who ran it; at the time, Chris [Wheeler] — who founded the Heritage Orchestra — ran live bookings at Cargo, that was his day job. So when I proposed to him the idea of doing a classical club night, he was totally up for it, and they were very supportive. I called that event “Chamber Music”, and the subtitle was “classical stays up late”. The idea behind that was: I had this string quartet, I really wanted to share it with my peer group — with a younger, non-classical audience — and the solution was to put it on in a venue they were comfortable [in]. And it just instantly worked. It was really crazy; instantly, the audience was all young people.

For the DJs, I didn’t have a clue who to get to DJ… I didn’t want straight up techno, or dance, or hip-hop, because I wanted to create a whole vibe for the night. I went to Phonica Records, a brilliant electronic music record shop — which was quite new at that time — [and] I was talking to someone about the first event in a café next to my studio, near Bethnal Green, and someone overheard me and said “oh, I think I know someone who can DJ your night.” And that was someone literally eavesdropping [in] my conversation! That was this guy called Tom Relleen, who worked at Phonica Records; he did a left-field electronic set at the end of the night. And I got Louisa Duggan to play John Cage as the warmup set.

It caused a big bang. We actually got some articles in the national press. Ours was [on] the 17th March, 2004; then on the 1st April, like two weeks later, there was C3 — the Camberwell Composers Collective. It turned out there were a bunch of composers living in Camberwell, and they started a half-yearly event at The Crypt in St. Giles, Camberwell. There was another person who put on a night called ‘This Is Not For You’, which was in Shoreditch Town Hall. There was certainly a vibe. And I got so excited; I thought within a few years, every area of London would have classical club nights going on, that it would become this phenomenon.

What excited you particularly about the format of classical club nights?

Of course, there’s loads of classical concerts going on all the time. But the idea of a club — of somewhere where you can go and it’s completely informal, it’s really relaxed, you don’t have to be there at 7:30, have a ticket in advance, [or] have to follow any etiquette, it’s just a place you can go and relax and hear new music — for so many people, that makes such a big difference. And the proof was there by the audience that we got; it was [a] completely different audience to the concert hall.

Of course — the moment you take something out of the formalised concert hall, people get more comfortable around it…

It’s totally that! Obviously, there’s a formalised culture around chamber music. It’s a weird thing; it developed a mystique, and a sense of tradition — people think “oh, this is classical music” — but it’s not even true. A hundred years ago, classical concerts were a lot more informal, right? I wrote a paper on it when I did my Masters: I think there was a reaction to the growth of popular culture, and new forms of media, [and] classical music found this refuge in being “high art”, this rather rarified, formalised thing. That was a way of protecting itself, making itself feel secure and important; but at the same time, it’s very damaging, because it makes it feel unfriendly and unwelcoming. It kills part of its heart, I think — it kills some of the humanity, in many respects.

People protect themselves by making something feel exclusive and special, and I find that really damaging. I feel it’s a real shame a lot of people don’t have access to some of the most exciting music being made today. There’s incredibly exciting new music being composed by young composers — people who are really saying daring things — and yet it’s hidden away. It feels like [it’s] in another world. Like the event [in Shoreditch], ‘This Is Not For You’… [But] as soon as you normalise something, people can go “oh yeah, I like this.”

At Nonclassical gigs, we play some really challenging contemporary music, and people just went for it. It makes so much more sense when you hear it in an everyday setting. We were in a place called the Troy Bar [for a while]; they used to have jam sessions there, reggae nights, the soundsystem was this massive bass-y, mono sound system. One time, a cellist played a solo Lachenmann cello piece — really crazy, extended techniques stuff — but in this grungy club, it felt so exciting, and rebellious. Whereas the same piece in a chin-stroking classical venue… You feel a bit tense, and nervous. You don’t appreciate the rebelliousness of it. It changes so much.

Going back to that first club night, with your String Quartet, No. 1 — how did the label get started from there?

The club was meant to be the launch of the label. It kind of was — the release came a little bit later. But I had this whole attitude of the person playing in bands, and electronic music, where: when you write a piece of music, as soon as you’ve made the piece, you release it. You make a tune, you put it out on a 12-inch; you’re in a band, you write an album, you record it, you release it, tour it. But in the classical world: you write a music of music, it gets one performance, you’re praying for a second performance… and that’s it. The release maybe comes in five or ten years, when (in this country) maybe NMC go “this composer’s got a body of work” — or maybe you’re lucky, and you get [it] picked up by an ensemble. But I was like: no, I’ve done the piece, I’ve gotta release it. It was where my head was at.

And that first record also had a number of remixes of String Quartet, No. 1. Tell me a bit about your ideas of remixing — what made you think to get producers remixing that recording, and how did you approach that element of curation?

I think we recorded [String Quartet, no. 1] in December 2003 — maybe a second session in January. And then the problem was that [the] quartet’s quite short; it’s only 15 minutes long. So I thought I [could] extend this into a full CD by getting my dance music colleagues to make remixes. I got the stems from the different mics — viola, cello, violins — and I shared them out with the people in the studios where I was working. We were in a community of six studios; there was somebody producing electro, one person producing punk-funk… Max de Wardener was making more ambient music.

So I passed them out and said “look, guys, I need these remixes” — and I thought we’d maybe get some kind of hybrid genre; music that could be played in a club, [that] has classical origins. But then I got really scared that a producer could get a house beat loop, and then loop some strings over the top, and it would sound really cheesy. So then I said to the producers: okay, I don’t want anyone to use any sounds other than those from the original recording. If you do wanna put drums in this, you’ve got to make the drums from the string quartet: take a cello pizzicato, detune it, distort it, compress it… do something to turn it into a bass drum. I did a remix myself; I did a kind of hip-hop remix in 3/4. It was really fun.

That became the house rule for Nonclassical; only use the sounds from the original recordings. Typically, in remix culture, people had their own pallette of sounds — they’ll have drum sounds, synth sounds, they use in everything — and they’ll bung a loop from the track they’re remixing on top. So I wanted us to do something a lot more inventive. The original inspiration for that was when I studied at Birmingham; Jonty Harrison was our electroacoustic composition teacher, and his whole approach was [that] he’d always take one sound source to create a whole composition. His most famous piece, ‘Klang’, [is] just the sound of a Le Creuset casserole dish — he created a piece just from sounds of the casserole dish. So I remembered that, and was like “I like this purity”; so we create an organic thing.

In terms of the synergies between the club nights, the label, and the community that came around it… In the musical environment of London at the time, how did that community around Nonclassical come about?

In a way, it’s funny; I studied outside London, so I wasn’t linked with the conservatoire scene. So in many respects, I wasn’t in the community myself. The Elysian Quartet were at Trinity, so there were connections with them — but in a way, we were just promoting it like any other club night. It was down to us getting enough flyers out there, getting emails out there, and hoping people would notice. It was a word of mouth thing. My thought was: hopefully there’ll be enough people who are curious to turn up, people who are interested in culture and want to do something different.

Obviously, we weren’t the first people to put on classical music on in alternative venues. It’s something that’s been going on for a long time. You go back 100 years, people were playing classical music in all kinds of places: Brahms in brothels, tea houses, salons. But in the late 20th Century, New York had the whole loft scene — Meredith Monk, John Cage — that’s the notable thing we can draw on as something that really succeeded. But in London, at that time, there was a kind of lull in [the] alternative scene, I would say. There was Bartok — that was a bar in Camden, [that] was meant to be a classical-themed bar — Richard Lannoy, who became a regular DJ at Nonclassical later on, was a regular DJ there. But we were kind of building a new thing.

We went monthly in 2007 at the Macbeth. Making it monthly made it a real statement: if you’re in London, anyone in London knows that once a month, there’s a place you can go [where] you can hear really good contemporary classical music, and it’s there. I used to say it’s part of the geography of London’s nightlife. There [were] also a few other people; Matthew Shlomowitz started doing Rational Rec at a similar time. There was [also] Music We’d Like to Hear; that was more a contemporary classical event, but they were still programming contemporary-only events outside of an institution. What I found crazy at that time was: if you were a young composer, there wasn’t anywhere for you to go and get your music played. You pretty much had to be connected to a conservatoire, or university — you’d get new music concerts in festivals, but to have something regular [was difficult]. So we were filling a massive void, in many respects.

Tell me about how the label grew and developed — how did some of the artistic relationships and wider collaborations form?

So, John Richards — an electronic composer who I knew from York — who’s now [making art as] Dirty Electronics, making really noisy, experimental music with the rawest nuts and bolts of electronic sounds. He got in touch, because he’d heard about Nonclassical, and he had a composition for piano and electronics; and that was the perfect second release for the label. People started approaching me — “I’ve got this project I think would be great for Nonclassical” — and some of the CDs got noticed by choreographers, and that spread the label further out. My second string quartet — [performed by] The Elysian Quartet, as well — that got found by a choreographer in Germany, Maurice Causey; then a choreographer in San Francisco, Val Caniparoli, used it. That piece is still touring now. So that obviously spreads the word.

Once we started the monthly night at the Macbeth, that’s when the sense of community grew. What was interesting was: you’d have some regulars, but each month there’d be a lot of new people. There was this feeling that Nonclassical was this thing that people who were curious about new music, new culture, had to check out. They’d find a Nonclassical they could fit in their busy London schedule. There was always this sense of discovery, and curiosity.

What were some of the challenges you faced as an organisation in those earlier years?

I still had to keep searching for the right groups. Programming every month was actually a real challenge; you wanted ensembles that would do a really dynamic performance, but wouldn’t all just be one composer, or an academic approach. So it was a challenge finding the right groups. But any time you’d find a new group, they’d have contacts and colleagues; so the community started to organically expand.

The venue thing was always a challenge, as well. We lost the Macbeth. I think we were were there for two or three years, and they were like “look, I’m sorry guys, we’ve had this promoter [who] wants to do an indie rock night — and they’re gonna sell twice as much beer as you. So we’ll have to kick you off the Thursday.” And then even on Wednesday, we got kicked off — because we’re not selling enough booze. Unfortunately, that’s how nightclubs make their money. We actually had a deal where we weren’t paying a hire fee — we just paid for the doorman, and they would make money off the bar — and when they’re not getting enough money on the bar…

How did Nonclassical navigate that kind of shifting environment — and what kinds of venues did you move to after the Macbeth?

We were at the Macbeth for at least two years. Then we moved to the Horse and Groom, that was an Irish pub; I think we were there for about a year at least. Then we moved to Troy Bar. We did the Shacklewell Arms for a bit, in 2014; that’s a really important live venue. After the Shacklewell Arms, we went to the Victoria.

Recently, we stopped doing the monthlies — which I think is a real shame. The thing about running a monthly [event] is that it’s incredibly time-consuming, getting all the bookings, getting it all set up. And we realised in terms of reaching a bigger audience — new audiences — a large-scale event is more effective. When we started doing these bigger events at XOYO and Oval Space — these were around 2012 — you’d do a much bigger publicity push. You’ve got to, because you’ve got to sell more tickets. Everything is bigger, so it just has a bigger impact. So in the last few years, we’ve changed the approach: we’re gonna do less events, so we can make them reach newer audiences, and do bigger projects.

It’s the problem of London; it’s so competitive. You’re continuously fighting. Everyone’s battling to get the audience in, you know? And nowadays, since covid, peoples’ habits have changed a bit; it’s more about going to really special events that going every month, I’d say.

Let’s explore that a bit more. What observations are you seeing in today’s contemporary music landscape, and how do you feel they relate to Nonclassical?

It’s really interesting, looking back over 20 years — looking back to the first five, then ten, of this sense of excitement, of “this is something new, this is a new approach.” And then seeing how that starts to become normalised, basically. Which is always what I’d dreamed of. I think it took a lot longer, and was a much tougher battle, than I thought. What’s amazing now, is that even established orchestras — the big establishments in the classical world — even their approach to programming, the venues they perform in, have changed. They’re doing things they definitely would not have done 20 years ago.

One big achievement for Nonclassical that I’m really proud of, and has been one of the biggest challenges, is that we’ve just kept going — we’ve just kept on. Even at times where we’ve had some nights where you mess up, you don’t do the PR properly… It’s a great night, but “why is this happening now?” It’s always a battle. But we’ve kept going. By always being there, we’ve proven that this is totally a viable and important [avenue] for classical music. It wasn’t a kind of trend, or moment.

And then, you get the next generation coming up. This has been a really interesting thing: a lot of the emerging composers and musicians, when we were new, were thinking of going along the “traditional” classical circuit. We were an oddity. But once we were a bit more established, people would come in, and they’d know about Nonclassical, and be like “yeah, I want to get my piece played there, I wanna perform there” — and then they’d think “hey, I can do my own event like that!” We’ve helped make it a realistic option for classical music. Our continued presence has created confidence, reassurance, encouragement, inspiration; you can totally put on classical music in a non-traditional venue, in a non-traditional way, [and] you can do it on your own terms.

It’s part of a changing attitude to music, overall, in being more genre-fluid. You can perform different genres; and when you perform different genres, you can see that they’re presented in different ways, and that adds to a different attitude. This whole feeling that we don’t have to be so rigid, and “classical”, in how we present classical music. That’s also something I think the generations coming up are feeling; they’re fed up of classical music being stiff, and cut off from their everyday lives. People weren’t even questioning that before! And now, we’ve questioned it — and we don’t need to question it so much, because we know we can do it differently.

Yeah, of course. I mean, even myself coming from a DIY music background into composition, it feels like a lot of the contemporary music environment isn’t as far removed from those scenes as I’d imagined.

If I wanna hear contemporary music, quite often, it will be in an informal and great vibe. Everyone’s chatting, and it’s a social occasion… People are trying out really interesting things that they wouldn’t dare to do in a classical concert venue. Venues like Café OTO, and IKLECTIK, have really helped; that’s something that we didn’t have when we started Nonclassical. When they appeared, they created really good spaces focused on [contemporary music] — you could put on a night there, and you didn’t have the challenge of saying “okay, we’ll sell £1000 of beer on the night.” You didn’t have to persuade them. I really hope IKLECTIK find a new venue, because that’s a particularly special place.

In terms of those shifting attitudes and environments — what do you see as having changed with regards to getting these kinds of intiatives off the ground?

So many more people are open to it. It is becoming a cool thing, to go to those nights. The thing is, in London, it’s always a challenge; just putting on any event, regardless of genre. Because it’s such a competitive city. But it’s become more and more of a positive time to put on alternative nights. The audience has grown.

A lot of it is about having a really interesting story for the night — that’s what people are interested in. Something that’s really creative and original. The “contemporary classical” label can hover in the background, but that’s less of a concern now, you know what I mean? Before, we kind of made a thing of it — “classical can be exciting, don’t be scared of classical” — but in London, certainly, a lot of people have been to these nights and are like “that’s just great music.” There’s a cultural openness, maybe — a search for something that’s really exciting and inspiring. For me, “classical” just means you have incredible musicians, and these beautiful instruments.

I mean, something like noisenights [ed. with Through the Noise], they’ve created a model that’s selling out. But they’re very fluid; they’re not necessarily doing “contemporary classical”, but you will hear some contemporary classical. They’re always mixing genres. Typically, they’ll have a non-European band playing after a classical performer. That’s what I love — that’s the challenge now, curating a night that has something that’s new and exciting about it. With Nonclassical, we still have the DJs, [and] the late night thing; people know they’re gonna get a taste of new musical approaches. And then, you have events where it’s presented in a more “traditional” manner, but it’s in an interesting venue and the music’s really interesting. There’s MUSARC — [the] choir — doing really cool concerts in a more “art”-y, “happening” kind of vibe. If there was someone starting a new night, it’s about finding something to curate the experience of the night. That’s been a shift in how people go out — it’s about the experience.

Absolutely. At least from my perspective, it’s amazing work that organisations like Nonclassical — and Through the Noise, MUSARC, Tantrum, Counter Chamber, The Listening Project, the list goes on — are doing to spread contemporary music out to wider audiences, and that audiences are receptive to it.

For me, it’s so exciting that we’ve got to that point. It’s what should be happening: it’s about these composers being part of a wider culture, being part of society — not being hidden away. It’s exciting times.

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Learn more about Nonclassical and their 20th Anniversary plans at:

• https://www.nonclassical.co.uk/
• https://nonclassical.bandcamp.com/
• https://www.nonclassical.co.uk/events

More of the history of Nonclassical and London’s Alternative Classical scene can be read about in Thom Andrewes and Dimitri Djuric’s book We Break Strings: The Alternative Classical Music Scene in London – learn more and order a copy here:

• https://nonclassical.bandcamp.com/merch/limited-edition-book-cd-we-break-strings-the-alt-classical-music-scene-in-london