PRXLUDES has operated since 2020, founded by composer Zygmund de Somogyi during their Master’s degree. Learn more about the history of PRXLUDES and its evolution here…
The beginning…
The concept for PRXLUDES initially came in early 2020, in the height of the first COVID-19 lockdown. I was in my first year as a Master’s composition student at Royal Birmingham Conservatoire, after having entered from a nonclassical background — and the lockdown made me realise two major points about my compositional journey:
- I had very little knowledge of what was happening in contemporary music, the kind of work my peers were making, and the kinds of composers being studied;
- It was incredibly difficult to keep a community of artists together, making our composition practices even more isolated than they were.
So around April, I set out a short plan to address these issues — both in terms of my own learning, which I felt was stunted by the pandemic, and in keeping together the community of composers and friends I had made at Birmingham.
Inspired by British composer Patrick Ellis’s interview series What is a composer? — and some encouraging words from my tutors at the time (particularly Ed Bennett and Howard Skempton) — I conducted some interviews with a few trusted composer friends about their practice, their artistic research, and their development as artists. Following the success of these interviews, I reached out to other composers and artists in my circles — from the DIY music scenes I used to be part of, from Royal Birmingham Conservatoire, and later from other music schools.
The now…
As of 2025, PRXLUDES has been home to over 120 interviews with composers, artists, and practitioners of new music, from over 20 countries ranging from the UK and Europe to the United States, China, Mexico, Iran, and New Zealand. We’ve featured composers who have gone on to work with organisations such as the Royal Philharmonic Society, Sound and Music, the London Symphony Orchestra, and Britten Pears Arts, among many others, and have directly collaborated with organisations such as Nonclassical, Cheltenham Music Festival, and PRS Foundation.
We’ve also expanded to include guest articles, as well as in-person events – our first being PRS Foundation and Southbank Centre’s New Music Biennial in 2025. You can learn more about our involvement with New Music Biennial here.
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header image: composer and visual artist Catherine Mole performing at new music platform AMOK, Artefact, Birmingham, 2022. Photo by James McIlwrath. Learn more about Catherine Mole