Claire Cope: Orchestrating Stories of Brave Women
The Manchester-based composer and pianist discusses her album 'Every Journey,' where she employs a newly expanded ensemble to present intricate musical narratives inspired by trailblazing women explorers.
Today, the Spotlight shines On British composer Claire Cope.
This British composer crafts music that combines the freedom of jazz with the precision of classical music, drawing inspiration from women whose stories are often overlooked in history books.
Claire’s new album Every Journey dropped in March to coincide with International Women's Day. On it, she expanded her original septet to an 11-piece band, giving her more colors to paint with as she tells stories of female explorers and their brave first steps.
Claire’s writing has been described as “beautiful and reflective,” earning praise for how she creates space for each musician to shine within these rich musical landscapes.
(The musical excerpts heard in the interview are from Ensemble C’s album Every Journey)
Dig Deeper
• Listen to Claire Cope’s Ensemble C on Bandcamp, Qobuz, and your streaming platform of choice
• Claire’s new album Every Journey was released on March 7, 2025 via Adhyâropa Records
• Learn about the Royal Northern College of Music where Claire studied
• Discover Maria Schneider, the influential composer Claire mentions repeatedly
• Listen to Michael Brecker’s “Wide Angles” album that influenced Claire’s approach to ensemble composition
• Learn about Bessie Coleman, the first woman of African American and Native American descent to earn a pilot’s license, who inspired Claire’s track “Flight”
• Read about author and explorer Jacki Hill-Murphy who documented female explorers that inspired Claire’s compositions
• Learn about Isabel Godin des Odonais, the first known woman to travel the full length of the Amazon
• Discover Kate Marsden, the Victorian nurse who traveled alone across Siberia in search of a leprosy cure
• Follow vocalist Brigitte Beraha, a key collaborator in Ensemble C
• Listen to tenor saxophonist Matt Carmichael’s “Dancing with Embers” album that Claire recommends
• Explore composer Mark-Anthony Turnage’s “Blood on the Floor”, which combines classical and jazz elements
• Learn about Amboseli National Park in Kenya, which inspired one of Claire’s compositions
(This transcript has been lightly edited for clarity.)
Lawrence Peryer: I wanted to start by asking a little bit about some of your formative training. What I'm curious about is, and please correct me if I'm wrong, but my understanding is that you started your training as piano performance and composition came later? When did you first start composing? Were you one of these children that were always picking out little melodies on your own, or how integrated was composition into your development?
Claire Cope: Yeah, that's a really good question. Actually, really early on, although I didn't start to think of myself as a composer really until about the age of 30, which was five years ago. But when I was growing up learning the piano and I played the flute as well, I was always wanting to play things by ear. I learned loads of music by ear, so I was training classically, having my formal piano lessons. But I was so interested in pop music and rock, and I played in bands, and then I did actually, I think my first composing was writing songs. I would try and sing really badly, so more kind of actually that I remember writing some little solo piano pieces for my mom for Mother's Day, which sounds so cute now.
But she has this book that I made and it's probably all very kind of like, do you know the composer Einaudi? It's probably like in that realm. Very atmospheric and nice anyway. And then it wasn't until later when I'd been studying classical piano at college, so at the Royal Northern College of Music in Manchester. Around about halfway through I started improvising, getting into jazz more and more, and that's when I would say I started properly composing or writing tunes for a piano trio that I had at that time. So definitely in the contemporary jazz realm. And then that kind of continued on through my twenties.
But then as I say, it wasn't till more recently that I kind of realized that I could open up the possibilities of what I was composing because of course, classical music is so important to me. As well as jazz. So then it kind of just, everything opened up and I started writing for loads of different ensembles. Which was really kind of an amazing moment and realization.
Lawrence: Well, there's a lot in there that I'd like to explore for a moment. And a few things that resonate with other conversations I've had with other artists. How do you have a philosophical view or a perspective on improvisation? I'm asking it that way because it's sort of fresh for me because I've had some conversations where I've had artists tell me, they're one and the same. It's just time that's different. Or notation that's different, but it's the same functional process. And I'm curious, do you have a unified theory of composition and improvisation?
Claire: It's such an interesting topic and it's really weird that you've asked me that because just on Monday this week, I'm doing a one-year composition postgraduate diploma at the moment in more contemporary classical composition back at the RNCM. Just on Monday, we had a two-hour discussion on this in a seminar about where composition begins, where improvisation ends, et cetera.
I use it as it's definitely an important tool, process, but I use it. So when I'm composing, I guess I use that in a conscious way. Improvisation. So what I mean by that is sometimes I will transcribe myself improvising as a compositional process, and I've actually done that quite a lot this year and thought about how different my approach then is if I'm doing something a little bit more naturally.
If that makes sense. Which of course, if I'm improvising at the piano, it kind of liberates you a little bit more than if I'm on Sibelius and thinking about how I need something to look notation already. So in a way that is quite a liberating thing compositionally.
If it's something that is kind of in your practice already. I mean, improvisation is, I agree that it is composing. It's hard to distinguish occasionally, but I'm definitely interested in music also that uses elements of improvising and performer choice as well. And I guess more kind of thinking about contemporary classical as well, where improvisation is not so inherent in the music, but so I see it like a tool in composition in the process, and then also as something that can actually be used to guide what you might write or give to a performer. I feel lucky to have experience of improvisation as a composer because I think it's such an important part of how you find your ideas, ultimately.
Lawrence: At the risk of being reductive, what struck me when you were speaking about transcribing your improvisations versus having to like sit there and look at Sibelius. One strikes me as a bit more intuitive and one a bit more intellectual. I don't know if that's fair to say.
Claire: Yeah. I wrote this flute and piano piece this year that I heard in my head this texture I wanted and I improvised something of this thing that I was playing. When I notated it, it took me ages to transcribe it 'cause it was quite complex. And I just know that I would not have written that had I gone the other way around and tried to figure it out. Notation. Oh, something would, it would've limited me, is what I'm trying to say. So I think it opens up more possibilities. And then that's also good for you as a composer in trying to figure out how to notate what you actually want rather than notation first.
So, intuitive, I guess is a really good word for it. It depends. It's so different with each piece or whatever you're writing. I find that it could be that you have a very strong idea about something, that you've just got a feeling, and then you've got to find a way to kind of let that grow. So sometimes it's sitting at the computer and actually notation can come quite quickly and other times it's not that. So it's really interesting. I'm very interested in compositional process, obviously.
Lawrence: In that class that you referred to? Do you find that in the midst of conversation around this topic, is there dogma, are there people that sort of stake the claim on the hill that these things are dramatically different? I'm so curious about what the range of positions are on this topic.
Claire: You know what came through actually that was really interesting in that discussion, and this is like a quite a big age range of students. So we're talking like 18 all the way to me who's very mature student, 35.
Lawrence: So, listen, we invert those numbers to get to my age, so I'm laughing at you because you know, okay, fine. You're but a child. (laughter)
Claire: What actually came through was how much improvisation is important to 95% of composers now because there's so much more cross-genre collaboration. I think especially more so in the, when we talk about contemporary classical music and then like myself, who is in jazz as well, and I think it's much more liberated, that whole thing of people and how they see improvisation as well.
And obviously there's so much music out there that does give, even though it can be heavily notated, the composer is still giving the performer a lot of choice, which is still a way of improvising, even if it's that they've got limited choice, but they're still making decisions in the moment.
So I think there was a range of opinions about what is the language of improvisation and is there any such thing as real, true free improvisation that's free of learned language and process, but I mean, incredible.
Lawrence: Trope. Idiom.
Claire: Which is an interesting topic. 'Cause I was thinking about Wadada Leo Smith, who I think quite famously got frustrated with the kind of free jazz scene. I read a really interesting interview with him once about his, when he was back, when he was playing with Anthony Braxton in that sort of scene, and that's how we tried to kind of go into making his more graphic scores, although he doesn't call it that. Anyway, so we had quite a big discussion about that, about kind of language and what kind of is freedom of improvisation, but a really interesting topic.
Lawrence: It strikes me, and again, this is like my armchair theorizing, but it strikes me that the only two groups of people that can be completely free in that regard are like the transcendent masters and the complete fools who have no training whatsoever. Everybody else is struggling to transcend technique and learning and everything else.
Claire: Fascinating. I agree.
Lawrence: In your initial studies at Royal Northern, I'm assuming they were more classically focused. Were you encouraged to improvise or were you forbidden?
Claire: It was not forbidden, but it's very different now. I will tell you that. The piano department was classical performance. It was very competitive. It was exactly how you might imagine that situation. I just about survived the first year and decided to carry on, and partly because of, I had grown up in a very creative musical atmosphere and I struggled a little bit with that. It being, you are learning these pieces and you are working on your technique and that is it.
Lawrence: And the composer is the voice of God, right?
Claire: Yes. The composers were this other thing. And I didn't know what they were doing. Exactly. It was like, there was no, back then there was no, it's so sad to think of it now, but there was hardly any collaboration really. I mean, there's so much more now, where composers and performers get together. It's so important.
But as I got more into jazz, which I'd always been interested in, and I'd grown up listening to so much jazz, I'd researched performers myself, and I'd got to know loads of standards, all just by that wonderful thing of finding records. And then you see who's playing on that, and then you see who's playing on that and all that kind of thing.
So, when I started basically teaching myself halfway through that course, it was like a secret life that I had, I was involved in the big band. I did, I had my trio that I started and I did gigs, and my classical piano teacher didn't know any of this was going on. So it honestly was kind of like, I had two lives at that point, which was very bizarre. And it just would not be the case now. Like, there's a jazz piano teacher there now. There wasn't even a jazz piano teacher there when I was there. So it's very different. And I mean, there was an excellent, we had an absolutely incredible, what we called musicianship teacher who, it was a course that we all have to take called Steve Berry.
Steve Berry was he's a double bass player and composer. He was in Loose Tubes in the early days. So he's a very kind of important person, especially here in the UK in that world. But he was super inspiring teacher and he was very serious about getting classical musicians to improvise with no training or background. So those classes were all we had really. So it was kind of an odd time, but there was enough people interested in jazz to make stuff happen. I think that's the key thing, and we had a lot of amazing guest artists come to do the big band, which I did quite a few gigs with. So that was an important thing as well.
Lawrence: It is such an interesting innovation to talk to artists about how it's really been the last, we could pick an arbitrary date, 30 years or so where conservatories have opened up more and have started to establish jazz programs and or have improvisation classes or, and to my ears, the music's only benefited from it.
Claire: 100%.
Lawrence: Tell me, I wanna talk a bit about the new album. Tell me a little bit about, I mean, the release date, profound, important indicative of something. Tell me, March 7th, International Women's Day. I take it, it's much more than a coincidence.
Claire: Yes. So the album is so heavily inspired by stories of women, especially female explorers, and I guess adventurers, you might call them, some of whom not known about at all because they have not historically been, their stories have not historically been documented in the same way as obviously male explorers have. And a lot of these stories I discovered via the work of author Jacki Hill-Murphy, who is a British author and also an explorer, an expeditioner herself.
She's retraced the journeys of some of these incredible women and she's written the story of the original story and then her own journey alongside. So she wrote a book called Adventuresses, which focuses on Isabella Godin, who's the first known woman to have traveled the full length of the Amazon. Mary Kingsley who climbed Mount Cameroon. I need to double check that. But I focused on a few of the stories and then another one of her books is called The Extraordinary Tale of Kate Marsden, who was a Victorian nurse who traveled by herself across Siberia in the winter. Because she was so determined to find a cure for leprosy, and she had heard about this plant that was somewhere in Siberia. And I just all of these stories are so almost unimaginable, that super dramatic, but the courage and the determination and all of that. So I drew so much inspiration from those stories and that's, and I was reading that as I was starting to think about this album and what I wanted to write, and it kind of all came together in that way.
So yes. And then it obviously made so much sense when I was thinking about the release date to release it for International Women's Day.
Lawrence: Is there something you could point to in the music where these influences manifest?
Claire: It's a really good question though, isn't it? So the big thing is it, I mean, it's a big album. It's like a lengthy album and the tracks are all very lengthy and I knew...
Lawrence: And big musically.
Claire: So I wanted them all to have quite big kind of arcs and it was very important that not only that the overall album feels like a journey, but that each track does as well. That's how I feel when I listen to Maria Schneider's music. She takes you through so many kind of moments and the shape of it is quite complex. And so musically, that's where I was coming from. And so I wanted it to feel like a journey in the way that all these stories, obviously all of our journeys. And then in terms of what I wrote, there's quite...
I tried really hard to think about because everything's so long and I was thinking about big structures and I had this bigger band, this 11-piece band that I was kind of thinking about how much more textural possibility there is with that and the colors. So I think there's a lot of contrast in all of the pieces, and I've tried to think about interesting ways to use the band in all of the tracks. So again, that's going into how to make it feel like a journey. And then individually. So the track, second track is called "Flight," and that is inspired by Bessie Coleman, who was the first woman of African and Native American descent to get a pilot's license in the US in the early 1900s.
And I mean that is all about, I actually wanted that to feel like, especially at the end, there's kind of a big electric guitar solo gets quite rocky. But anyway, I wanted it to feel like it was literally taking off at the end. So there was certain things that are actually, I dunno what the word is, programmatic or whatever to what I was trying to do. But I think the most important thing was about the shaping and the structure and the sense of journey through the whole thing.
Lawrence: First of all, thank you. That as a listener, that I appreciate that insight because it'll give me another perspective when I listen to the record again. I wanna zero in on something you just said, which is you used the word programmatic. Did you mean it in the context of like, the tradition of program music? Was it taking a text and illuminating it with music? Or am I overreading there?
Claire: I guess like it's that thing of, when you say a piece of music is about something, basically like what you just asked me and then thinking, but how is that about something? What in that music is making that be about something? And obviously there was a whole debate about this wasn't there in the late 19th century, but I guess there's certain things musically, like small things you can pinpoint where you can go, that's definitely, you can see how that might be inspired by that, but it's still a contemporary jazz album where, you take inspiration from something, but of course there is loads of musical inspiration as well.
So I guess there's a track "Amboseli," which is all about kind of big open space of Amboseli National Park in Kenya. 'Cause you can, it's a place where you can see so far away, you can see Mount Kilimanjaro in the distance. And so that's like a really big piece. Again, it's like more like a through-composed thing and it's got this big structure, but I tried to make it feel spacious in the way it builds. It's about it as much as it can be about that thing that I was inspired by, if you see what I mean.
Lawrence: I do. This is a little sort of anti-intellectual on my part, but I love the concept of program music. I think, you know, using books and literary works and illuminating that way with music is fascinating. But it's always been interesting to me that we have a term for that, yet we don't necessarily have a term for like parenthood as interpreting parenthood. We just call that our artistic creation, you know, so it's fascinating to me that that particular modality is focused on as somehow being unique where it just strikes me as part of the artistic process of integrating your experience and other works to create new it's, it's what you do.
Claire: It's a really good point that, although it is been an interesting process. This, because I have realized through doing this and in what I've been writing this past year, how much I love storytelling in music, which again, might sound like such an obvious thing, but I'm very interested in that and the narrative. And as you said, being guided by literature as well, so I know, I totally agree.
Lawrence: Well, I was gonna bring this up to you a little bit later, but since we're here, I want to touch on it, which is in some of the material, in reading about this album, you forced me to go back and listen to the Michael Brecker Wide Angles album. As I was going through it, I realized one of the tracks on there I had saved to like a playlist of some favorite songs of mine, and I had completely forgotten, and it was to track "Scilla." I hear the lineage from your record. I, you know, not at all copying. I don't mean it that way at all. I literally mean the artistic, I can hear the it's oftentimes hard to trace the, when an artist says, oh, I was really into such and such, it's oftentimes hard to, it goes through the artistic filter in such a way that it's unrecognizable, but I felt it here. The things that I were feeling were the scope. Like the grandeur of the music. The power of the size of the ensemble. Like you can't get past. I mean, it's just, for lack of a better way to say it, it's, there's a bombast to it, a power to it, a driving to it, right. You used the word rocky earlier, like a rocky-ish or a rocky, it's not rock as an idiom, but it's the force of rock, but I also feel that there's a narrative scope to that record as well, the individual tracks and the album as a whole. So I felt that influence, but it was great to go back and listen to that album. I hadn't listened to it in a long time.
Claire: Oh, it's so good, isn't it? It's not casual listening. You know, I think that was the first album I discovered when I was younger that made me fall in love with the bass clarinet in particular. Some of the textures on the album are so interesting, and I listened to that so much to guide me when I was really figuring out how to write for this size ensemble where the horns could be a little bit overpowering, and I was figuring out what to do with the bass clarinet and the trombone. And there's just some tracks on there where the writing, the bass cot does something you wouldn't expect it to do.
It doesn't play with the bass, it has this line on its own and it's not with the other horns. So there was some really intricate things that I learned from that album. Especially some real kind of arrangement things, which is amazing. But yet the harmony on the album is just is so interesting all of the time. And then obviously the space for him to play, that was important to me as well, with what I wanted to make for it to still feel like there was space for everyone to really play and contribute to the form of the music. And I think that's really successful on that album as well. And then, the strings on there as well are just so, it's just that other color in. It's fabulous. I learned so much from listening to that.
Lawrence: So your answer there brings me back to the question I was going to ask, which is this expansion of Ensemble C to an 11-piece group. That's like pretty ambitious in scope. How did that happen? How did you arrive at that?
Claire: So, as soon as I'd made, I'd made a septet album in 2020. Literally the minute I finished that, I knew I wanted to do something bigger. 'Cause I'd really enjoyed thinking about arranging the horns on that, which was slight, just big enough to make it a little bit more interesting, and Brigitte was singing on that as well, so there was a voice as well. So it was, I knew immediately that I wanted to do something bigger, but I didn't, I just wanted it to be in between that and big band, basically. I didn't quite feel I wanted to go towards big band. The Brecker album we were just talking about is around that size. It's a little bit bigger. I'm such a big fan of the early Pat Metheny Group stuff, so I knew I wanted more percussion, so I knew that would be a big part of it. It was kind of like, I just felt like I found this size that might be just interesting enough before it got into big band territory, if that makes sense. And which hopefully work arrangement wise, which I think it does.
Lawrence: Could you talk a little bit about, to the extent that these exist, like there's a lot of colors to draw from, it's a large palette, but it's also a lot of individual artistic souls that are present. As a composer and leader, how conscious are you of creating lane for everybody? Or is that simply like it's in service of the composition and an arrangement, but like how do you create an environment where it's satisfying for everyone?
Claire: It's a really good question. I think some pieces I would be writing it and it would be very clear in my mind who would be featuring on that based on the style or, I know these people really well, and I know they're playing really well, and I did want each piece to feel like it was a bit more of a feature. So there isn't really a tune where there's like five different solos. Like the first tune, for instance, "Every Journey Has a Beginning" is a guitar feature. It's the main melody is guitar at first. And I knew that would work really well to have a really quite hefty guitar solo in it.
So it was like trying to be true to what I was thinking musically. Also, I mean, some things occurred obviously also in rehearsal that I, that kind of came about from us playing. The final track is called "Home." It's quite a slow track, and I had just thought probably there would be a vocal solo on that because it's quite a kind of, it's a very simple harmonic sequence and it's quite a spacious piece. And then we tried doing this duet, like an improvised duet with voice and flugelhorn. And it was just so much better than anything I had thought of. And that was what it was. And that was like a big feature in that piece.
And so there was a lot of space in that piece for more interaction. Whereas I guess one of the more really heavily notated pieces, "Amboseli," there is one tenor sax solo, and that is part of the structure of the piece. Again, this is something I've really taken from what Maria Schneider does a lot. She will often have an improvised section, which is part of the build of the piece. So it's not just, here's what's happened and here's a solo. You know, it's really like she's thought about going into that and where it's gonna go after that. And I learned a lot from that in writing that piece. And I specifically did that for Matt Carmichael who plays tenor saxophone because he is so good at making a big shape with a solo and like really drawing you in for quite a long time. So I think obviously knowing all the performers and what they can do, and then I was really trying to have each track have a really unique identity with who I featured on it. So hopefully it feels quite sort of even across the album. That was my intention.
Lawrence: You've mentioned Maria a few times. I mean, she's sort of a towering figure. As a composer and band leader she is. How long has she been in your consciousness? Like are you a student of Maria Schneider or... (laughter)
Claire: Not that long actually. I actually didn't properly go back and really listen to everything until a few years ago, and particularly around the time that she released Data Lords, which was actually her most recent one, I think, wasn't it, a few years ago. It really, it's music that just, for me, it just grows, it grows on me, even though I already love it. I still hear new things in it. And she's just, I think it's the size and scope of her ideas that I'm so drawn to.
She's not afraid to do what she wants the music to do. You know, there is like literally no limitation, but it's also never too much. It's never unmusical, you know, there's 20-minute tracks, but it's like you believe that they need to be 20 minutes. You know, it's like, because, she's so good at that. Obviously I have such sincere respect and admiration for her as an artist who is kind of adamant about what, how we should value music. It's frustrating that it's not, obviously, that more musicians are not kind of following, or more musicians with some power are not following in her footsteps.
But I think she is a really important person. I think she's a very important composer. I've never had a lesson with her. I wish I could hope to meet her one day.
Lawrence: She's really an artistic citizen. Like she's an engaged right person. A friend of mine is in the big band, and so I get the opportunity to see her. That it's such a powerful band live.
Claire: I can only imagine.
Lawrence: Tell me a little bit about your relationship. Is it Bridget or Brigitte?
Claire: Brigitte.
Lawrence: Tell me about that relationship. It, you mentioned that this is not your first go-around with her. She adds such a beautiful quality to the record and quite honestly, one, that I have a bit of a bias against voice in creative music. Sometimes I, 'cause sometimes it's used in ways that I, I don't know. I have a hard time. I can't articulate it better than that. I have no hard time here. Right. Something that I had been wanting to articulate to you, and I'm gonna probably do it badly, is this was in the context of some of the artists you mentioned.
You know, you mentioned Maria, you mentioned Pat Metheny. We talked about Brecker. Something that struck me about this record is that I heard an Englishness in it. What came through for me is it almost had elements of like, I'm embarrassed to say this to you, almost like that late sixties, early seventies where folk and prog met each other.
Claire: No, someone else has said something similar to me.
Lawrence: That's okay. Okay, good. So that the first person over the wall can get, can take the fire for that one. (laughter) But, and I think the voice had something to do with that. But I, so I don't need you to comment on my musicological bent but, but I am curious about your relationship and the collaboration with Brigitte and what she does for you.
Claire: I just, she's such a special musician. She's gotta be like the lead, one of the leading vocalists here. She is on a lot of albums at the moment. I will say that you can hear her in a lot of places and in her own music, and she, I think she's one of the most versatile musicians I've come across. I mean, I've heard her and seen her in all sorts of different styles and projects, and she's so committed and believable in all of them. And she's just, she's supremely talented, but there is a, I mean, just in her voice alone, there is a special quality. I first heard her on a big band album actually by a British composer trumpeter called Reuben Fowler.
Amazing big band album actually from maybe about 10 years ago now. But, and she sang this one song on it and she'd written the lyrics and it just brought this such fresh energy and, but there was just something about it that I honestly listened to that track so many times. I was quite mesmerized by what she did on it. And when I wrote my first album, the septet album, I really had gone about it with her in mind and was desperately hoping she would say yes, which she thankfully did. I just think there's something about her sound that really actually does gel with what I want to write. She adds exactly what I intend, and she's an amazing improviser as well.
So when that happens, she's, she's really incredible. Sorry, one of the things I should say, she did write the only lyrics on this album, which is for the tune "The Birch and the Larch," which I knew I wanted to have lyrics 'cause it felt a bit more like a song. Always intended to ask her. 'Cause I was aware of her lyric writing. She's a really beautiful writer as well. So, and I'm absolutely thrilled with what she did. She's so poetic these words. She, the way she told this story, she's quite a sad love story, but she did it beautifully. So, she's brought so much to both the albums I've made. I'm really grateful to her.
Lawrence: What aspect of making Every Journey would you say took you furthest from your comfort zone or pushed you the hardest?
Claire: I think from a really compositional technical perspective, the size of the ensemble, writing for that size ensemble and really figuring out how to arrange it well. So the kind of, actually how am I gonna make these arrangements interesting. I did definitely start with, when I was writing it, I did it in quite a traditional way of like, I've got the tunes, I've got the harmony, and then I started thinking about how to arrange it. So that was a big learning curve for me 'cause I hadn't written for something this big before. And then also I definitely push myself in terms of structure.
And so because the tracks are lengthy, I really wanted to open up the possibility of thinking about structure in a different way. So there are a number of tracks where I've done, I've gone through various sections. I've tried to through-compose a little bit more and or think about how I can do something different at the end. So yes, those two things in particular, for sure.
Lawrence: Do you demo the composition? Like after you're done composing, do you demo them in a digital workstation or like is the first time you're hearing them when the ensemble fires up? Like I'd love to hear about that.
Claire: Yeah, I do use Sibelius and NotePerformer on Sibelius is actually pretty good. So I do listen to MIDI a lot. Absolutely. But, oh my goodness, when you first actually get to play it, I mean, all those awful MIDI sounds go right outta your brain and that's great. That's a great moment. (laughter) And there's so much, I mean, after we had like two full rehearsals quite spaced apart before we recorded and though it was after that first rehearsal, I learned a lot.
There was some revising after that for sure. And things that needed changing balance wise and all those things, you can only figure out when you're doing it live and new, practical things about actually the horns probably need to not play anymore for a bit. 'cause they all need to breathe. All those kind of things. So there's only so much you can learn from being at a computer.
Lawrence: Well, I'm curious to kind of go back to something you said earlier, it's only been around five years or so that you've been comfortable identifying as a composer, if I'm paraphrasing you correctly. You know, to sort of over beat the metaphor, this album is about adventuring and journey and transformation. And I'm really curious how your compositional journey. I was gonna say how it's going, but really like where does this adventure go next? Like you know, when you turn around X number of years from now, what are the things you're hoping to accomplish?
Claire: It's really important to me that I can work in both spheres, jazz and classical. I think that's been my biggest kind of learning these last few years because I really started composing only as a jazz musician, but I do think I have something to say in both places. And hence why I went back to study this year because it's so important to me. I really wanted to develop my understanding, particularly of orchestration. I'm really passionate about writing orchestral music, so that's a big ambition of mine at the moment is, I had my first workshop this year actually with an orchestra here in Manchester, which was an incredible experience.
And I've been writing for so many more, such a wider variety of ensembles this last year. So I really hope over the next few years I see that going in an upward direction of who I can write for and hopefully getting more opportunity to write orchestral music that is very important to me. And then alongside that, I hope I can keep kind of leading this band. I'd like to do some big band writing for sure. I think that might be my next step in this kind of world. I see it maybe getting a little bit bigger and then maybe it'll get smaller again. Maybe after that I'll need to reduce, I mean, this is, a lot of that is it's financially dependent on many things.
So we will say, I am, I would say I'm quite an ambitious person. So those are the big things in my head at the moment.
Lawrence: By way of wrapping up, I'm curious, could you, when we part ways here, what's the next music that you'll probably listen to?
Claire: Can I say two?
Lawrence: You could say as many as you'd like. So there's, we make the rules here.
Claire: I'm gonna big up someone in the band actually. So Matt Carmichael plays tenor saxophone, has just released a really beautiful album, which goes more into folk. He's Scottish. He's heavily influenced by Scottish folk music, but he is just released a new album called Dancing with Embers, which is a really interesting album. He has such a beautiful sound on the tenor saxophone, and I've only listened to it once and I already know I need to listen to it again. And a massive piece, which I only just discovered actually after this big seminar we had about improvisation and composition on Monday. One of my favorite composers here is Mark-Anthony Turnage.
I did not know he had written this piece called Blood on the Floor in, I think it was in the nineties, actually, it was quite a while ago, is using a classical ensemble with jazz, with a jazz band. So there's like Peter Erskine on drums and I can't remember who's playing saxophone. I need to look it up. But anyway, it's this massive kind of 45-minute piece that for sure merges his quite radical contemporary composition with improvisation and harmonically. I mean, I've kind of listened to a bit of it so far. It's very interesting. I think it was, it quite divided audiences when it came out. But I just did not know this piece existed, so I'm really excited to get into that.
Lawrence: I'm gonna go listen to that right now. It's both of those.
Claire: And the kind of, just the story about it is his, I think it was after his, he lost his brother to a drug overdose. And I think this was the piece that came after that. So it's quite an intense, massive thing. But anyway. Thank you. I'm gonna listen again.
Lawrence: That's great. Oh, that's wonderful. Thank you so much for those. Thank you for making time. It's been such a joy talking with you.
Claire: Thank you. You too. Thank you for the questions and for listening to the album. Really appreciate it.
Lawrence: I'm not done listening to it, but you're welcome. Okay, thank you. Have a wonderful day.
