McDonnell - Politics of the Imagination

Anselm McDonnell - Politics of the Imagination

Stop Small Boats – Crash Ensemble – Leonie Bluett, Kate Ellis, Patrick Nolan – Barrowclough, Joel the Custodian, Kosyne

Politics of the Imagination – Crash Ensemble – Leonie Bluett, Kate Ellis, Patrick Nolan – Barrowclough, Joel the Custodian, Kosyne

The Union is our God – Musicians of the London Symphony Orchestra – Clare Findlater, Tom Ellis, Sam Walton, David Jackson

Cross-Purposes – Musicians of the London Symphony Orchestra – Heather Roche, Louise McMonagle

Independent label CD/Download

One of the problems for composers of contemporary classical or new music, apart from the challenges of getting new work commissioned and performed in the first place, is that it can appear difficult, abstract and academic to the outside observer, detached from the 'real world'. We are a long way away from the political engagement of the music of Luigi Nono (Intolleranza 1960), but fortunately, as seen recently in the latest edition of the Hard Rain SoloistEnsemble's Ink Still Wet programme, there is a new generation of composers willing to confront and engage with the world around us and the new challenges we face today, many recognising the importance of our relationship with nature and how it is under threat, finding relevant and creative ways to explore those issues.

Whether it's concern about the climate or returning to seek solace in nature that is uppermost in many people's mind, the political and social issues raised by Luigi Nono a long time ago are unsurprisingly not all that different from similar problems we face in the world today. There is still a lot of 'intolleranza' going around. I don't think it's arguable that we might even be in a far worse place today, but a different response is required and indeed a new musical approach. What you might not be expecting from a contemporary music composer however - and to be honest, there has been little indication from this composer that he was heading in this direction - is the impact of the first track on Anselm McDonnell's third album, setting the tone for what follows; a word driven electronic beat and a rap that samples and musically elaborates on Rishi Sunak's promise to Stop Small Boats, shifting from Stockhausen into Prodigy territory. Now that's a generational shift.

You can thank Birmingham rappers Barrowclough, Joel the Custodian and Kosyne for that along with members of Ireland's ever creative music group, the Crash Ensemble, but Irish/Welsh composer Anselm McDonnell has already made ambitious steps towards extending the range of what can be explored by contemporary music, and elsewhere on the album working with the LSO, he can be seen working towards a style where there needs to be no strict demarcation or boundaries around what media and instrumentation contemporary music can make use of, nor what subjects it can deal with. The scene set with Stop Small Boats, the music genre barriers already beaten down and ready to confront the political climate of the day, those features are what characterise and what amounts to a kind of rap opera - or 'hip-hopera' - Politics of the Imagination.

There is no need to detail or even rail against everything that is wrong with the world today. In Politics of the Imagination the pertinent question posed by one of its characters is "What do you want to see changed? What's collapsing under the strain? What could be brought into public domain?". Brexit and AI are just two of the problems/solutions mentioned here, but not as merely throwaway buzzwords. These are issues that were/are supposed to bring change, but have they been or will they be for the better? And if there is any good to come of such new ways of working, who will really benefit from them? What is really needed is an imaginative response, a politics of the imagination to find a way how we can break the current failing/failed system and come up with new ideas. No, I'm not seeing much sign of that either, although there are a few crypto-fascist billionaires with some ideas of how much they can gain from breaking the system. If we can be aware of the danger and avoid that fate, that might be the best we can hope for right now.

Politics of the Imagination does just that in a light-hearted, tongue-in-cheek way, but that can be a good and accessible means of getting a message across. Divided into seven sections, the piece opens with the fall-out from a local politician's press conference on his plans to fix the post-pandemic, post-Brexit problems of his constituency of Nether Whitaker, but is really just finding a way to serve his own interests? He is indeed challenged on this quite vocally by one activist, actually a former schoolmate, the two men having very different views on what needs to change. Their discussion continues in an elevator where a mysterious lift attendant takes them on a Being John Malkovich journey to floors where they have the opportunity to try out their ideals in various conceptions of utopia. Needless to say, the future doesn't look too bright (and unfortunately for us here, it does look orange).

Hip-hopera is not a new term or genre, but I don't think its potential as a means to progress musical forms and get across important contemporary ideas has yet been fully realised. The music in Politics of the Imagination does integrate fully with the hip-hop style in a creative way that still retains the flavour of its new music and experimental roots, but it does inevitably take something of a backseat to the delivery to the rap storytelling. If a rap opera sounds intimidating - a challenge new music often has to content with - it is not rap as most of us know it from furious hard driven hip-hop, grime or freestyling monologues, but a form of rap-inflected spoken-word theatre, the three vocalists fluidly interacting in their witty and creatively worded exchanges, leaving space for the situation and the ideas to be heard. The music might never dominate but it also never falls back to simple rhythmic beats and accompaniment either. It's music to explore new worlds, working purely in service of the situations and their utopian ideals, painting an auditory picture, and there is a welcome brief musical coda in the final section, The Basement, that gives pause for reflection and perhaps sums up that fewer words, less idealism and more action is needed.

But the music doesn't stop there and the subsequent final two tracks similarly find new ways in which music can engage with real political events and their consequences on the streets. The Union is our God boldly employs the marching tattoos of snare drums, the boom of the Lambeg and confrontational flute playing in a piece inspired by or a reaction to what we call the Marching Season; sounds that are deeply ingrained into the subconscious of many Northern Ireland residents. What McDonnell does however is combine an original arrangement of those traditional instruments with guitar screeches, electronic samples of noises, crashing glass and voices of protestors, ending on a violent note with with a snare hit that sounds like a gunshot. It's a superbly realised piece of music that has absorbs the celebratory nature of the music, but gains deeper resonances and is more than a little unsettling for others who might recognise in it the intimidating background sound of many Belfast summers.

I'm not sure that the behaviour and failures of the UK and world political leaders response to the COVID epidemic needs to be satirised, but consisting of a range of sampled, cut-up and reassembled pronouncements, the final piece Cross-Purposes also clashes familiar voices with sounds in a context where we can take notice of it in a new light. As such it is certainly a topic worth raising again, reminding us by letting the words and pronouncements of our politicians speak for themselves - much like Conor Mitchell and his Belfast Ensemble have done in Abomination, Riot Symphony and the cut-up news samples of Lunaria - that these actions haven't been forgotten and are still out there to be held to account in the court of public opinion. Like The Union is our God and indeed the Belfast Ensemble's work, Cross-Purposes forces you to admire the cleverness of it, take in what it is saying and still feel vaguely disturbed by it all. All good signs that Anselm McDonnell is another Northern Ireland composer on the cutting edge of musical creativity and politically charged contemporary relevance.

External links: Bandcamp, Anselm McDonnell

Bennett - All Earth Once Drowned (Belfast, 2025)

Ed Bennett - All Earth Once Drowned

Brilliant Corners Festival, Belfast

Ed Bennett, Cherry Smyth, Xenia Pestova Bennett, Kate Ellis, Tom Challenger, Martyn Sanderson, Neil McGovern, Barry O'Halpin, Damien Harron, Steve Davis

The Black Box, Belfast - 2nd March 2025

It's probably a sign of the times, but recently there seems to be an upsurge in contemporary composers taking an interest in and having a greater engagement with pressing matters in the world today. That at least has been my recent experience with Northern Irish composers, looking at the state of the world from a local and universal perspective, whether it be the specifics of the political and social climate of this province (Anselm McDonnell's 'Politics of the Imagination' or Conor Mitchell and the Belfast Ensemble) or the environmental issues facing us all. This year's Hard Rain SoloistEnsemble's Ink Still Wet programme saw a whole host of new commissions taking nature as an inspiration, not so much to highlight climate crisis specifically, as much as to remind us of the importance of nature, its structures and how it literally affects everything around us. There can surely be no more pressing issue that needs to be addressed or at the very least highlighted.

Ed Bennett, originally from the seaside town of Bangor in Northern Ireland, has also recently recorded an album with Kate Ellis of the Crash Ensemble, Strange Waves, where he notes how "the sound of waves has been ever present in my life". If you didn't know Ed Bennett, you might think this work with a solo cellist would be a minimal affair, but typically of Bennett, while wanting to retain and highlight the evocative qualities of that instrument, he has Kate Ellis play eight cellos. Not all at once evidently, but using multitrack recording with the composer providing additional field recordings and electronics. A single cello wouldn't be enough to connect with the sheer vastness and incomprehensibility of the sea or characterise his own personal relationship with it. And perhaps eight cellos could only take that so far because the sea has again proved to be the inspiration for Bennett's latest work, All Earth Once Drowned.

And indeed Bennett takes his exploration of the importance of the sea to himself, and to us all, much further in this latest work, commissioned by Moving on Music and the Arts Council NI and presented in the 13th edition of Northern Ireland's Brilliant Corners Jazz Festival. Can you really integrate a new music composition into what is primarily a jazz festival? Well, yes, especially since the festival incorporates boundary stretching avant-garde, experimental and improvised music as part of the programme. Although composed and played from a score, Bennett’s Decibel Ensemble does it all, drawing on musicians from a jazz and improvised music background as well as contemporary classical and experimental musicians. It's a crossover of disciplines and styles that is essential to the purpose of this work and how Bennett wants to treat the subject.

The chief motivation for All Earth Once Drowned lies in texts written by Northern Irish poet Cherry Smyth. She provides a reading of the texts here at the performance of the work at the Black Box in Belfast accompanied by Bennett's score, and with that vocal element to the fore the subject and content of the work is much more upfront. It's about the beauty of the sea, the majesty of the sea, the unknowability of the sea and the destruction of the sea. "The sea is shut?" Cherry calls out in astonishment at one point in the fifth section of the six part 70 minute piece, and then repeats the phrase in increasing indignation and disgust, an expression of sheer disbelief that something as immense and vital and as part of everyone's life as the sea can be, and in some places has been, has been placed off limits due to environmental pollution.

Confronted with the immensity of the subject, not just the mystery of the seas but the potential destruction of the seas, Bennett accordingly upscales the instrumentation and the sound world from already expansive use of eight cellos in Strange Waves, employing his Decibel Ensemble for All Earth Once Drowned. If you've heard his Decibel Ensemble work before, you will know what to expect. If you haven't, the name gives you a clue. It's a ten piece line-up that is required for this work in performance at the Black Box, the stage of the venue unusually extended to accommodate the ensemble - and even then it was a tight fit. The instrumentation includes two saxophone players, trombone, guitar, cello, piano, percussion, drums and vocals, with Bennett himself conducing and managing the electronics. It has a tendency to get very loud but exploits the full dynamic range that the ensemble offers across the whole work.

It needs that kind of instrumentation for the immensity of the subject; the sea, its importance, its mystery and its many moods. Sometimes the brass front line of Tom Challenger, Neil McGovern and Martyn Sanderson sounds like the roar of the sea or the blow of the fetch, sometimes like distant foghorns carrying across the water, Barry O'Halpin's guitar providing textures, Xenia Pestova Bennett's piano sunlight and splashes rippling on the water. Damien Harron on percussion and Steve Davis on drums were capable of whipping up a storm out of nowhere. Davis did much the same with his own Stephen Davis Unit at the Brilliant Corners festival last year with a likewise counterintuitively roaring depiction of nature inspired by the Wicklow mountains in The Gleaming World. Throughout however it's again Kate Ellis’s cello playing that provides the rhythmic force of the tides, the hidden undercurrent, constant and insistent, its sad theme slowing and fading as the sixth part draws to a close.

Although composed there would appear to be a degree of openness and improvisation in the performance, which again is in accordance with the unpredictability of the seas. You would get that anyway with the individual qualities of the performers and the interaction between them, as well as the unpredictability of what happens in a room full of people. There was an energy to the live performance at the Black Box that has to be felt between the performers and the audience. The ensemble could however probably have done without the unexpected intervention of the fire alarm going off at the start of the sixth section, shutting down the lights and the power. It wasn't as if content the piece and its message needed any assistance in raising the alarm bells than the ultimatum already delivered emphatically by Ed Bennett, Cherry Smyth and the Decibel Ensemble.

External links: Brilliant Corners, Ed Bennett