An Interview by Zyggy Olyver/Prxludes: PRXLUDES | Alex Tay – PRXLUDES
“It’s funny to me, because I’ve written a lot of music that goes really fast — that’s like ‘vrrrm, vrrrm, vrrrm’, you know, like ‘blrrrrgh’?”
“When I write, I feel really manic — I feel a lot of adrenaline coursing through my veins. Even though what I make comes out very slowly, I feel like I’m going at a million miles an hour.”
“I think I’m quite a simple creature, and I think in some ways, in this composition world we’re in, I’m quite boring and quite conservative. I kind of sit there with a piece of paper and pen, or on Sibelius, and just write notes. I’m very interested in gesture; [moving forward] it’s about going for it, trying to find concepts for how sounds can behave, or should behave. Trying to make interesting shapes with that.”
“I think the ‘why’ is a really good observation. It’s probably not so much an original thing to say, [but] compared to Mozart, or Handel, back in their time, they didn’t have to think so much about the ‘why’. Now we have to think about ‘why’ a lot, right: why does this have to be out there? Why am I doing this? Why am I creating in this world [where] not everyone values what we do — and that’s okay, great even — but why make this, why have I gotta put this out there. And that informs ‘why do I have to write it in this way…’”
“I’m prone to using a lot of things at once, and the things that happen at once weather each other for better or for worse: and what’s born out of the collision is the piece.”
ALEX’S PIECE JAB WAS FEATURED IN NMC’S THE BIG LOCKDOWN MUSIC SURVEY
Alex’s JAB represents the South-East in the survey: NMC Lockdown Survey booklet SOUTHEAST_1.pdf (nmcrec.co.uk)
The map: Lockdown Map | NMC (nmcrec.co.uk)
“Wigmore Hall’s 120th anniversary celebrations culminate today with the winners announcement of the largest ever one-off commissioning scheme in the history of the hall.
16 composers aged 24 to 63, spanning five nationalities, have been chosen as winners of Wigmore Hall’s ‘Lockdown Commissions Scheme.’ Chosen from over 700 applications that responded to Wigmore Hall’s October 2020 call-out, each winning composer, over the age of 18 never before commissioned by Wigmore Hall, will write new music reflecting each individual lockdown experience to be premiered at the hall over the next four years.
John Gilhooly, Director of Wigmore Hall, said:
“The ‘Lockdown Commissions Scheme’ is the largest single initiative Wigmore Hall has ever undertaken to find new voices, and a fitting way to celebrate an important anniversary as we look to the future. It has been a great joy to hear new music of such quality and invention from such diverse talents across the globe. I am looking forward to programming the premieres with these new friends.”
“Alexander Tay’s Witherbud, inspired by lines from Samuel Beckett’s 1953 novel Watt, seemed at first more purely modernist in its intricate overlapping scales, which suggested a never-ending movement being constantly renewed like a waterfall. But one could hear echoes of Bach in the weave - echoes that, at the surprise ending became overt.”
“Guildhall School PhD student Alexander Tay took achieved a similar effect with Witherbud as perhaps Kelly did in the TV drama Together, by shining a light on a specific experience we’ve all experienced through the past fifteen months. In his writing he combines multiple instrumental lines moving at radically different speeds to create a stop-start effect – a musical articulation of the false endings to lockdown and the associated disappointment we all experienced. Tay’s writing is much denser than the other composers pieces that gives me the sense of multiple experiences colliding.”