Simon Holt

Confidently shy, Holt lives in a world of his own. Discovered by Michael Vyner (artistic director of the London Sinfonietta) in the 1980s, Holt was commissioned to be the featured composer at the 1985 Bath International Festival. He has been composing steadily ever since for the likes of the Nash Ensemble, Birmingham Contemporary Music Group, the BBC Proms, as well as setting Lorca’s texts to music in his first opera The Nightingale’s to Blame. Holt’s repertoire is seemingly endless, writing concertos for cello, soprano, viola, chamber ensemble, and percussion, as well as major orchestral pieces and opera. Holt has been awarded the Royal Philharmonic Society Award (2002), Best Stage Work at the British Composer Awards (2004), and the British Composer Award (2006). Since moving to Albuñuelas, he is breaking into the Spanish market. Sueños for Baritone and Ensemble was performed in Madrid in 2007 and TAiMAGranada took on his “dark themes” in the XV Jornadas de Música Contemporánea de Granada (2004) to the backdrop of thunder and lightning outside the Teatro Alhambra.

Q: Describe your sound world.

A: Intimate with explosions.

Q: Do you feel an affinity with the dark side?

A: I do. Difficult to talk about without sounding pretentious, however. The anima is an important source for all creative people, if not for everybody generally. I suppose it’s essentially the duende, which powers everyone’s imagination.

Q: What musical current would you say you are part of?

A: I’ve always gone my own sweet way, influenced by all kinds of music from early 20th century composers such as Webern and Stravinsky to modern masters such as Kurtag, Ligeti, Feldman and Xenakis.

Q: How is it that you normally find your inspiration?

A: I get a lot of ideas from trying to be as open to as many things as possible, particularly literature.

Q: What affect did it have on your career to become the featured composer of the 1985 Bath International Festival? They say it was your big break…

A: I had sent Michael Vyner, the then artistic director of the London Sinfonietta, a piece I hoped they might run-through after a rehearsal or something. But instead he took the risk of commissioning me, a completely unknown student. I said, “I hope I can write you a good piece”. He said: “They all have to be good, Simon”.

Q: How did you feel when the BBC approached you the first time to write for the Proms at the Albert Hall?

A: I was excited by the performance, but preferred to hear the recording as I often do when I’ve had things played in the Albert Hall. The microphones are in the right place.

Q: Apart from central heating, what do you enjoy when you return to London?

A: That’s a very good question! I’ve lived in London for 25 years (half my life) and find it to be largely nightmarish, wildly overpriced and a difficult place to deal with and get around. Exhausting.

Q: What triggered your decision to move here?

A: When I turned forty, I felt that I should venture out into the world. I eventually found the house I bought six months later in Albuñuelas. It was a rather decrepit village house that needed total renovation, but I knew immediately (in the dark with no electricity) that it was the one. The Lorca connection was a major consideration also.

Q: You mention a turn-around in your work on arriving in Spain. What do you mean?

A: It was completely liberating to find myself in a place that felt more like home. I love being in the village. Hardly anybody knows I’m there. It’s utterly charming and full of characters that are totally different to my London life. Refreshing and completely unpretentious. With email, nobody is far from anywhere. I work on the computer now and I email all my work directly to my publisher.

Q: How do you describe your work to your neighbours in Albuñuelas?

A: They don’t know what I do. They know nothing of my music.

Q: What is it about Lorca that inspires your work, such as your first opera The Nightingale’s to blame?

A: I set Lorca’s poetry in an attempt to understand what it is that compels me to try and inhabit it musically and get under its skin; to feel a part of its unleashed freedoms and very un-English otherness. It’s uncompromising certainly, passionately direct and yet strangely elusive. It feeds on simple everyday imagery, but uses it in utterly surprising juxtapositions. In many ways it’s song-like already and uses the structure of Arabic poetry and those of cante jondo, or deep song. It comes from the root of something elemental.

Q: Do you remember how you felt writing an opera for the first time?

A: Scared. It’s longer than anything else I’ve written and was a huge enterprise.

Q: How do you combine your compositions with your children’s stories?

A: They were fun to do as presents for my nephew. They would be difficult to publish as they’re a little strange. I used to write words a lot as a teenager and even toyed with the idea of becoming that kind of writer, but music took over.

Q: What has been your experience collaborating with musicians here in Spain?

A: Glorious and vivid. They work very hard and are astonishingly committed. Working with TAiMAGranada was a total joy and not a day goes by that I don’t think myself very lucky for having met their artistic director, the supremely talented clarinettist and conductor, José Luis Estellés. The musicians are of a similarly high calibre to those of the London Sinfonietta and the best we have to offer in London.

Q: Have you ever thought of branching out of the classical world?

A: No. It’s where I belong.

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Contact

Jenny Wegg
Chester Music Ltd, 14-15 Berners St, Londres W1T 3LJ
Jenny.wegg(at)musicsales.co.uk
+44 207 612 7475