Season 3 Episode 20: David Hackbridge Johnson -- Composer & Multi-Instrumentalist

Welcome back to another episode of The Piano Pod with Yukimi Song. I am your host, Yukimi Song. For this episode, I interviewed Mr. David Hackbridge Johnson, one of the prolific British composers of our time, whose piano works were recorded by Mr. Lowell Lieberman, who is one of the prolific American composers of our time, whom I got to interview last season. So in the episode with Mr. Lieberman, he mentioned that he was about to release a new album titled "The Devil's Liar" under the Steinway Sons label, and he mentioned that he wanted to play pieces by contemporary composers, and he stumbled upon Mr. Hackridge Johnson's music. So Mr. Lieberman chose Mr. Hackridge Johnson's piano compositions, including all 7 nocturnes, exclusively for the album, and the rest is history. Lieberman describes Hackridge Johnson's compositional voice as vigorous, unrepentantly melodic, superbly crafted and orchestrated, and with a refreshing and idiosyncratic harmonic sense. Since then, I have been super curious about this composer, and since the release of the album last year, The Devil's Liar, I have been listening to it often, and I absolutely love it. It became one of my favorite albums of all time. So then I reached out to Mr. Hackridge Johnson via Facebook to be friends, and finally today I got to meet him and interview him. Just finished the interview session now with Mr. Hackridge Johnson, and he's the sweetest person on earth, and his wealth of knowledge about music and literature, especially the way he explains with humor, is just so priceless. So before getting started, I want to welcome everyone who is listening or watching The Piano Pod with Yukimi Song for the first time. I'm a classical pianist and educator from New York City, passionate about creating a thriving and meaningful community of the classical music industry through this podcast. Please visit yukimisongstudio.com to find out more about my work. And each episode of The Piano Pod with Yukimi Song, I interview a guest speaker who has been breaking exciting new ground in the industry. Before getting started, I want to thank everyone for tuning in. Please rate the show and review it on Apple Podcasts because every rating review will help people find my show. So here we go, dear friends, please enjoy the show.

You are listening to The Piano Pod with Yukimi Song with Yukimi Song with Yukimi Song.

You are listening to The Piano Pod with Yukimi Song where we talk to the brightest minds in the industry about how they are bringing the piano into the 21st century. I am honored to welcome Mr. David Hackridge Johnson, one of the prolific British composers of our time who has written works in all genres. His name became known to many classical music listeners worldwide in recent years with one of America's most frequently performed and recorded living composers and pianists, Mr. Lowell Lieberman's solo piano album under Steinway Sons label. The title of the album is The Devil's Liar, which all the pieces are written by Mr. Hackridge Johnson. Mr. Hackridge Johnson has written over 20 symphonies and tone poems, as well as various chamber, vocal, ballet, opera, and choral music. In addition, he has written extensively for the piano, including piano sonatas, nocturnes, and many shorter pieces and piano cycles. Very recently, Mr. Johnson's newest work, An opera titled Blaze of Glory was premiered at Wales Millennium Centre and presented by the Welsh National Opera and received rave reviews from multiple publications. The opus numbers to catalog Mr. Johnson's large-scale works are currently in the 400s and more. Unfortunately, however, we get to listen to only a handful of recordings of his compositions through YouTube and music streaming services. So here I am today with Mr. Hakuichi Johnson to discuss his remarkable career and compositions. And I have been a big fan of his music since the release of The Devil's Liar, so I personally want to promote his music, not limited to piano works but ranging in different genres, so that a lot of classical musicians, including fellow pianists, will get to know him and start performing and recording his incredible music more often. So David, thank you for being here today.

Thank you, Yukimi Song, for inviting me.

First, I want to tell you, Mr. Lowell Lieberman was on my show and just before he released his second Piano Solo album, The Devil's Liar. I love that album so much. I've been listening to it since its release in February 2022. And you know, during the interview session, Mr. Lieberman said nothing but praises about you and your works. And out of 70 minutes of our conversation, he spent a good amount, like 8 to 10 minutes, talking about the album, your compositions, and he shared the story of how he found you and your works in details. And I just wanted to say to my listeners and fans, if you haven't listened to Mr. Lieberman's album, The Devil's Lyre, lyre as in L-Y-R-E, which is the ancient instrument, U-shaped harp, with piano solo pieces written by Mr. David Hackridge Johnson. Please find links in the description and buy an album or start listening to it via music streaming services. And if you missed Mr. Lieberman's episode with me, which was published in January 2022, and where we discussed about this album and talked about Mr. Hackridge Johnson, I wanted to remind you to check it out. This link is also in the description. Anyway, so let's start with this. I know how Mr. Lieberman found you through Facebook and everything, but I want to know from your take.

One of the positive aspects of the internet is that it can bring people together who probably would otherwise never meet. And I got a friendship request from Lowell and I thought, wow, because I'd heard of him because he's a major American composer. And I knew he was a fine pianist as well, sometimes playing his own music, sometimes others. I thought, oh, that's interesting. And then, you know, the nature of these things, you just sit there not really communicating for months because we're just on the internet as entities. But then all of a sudden he did write to me and he mentioned that he, during lockdown, he was playing the piano a lot and he'd already produced an album, a double album actually, of some of his favorite rather demonic pieces, including things like Liszt's Totentanz. And we had started a discussion about that. And he said he was planning another album which would include another bunch of favorite pieces, but he'd want to include maybe something by me. And I thought, okay, so continuing on the devil's theme, the diabolical, I concocted a nocturne for him, which was based on a very weird dream I'd had about this peculiar devil-like creature sitting on a rock playing an instrument with very strange tunings. And I thought, okay, I'm going to write this. And I sent it to him the next day and he seemed to like it. And then he said, well, you've called it Nocturne Number 7. I think it's number 7, isn't it? Where are the others? I said, I don't know. They're around somewhere. I mean, they could be in piles of manuscript paper in that corner or in that corner or upstairs in the attic. I did find the other 6 and they needed a bit of tidying up because these were quite old pieces from nearly 20 years ago, at least 15 years ago. I tidied them up, I sent them to Lowell one by one, and he then at that point he decided, you know what, I'm going to do an album entirely of your music, David. And I was quite amazed and I thought I didn't know what to think, really. And I thought, well, maybe he'll go away and maybe he'll change his mind. Maybe you think, actually, maybe this stuff's not so good as I first thought. But literally within a few weeks, he sent me practice recordings that he'd done in his own house and then said that he was going to go to a recording studio where Sergei, who I don't know whether you know Sergei, as a recording studio and he's just going to do them. So I think probably within 6 months of us having any kind of official communication other than just staring at each other in the ether, he had an album out and Steinway had agreed to issue it. And what was— okay, that's remarkable enough. And that would have been fine had he just played, played the pieces and that's fine. Great. But it was the fact that the way he played the pieces just so impressed me. The fact that regardless of what one's opinion might be of the music, I can't say, other people have to say that for me as a composer, he got right inside the style, right inside the marrow of the music to produce these very, very intense, intimate and intense performances, which I was absolutely— I was absolutely thrilled by. And, and it was really just one of those strange things where, you know, 6 weeks after first speaking, he's made an album of my stuff. So he's always been a hero, but he's now a double hero for me.

The title of the album is actually the title of Nocturne Number 7. Did you write the Nocturne Number 7, The Devil's Liar, for Loa?

Yes, I wrote it. He asked me whether I would like to write a piece. I wrote a piece that very evening and I sent it to him by probably breakfast time the following morning and said, 'Look, I want to dedicate this to you.' He'd sent me a hamper of his own music, by the way. He'd sent me some sheet music and I already had some CDs of his, so I felt like I owed him something anyway. And now that we were actually in proper communication, I thought, 'Well, whatever he does with this piece, I don't mind. I'm going to write him something just as a greeting.' as a sophisticated greetings card, if you like. Yeah. So it's written for him and it is an interesting sound world that I just happened to be in my mind. It's not a showpiece. It's not really even impressionistic. It's part of my— I have an obsession with the late piano music of Liszt, and it's a music that Lowell loves as well. So I thought, okay, this is in my head. So it comes out and I thought it's got Lowell all over it because I know I knew his Frankenstein, of course, as well, the wonderful ballet that he wrote, the DVD of which I bought some time ago. And the fact that Lowell writes very melodically, but also in Frankenstein, there's this— it's not just the horrible horror aspects, it's the pathos, it's the sadness, the melancholy of this creature that's been made and is rejected. And it comes out of Gothic horror, but also feeds into the decadent literary movement. All things I'm terribly interested in. So I think we already had a kind of meeting of minds, not just musically, but also intellectually and culturally.

Right. And then also in the episode that I spoke with him, he was very impressed. You know, he, of course, himself is a composer, and he was very impressed the fact that you know, at that point it was Opus 405. And not only the amount, but the quality and the variety of music that you are making. And then, you know, let me quote him. He says, David is a terrific composer. I am very excited about this release, hoping this album will make many others to explore his music. So that's what he says. So let's talk about this album, The Devil's Liar. Now that people have the access to your music, through, you know, music streaming services like Spotify and Apple Music and so forth, then people get to hear your music. The album includes 7 nocturnes and then Belle Fanfare and Barcarolle Elgise and then Calligraphic Poems, which has 6 different pieces. So let's start with your nocturnes. Nocturne number 1, Nocturno Spettrale, which is— I heard a lot of Chopin's excerpt. It started with a left-hand pattern with— I think it's an excerpt from Bach.

Yeah, it's put in a minor mode, isn't it? So that sets you up for what is a parade of Chopinesque phantoms that haunt the music. And Chopin is to me always extraordinary. He's never old-fashioned. He's always modern. He's so far from a parlor composer. There's this mistaken view that, oh yes, Chopin, yes, we should all learn Chopin because we can just sit in our drawing rooms and play it and it's nice. And of course that's fine. Chopin always sounds nice, but I think it's much more than nice. I think Chopin is a profound musician because of what he did, not only in terms of piano texture, but also harmony and counterpoint. He loved Mozart and Bach, so it's not this rarefied airy fairy aesthetic, it's an aesthetic that's really firmly rooted in classical counterpoint and harmony, which he then extends using the piano as a palette, like a painter. So you've got this— suddenly the whole piano is available rather than just thinking in terms of what we have a melody and will accompany it. Suddenly that the hands are more widely spread, there's interlocking, there's all sorts of things that I think was probably revolutionary at the time. Probably Czerny was doing some of that kind of stuff, but in a more— in a less revolutionary language. And so I thought, well, I'll pay a little homage to Chopin, whose music is always modern, always shocks me when I hear pieces and I think, 'Oh, I thought I knew that piece well, but something so incredible just happened there.' And it makes you want to start thinking about music in a different way all over again.

Tell us more about the next one, Nocturno Misterioso and so forth.

Oh yes, now I haven't got the music with me. Is that the one I wrote for Michael Garrett? I can't remember which one that is. There's another very strange one again which has its links with decadence and the occult and mystery. So again, probably coming from my obsession with the late piano pieces of Liszt, where you have elements which you could perceive as tonal, but they're not resolved in a tonal way so that the traditional functionality of harmony breaks down and you start to get very strange progressions and you can play around with them. You can start with the whole tone chord and then you can do things with that. But then you can introduce alien elements to the whole tone chord or you can have the two different whole tone chords going on at once. All sorts of availabilities that were explored by Busoni, of course, as well. So that's the root of that one, I think.

Would you like to show us what that means on the piano?

I mean, if you're thinking in terms of improvising, which of course I do all the time, it's one of the things that—— or something just, just to get a harmonic flavor of something. Also, I like when I'm composing, I like sometimes to think of 2 or 3 different harmonic strains going on at once. So an easy way to experiment with it and you find wonderful harmonies is to just put the right hand on the black notes and the left hand on the white notes. And you suddenly have a harmonic world opening up to experiment with, to experience, and then see if you can— and that's just playing chords. But you then have to find the actual material to make a composition. But that will inspire, titillate your ear so that you can get into a harmonic mode for that particular piece.

I see. Wow, that's really fantastic. Just to know the secret of that, you know, particular sound that you create. And also, you know, like No. 4 and 5. I don't know if you remember all these pieces, but There are some of the nocturnes that have really sensuality, and then some of them are sweet, almost like a number 5 to me sounded like more like reminded me of Eric Satie, like a mood.

Yes, that's the one in E minor, isn't it? I don't remember the key. Is it this one? Yes. That one, I can't remember it. I've lost the music. The music has been sucked back into the vortex of stuff in this house, so it would come out again, but it's not on the piano at the moment. I should have made more effort to find them. Yes, that has a Sartre-esque beginning. I wanted to write something very, very simple and modal, but then I wanted to smudge that image So you can set up something that's nice. It's got that hypnotic appeal. It has a pastoral quality to it, perhaps. But then you— it's like you do a watercolor painting, but before the paint is dry, you take your hand and you go— and so in the subsequent verses, because I think it's in basically in 3 verses, that nocturne, the subsequent verses, they get progressively more chromatic. So that you end up— by the end of the piece, you've moved into a form of expressionism, so that all of the simplicity of the opening harmonies are distorted to produce something that's not just wistful and pastoral, but something that is almost agonized in its expressive content. That was quite deliberate.

Wow. Okay, well, good to know. Beautiful. What a beautiful, beautiful nocturne and very— I don't want to say strange, but it is like a very strange sound too.

Music to me can often hover into the strange. It might start out perfectly straightforwardly and simply, but it can then change. And I think it's the process of change that fascinates me, how you get from— how you get from A to B, where you've got an emotional trajectory that's taking you away from an idealized form of expression, which you think, oh, that's nice. You know, that could go on like that, could go on like that for I could go on like that for 5 minutes and everyone thinks, oh, that was nice. But to then something else and think, oh God, what's he doing? What's he doing? Why is he doing that? It's almost a challenge to the perception of the listener. And I like composers who do that.

Yeah, it takes almost takes us to really the darkness, darkness of within us.

Yeah, we always want to try and be good. I think most of us want to try and be good. But we also have the capacity for darkness and mystery, even to the extent that we don't know what we are. We don't know inside us and we don't know what sort of personality we are. There's a self-questioning, which of course we try and push away because in our day-to-day lives, we just have to try and act as peaceably and as normally as possible in order to negotiate ourselves through life and relationships. Right. We all have a dark side. Yes, absolutely.

That's why, you know, Lowell's first album, piano album, is The Personal Demon. And we always battle with that personal demon, right? Yeah.

I suppose it's a bit of a cliché to say that he's a neo-romantic composer, but he's capable of writing the most gorgeous melodies and lush harmonies, and he's got this virtuosic piano technique. But where does the gargoyles set come from? That's his dark side, isn't it? Those pieces where you— oh gosh, you know, it's a bit disturbing.

Speaking of disturbance, The Devil's Lair. Oh my goodness. The introduction. How in the world you were able to create the sound. Wow. It really was like the devil is playing the harp and alluring you.

Scary. I can't remember what scale I used, but it's something like that, isn't it, that starts the piece. Yeah, that's in the dream. This weird creature, devil-like creature sitting on a rock, literally strums the strings. And I thought, when I woke up, I was quite glad to wake up. You know, thank God I'm out of that. So yeah, the piano piece really mimics that. And that sound, that weird, strange scale was really as close as I could get to what I was actually hearing in the dream, because I heard that music in the dream. It was very, very vivid. So yeah, that's literally what I was trying to do at the start of that piece, to create that same rather oppressive, scary atmosphere. But you had to do it with a fairly standard impressionistic piano technique, but then to put it in a rather mysterious context. And it's just one of those strange things that you— the music comes out, you think you know what you're doing, but Sometimes it's a bit strange, the creative process. Sometimes you're not thinking, you're listening. Oh, I will invert that theme and do double counterpoint with the blah blah blah, and then I'll use— No, I don't have any of those thoughts when I compose. I mean, it might be that once I've written a piece, you can go back and analyze it and see that that's exactly what I've done, but I won't be consciously— I don't know what other composers think when they compose, but Certainly for me, I might discover afterwards that I've done something. Oh, that was quite clever. I did a bit of that. I did a bit of a stretto fugue there or whatever. But normally it's the listening that dictates the process. Often the music is already there. It's kind of up there somewhere so I can see it and hear it, an object. And all I have to do is bring it down and write it out. And the writing out is almost non-thought.

It's simply this. Wow, that's— you're like Mozart where the music is all inside and then—

No one is like Mozart except Mozart. Yes, I mean, Elgar said that the music was in the hills around him. So I don't live anywhere near hills, so I suppose I could say that the music is on Tooting High Street where I live.

Actually, where are you tuning in from today?

Well, I'm in Tooting, which is a part of southwest London. It's towards the end of the Northern Line Underground, so I'm within 20 minutes of Waterloo Station. So it's a great place to live. It's a wonderful community. If you go into the center of Tooting, you can You can pick a restaurant from almost anywhere in the world because it's a tremendously multicultural area. I love it. I've been here for over 20 years now and I love it.

This episode is presented in collaboration with our good friends at Forte, a free alternative to Zoom purpose-built for music teachers. Forte offers features optimized for classical music lessons, including audio quality, far superior to existing platforms and allowing you to hear every nuance of your student's instrument. Their colleagues at the Royal College of Music, Aspen Music Festival, Curtis Institute, and Berklee College of Music have even used Forte in their own programs. Forte's mission is to radically expand access to high-quality music education worldwide. Forte always puts teachers and their students first. This means You can use Forte with your own students for free forever, and Forte will soon introduce paid features allowing you to connect with new students around the world. Sign up for free today at fortelessons.com or click the link in the description. So you were born, raised in England. Can you tell us a little bit about how you discovered the love for music? Where, where does your musical journey begin?

Well, it comes from my family essentially, because my grandmother, who was half German, she sang the lieder of Schubert and Schumann and Brahms and Hugo Wolf. So I had that from a very early age. My mother also sang. My father played the piano and was a conductor. I mean, he had a job in the city, but he, in his spare time, He was a conductor and he conducted a church choir, the choir of St. Boniface German Mission Church in Whitechapel, which is still there. It's a beautiful building which, if you ever come to London, you must visit. It's, it's a wonderful church. And so I was from a very early age, from 6, 7, I was aware of the masses of Mozart and Haydn and Schubert, which my father used to conduct with this choir. My brother, who is older than me, he's 3 and a half years older than me. He was both the best kind of musical brother and the worst kind of musical brother because he's a brilliant pianist and he was winning silverware at all the local music festivals when I was very tiny. And I was persuaded to have piano lessons. And I thought, well, my brother is marvelous because I can just listen to him playing the piano and it sounds absolutely wonderful. I'm hearing all these wonderful pieces that he's playing. Why should I bother learning the piano? What's the point? He's done it already. So that was the worst kind of brother. He's absolutely marvelous musician. He actually went into pharmaceutical chemistry, but he still plays. He plays the Metzner sonatas. He plays all the Faure piano music. He, when he was very young, he was already playing Debussy preludes and Schubert sonatas and Chopin nocturnes. So I'm thinking, well, this is lucky. I don't have to do any practice because I can just listen to him. So I was actually a very late starter with the piano. I did have violin lessons when I was 7, but very late starter on the piano, and I would have periods of flunking out completely. Where I wouldn't do any practicing. That changed actually a little bit later on when I got into jazz. I went on a conducting course in Canford, which is in the south of England, under George Hurst, who was a wonderful conducting teacher, wonderful conductor. But actually, after the conducting lessons, we just used to muck around on the pianos. And there was a young student about my age, perhaps a bit younger, actually, who was mucking around playing jazz. I said, what are you doing there? What's that? I mean, I'd heard some jazz, but I'd never tried to play any. And he showed me the blues. All I'm doing is the blues scale. And he was called Tolga Kashif, who is quite a well-established conductor now. And that was it. I was off. So I finally found something I could do. I found something I could do on the piano. I didn't have to look at any music. I didn't have to read and learn pages and pages of piano music. I could just sit down and improvise using these building blocks that Tolga Kashif had given me. So I suppose that's the pianistic side of me. I had very— I was lucky to have a very good violin teacher called Louis Rutland, who was in the Royal Opera House Covent Garden Orchestra. I then had singing lessons with Fabian Smith and Arthur Reckless. I did actually study singing at the Guildhall with Arthur Reckless, who had been the teacher of Sir Geraint Evans, and at the same time as he was teaching me, there was a lad who used to come in after my singing lessons. Arthur Reckless was very cheeky, very naughty. He used to say, 'Ooh, Jenny, look, there's 'Oh look, there's Bryn! Bryn, come and show Dave how to do it!' It was Bryn Snout, Sir Bryn Terfel, can you believe it? Wow! So he would come in, blast the room apart with his fantastic baritone voice, he was only 18, and I thought, 'Oh, why am I bothering with this?' So my early years were slightly checkered because I was always coming up against people who were so incredibly talented, my brother, and then having to having Bryn come into my lessons, I thought, oh gosh, I'm not sure what I'm going to do with this. I'm not in this league. So I actually became a professional jazz musician for about 20 years because that was something that, that was just me. I was just working out my own thing and composing as well all the time. But, but certainly performance career was almost entirely as a, as a professional jazz musician.

Yes. And then I watched some of the improvisation that you did on YouTube. And also, in fact, I don't know if it's a jazz style, but this morning you composed a little song for The Piano Pod with Yukimi Song.

It's not very jazzy. I can't resist envelopes. I think envelopes are very good. I don't know whether the camera is able to pick this up. But I find envelopes are extremely useful as a compositional discipline because you're only allowed to write what fits on one, so it teaches you something. I ought to mention here one of my most inspiring people in my life, Ronald Stevenson, who is a wonderful— he's passed away now sadly, but he was a a wonderful composer pianist, and he was particularly interested in composers like Liszt and Busoni and Edward Grieg and Percy Grainger. And he said, you know something, David, I think it takes as much skill to write a Grieg lyric piece as it does to write a Mahler symphony. Now, that's a point of discussion, but I knew what he meant, and I quite like the discipline of the envelope. I can play this for you if you like. I reserve the right to make lots of wrong notes. They'll simply be a new variant. Okay, an instant variant. Sounds good. So I hope the piano doesn't sound too echoey, just in case it— well, it is quite a slow piece, so maybe the echo will help it. But I've called it— I don't know whether you can see the title— it says Piano Pod Prelude. Oh my goodness.

Oh, I want to take this photo of it and I want to play it too.

I will photograph it and send it to you later.

Sounds great, thank you so much. It means so much, I feel so special. And I want the envelope, oh, I want the envelope. Can you send it?

I mean, I better write it out more neatly because it's all terribly messy, but it's another one of my rather strange meditations, so it isn't particularly jazzy. But anyway, here goes. Or something like—

Hey TPP friends and listeners, The Piano Pod with Yukimi Song is in its third season. Thanks to all of you for watching or listening to every episode since its launch in 2020. I started this show with a simple question I had in mind for quite some time, which is how can we as classical pianists and music educators present the beautiful classical music tradition to the 21st century audience in a fun, contemporary, and engaging way. It's been an incredible journey for the last 3 years. I love what I do through this podcast, providing a platform for pianists and educators to reflect, and discuss freely how we can keep the classical music industry thriving and relevant in this rapidly changing world. Now more than ever, I need your support so that I can continue my work by bringing you highly valuable content biweekly by interviewing groundbreakers in the industry. Your support will go directly to all the costs of The Piano Pod with Yukimi Song, such as a yearly subscription to the podcast hosting platform, the software I use for high-quality recording sessions and tech gear, as well as all the hours I spend researching and audio and video editing. You can make a one-time donation or monthly pledge by clicking the PayPal link in the show notes or going to TPP's website at thepianopod.com. As a thank you, you will receive The Piano Pod's fun logo sticker in the mail. So please support my show today and don't forget to subscribe, continue listening, and tell your friends and colleagues about The Piano Pod with Yukimi Song. Let's continue with the episode. So you mentioned that you, you learned to sing. So you were writing a song cycle or song cycles that set poems in French, German, and Old Norse, Elamite, and ancient Babylonian as well as English. Are you also a linguist?

Well, I tell you, I'm a lover of language, but I'm pretty useless at languages. So I love particularly French and German literature, which I can just about read, but not always translate at sight. My brain gets too tired. I'm not fluent in either of those languages. And I'm certainly not fluent in ancient Babylonian or ancient Elamite, but I'm fascinated by the ways in which languages allow you to express things differently that don't translate and never can. Translation, of course, you're on a continuum between doing a literal translation of the original or making something slightly different in the, in the new target language. But you can't really have it both ways because there are certain things in a language that obviously don't translate. First and foremost, the actual sound. And I think the actual sounds of words fascinate me and interest me, the colors of words. And of course, if you, if you grow up singing Schubert and Schumann, you learn about the color of the voice, how the voice colors words. And how words color the voice. It's a two-way thing. So it always used to interest me when my grandmother particularly used to sing in German exclusively, although she was an East End— she lived in the East End of London. She was of German parentage, so she only ever sang in German. I thought, well, I've no idea what she's singing about, but I understand something of what it is simply from the sounds. And each language will have a completely different soundscape. So no, I'm afraid I can't, I can't, I'm not like one of these people who can speak 11 languages. I'm very jealous of those types of people. I struggle enough in English.

No, you're doing great. But this is a very, maybe sort of simple question, but do you think each language, let's say French, German, and, you know, these, all these ancient languages, do they affect the way you write music? So let's say if you're writing music to a French poem or German, then does the music come out differently in each language?

Yes, of course. I think it does. And that's partly because of what I've just said about the color of language and the color of words. Also, it's to do with the fact that you can't pretend to be an island isolated from a musical past where those languages have a body of music attached to them. So there's an enormous difference between a Hugo Wolf and Claude Debussy musically, and in the way that they set words, and in the way that words inspire them. A huge difference, say, between someone like Richard Strauss and Gabriel Fauré. Again, I mean, you could explain these things technically and we could be here for hours talking about the musical reasons why they're different, but I think it's plain just by listening to those composers that they have a different sound world that seems to somehow be symbiotic with the language that's being set. At the same time, and it's going to be to do partly with the word stress and what kind of rhythmic melodic figure will suit. I mean, a great example is Janáček, so that when he's setting Czech language, I presume, I'm not an expert, that has distinctive speech patterns that dictate his rhythmic and melodic shapes. It's clear with Bartók's folk music as well. These are rhythms and shapes that you don't find, for instance, in English. There's a lovely comment by the composer Louis Andriessen who said all English music sounds like Greensleeves to him. Because of the way English— English people don't know they're doing it, but we all apparently speak in iambic pentameters. We speak like this because that's the way it sounds. I must buy some carrots and bread today. We speak in these I ams apparently. I mean, sometimes it's quite fun. You get on a bus and you listen to people speaking and they're just speaking about what they're going to do that evening or see you later, darling, or whatever. I'm on the bus. See you later. But they're speaking in these I ams. We don't 'Speak like this, we don't speak like that,' which is the sort of rhythm you might get in a Middle or Eastern European language. That's going to affect the music that gets written, I'm certain of it.

Yeah, interesting, because I live in New York City, and then each, you know, we have 5 boroughs here, you know, Manhattan, Brooklyn, and Queens, and the Bronx. And I mean, it's all, you know, here in America, we say melting pot, But however, you really hear specific accent the way they speak in specific section of the town.

Well, I'm sure that's right. I mean, as a family, our favourite show on TV, which we used to sit down on Saturday nights, was Kojak. Do you remember Kojak starring Telly Savalas? I'm not really familiar. You can watch it on YouTube. And if I remember correctly, it's set in Brooklyn. So when they go into, they go into a bar and they, they order a cup of coffee. I want a cup of coffee. So it's like this. We thought this was brilliant. We thought it was absolutely brilliant. We were sitting there watching this and my father would turn to me laughing and he'd say, I've absolutely no idea what any of them are saying. I said, no, Dad, neither do I. It's brilliant, isn't it? Because we couldn't quite catch that the accent was so strong. But you could still work out what was going on because it was so expressive. It was so musical. So I love that. I'm addicted. My Opus numbers are ridiculously high, but believe me, they'd be a lot higher if I was able to suppress my addiction to American B-movies and film noir.

Accents are really fascinating. I mean, I don't want to stereotype anyone, but stereotypes It does exist. And then let's say, for example, if you go to the borough like in the Bronx, and then that's where the hip-hop music was born, basically. So obviously their language, the way they speak really does affect the music.

Yes. And what I don't like is language totalitarianism, where somebody is saying, "Oh, you shouldn't speak English like that. You should speak it like this." I don't agree with that. I think if you start to suppress people's natural way of speaking, you can end up suppressing their culture, which I don't think is a very good idea. And I think what allows us to live together, even though we're different, is just recognizing difference and celebrating it. I mean, we've had this terrible problem in this country. I don't know whether it's quite as bad now, but certainly when my parents were growing up, in the 1930s and 1940s, we were a class-ridden society. And one of the ways in which class— you gave yourself away class-wise was through language, through your accent, so that people literally had a scale of accents. And the more posh your accent was, the better you were. But if you went down the scale and you— like all my, my mother's side, they're all Cockneys, they're all from So talk like that, you know what I mean? We talk like that. I'm going down the shop. I'm going to get a bit of butter and a bit of bread. Now, if you spoke like that, people would make automatic assumptions about your intelligence, your abilities, your cultural position in society. And they can be completely erroneous. You can make all sorts of wrong assumptions about people just by the way they speak. I don't think we should make assumptions in that way. Absolutely.

Well, thank you so much. Well said. Yeah, I agree with you. I want to specifically ask you about the calligraphic poems in the Devil's Liar album. So what are those pieces?

Well, those pieces were inspired by a book I have again buried upstairs somewhere, which was a calligraphy— it's a catalog of a calligraphy exhibition that, if I remember correctly, was held in Washington, Washington, D.C., I think that is. In the 1970s somewhere. It's something I picked up in a secondhand shop, or I should say thrift shop for American listeners, and I brought it home. It's got these fantastic reproductions with just, you know, the ink brushstrokes. And I thought they were like musical compositions because they have line and they have form and structure. And it suddenly occurred to me that I could write a set of pieces that was inspired by that. They're not inspired by individual drawings or paintings, but just the idea of creating lines. You'll notice that most of those pieces have quite a simple texture, so it's almost as if there's a single line being drawn across the piano to make a shape. So it's really a form of translation from the look of a painting to the sound of a short piano piece. And so I did 6 of them. And yeah, I sent those to Lowell and he thought they fitted well with the idea of a recital. And I was interested at that time. Again, it was part of this rather maverick exploration that I go on. I thought, well, you know, I was exploring also. I wrote a piano sonata based on Korean ceramics at around the same time. And that was a rather interesting— again, that was from stuff that I'd seen in museums.

How many piano sonatas do you have?

Well, there's 18 in total, and to my knowledge, none of them have been performed in public.

I mean, where can we have the access to scores?

Well, I don't have a publisher. This is another aspect of my life that I've been particularly lazy about, is actually finding one. And I don't have one. So it's all buried there in corners. So at some point I have to get it out and disseminate it more effectively, I think.

Sure. I mean, we are always looking for new music, especially during the COVID I think there was a big wake-up call where, you know, we classical musicians tend to stick with the, you know, good old regular composers. But then during the COVID time, we had more time to experiment and explore different things and realize that we need to play more new music. And then I think people should play your music more often, Mr. Huckeridge-Johnson. I think so. I would love to see your scores in my hands, you know, being published and then being able to purchase.

Well, I will, I will, I will consult with my, shall we say, my syndicate of supporters, which is basically my wife and my family, and see if we can't come up with a plan. It to me, because I'm always a bit obsessed with things, I write a piece and I think, oh yeah, I should try and get that out there. But when I get up the next day and I come down and I think, actually, you know what, it's easier just to write another piece. The simpler option for me is to write something new. If I've heard it, if something in my head— if it's not in my head, I don't write. It has to be there. The kernel has to be— the idea has to be there. But that always seems to be an easier option than, than doing that extra mile where you actually get your music out. I mean, at this point, I should mention a person who is of all people in recent years is probably most responsible for any of my music appearing at all. And that's Martin Anderson, who's the director of Toccata Classics, who I've known for 35 years probably. And we met through an organization called the Havergal Bryan Society. And I can point to— there's Havergal. English composer of 32 symphonies and various operas and things. And that's where we met. Above him is Wills Morgan, great, great singer, wonderful singer who was actually in Jerry Springer: The Opera. You know, Jerry Springer has just passed away. Wills, who's sitting on top of Havoc O'Brien, played a major role in the Jerry Springer Opera. This is my kind of Heroes Board, if you like. And I met Martin through that. And we— our associations were really through other people's music, particularly neglected English music, British music, I should say. And in 2015, I had a health issue which was quite serious, but it was tremendously dealt with by my local hospital. But when I came out of the hospital and I was convalescing, I had a bit of a talking to myself because I knew that I had this monstrous pile of music which I'd never shown anyone to. People didn't know what I was doing. And I thought, what the hell, I'll send a copy of my Ninth Symphony to Martin. And he, he wrote back a couple of days later and said, what the hell have you been doing the last 30 years I've known you? What is the Opus 309, whatever it was? What on earth have you been doing all this time? And he sent this music, sent this Ninth Symphony to the conductor Paul Mann, who said, right, we're going to record this. So the rest of that, you probably know the CDs that came out consequently, but someone had to say yes, someone had to say, okay, yeah, we— I believe in this piece, we're going to do it. And that person was Martin. And then the conductor was Paul, who then went forward with it. So I can't quite remember how we got onto this aspect, but the idea of self-promotion and the availability of music, I think it is very difficult for composers because of course There are hundreds of us. You know, you lift up a pile of leaves and there's 5 composers under there. You look in a waste bin and there's someone in there composing. We're everywhere. So it's extremely difficult because you could send a piano piece, you could send it to 100 pianists and not get one reply.

Yes, but there are too many pianists out there too. You know, always looking for wonderful, great music. You see my point? So there are too many of us, too many, too many podcasts, too many pianists, too many musicians. But then there's always, you know, your niche, your— and then somebody is recognizing you, someone like Lowell, someone like Steinway Company, right? So I really, I'm saying this not to twist your arm to do something that you don't want, but You know, we are always looking for great music. So, you know, you have more piano music that I listen to on YouTube. Songs of the Seasons. I listen to Tales from the Forest. And what else? Paraphrase on an English carol in the beautiful setting of Bristol Cathedral. I mean, I would love to try them, and I would love for my students to try some of the smaller pieces. I wrote a lot of pieces.

I, I started to write an enormous amount of piano music after I met Ronald Stevenson. He invited me to a summer school that, that he wasn't running, but it was a society. The Ronald Stevenson Society was running it. And he said, well, why don't you come? And I went up there. I had written piano music beforehand, but This was a revelation because Ronald Stevenson is a great pianist, a great composer, and of course he attracted lots of pianists to the summer school. And two of the pianists I met— well, I first of all, I met Chisato Kusunoki, who was at the summer school, and I wrote a lot of pieces for her. And I met her teacher subsequently, Nicholas Austin, who lives up the road here. Who is a marvelous pianist who tends to specialize in the Romantic repertoire— Chopin, Rachmaninoff— but also composers like Godovsky, of whom he's, in my opinion, a really leading expert in Godovsky's very, very difficult, very, very beautiful piano music. And I started to— once I'd been exposed to their way of playing and their approach to the piano, I began to perceive the piano more in terms of the sound and the textures of a piano, the sonorities of a piano, rather than just thinking, oh, I thought of a really good tune and just, you know, do that. So it became not just about material, but it became about the medium. And I wrote a lot of piano music which, which was exploring that sonority. I think one of the pieces I wrote at that time, which isn't on the isn't on the album is Five Coloured Parakeet, which Cisato recorded many years ago now, which I felt was a bit of a breakthrough piece for me because it was the first piece where I thought, I'm thinking in terms of the piano rather than just thinking in terms of a piece that could be written for anything. That really changed my approach and probably why I've written so much. I mean, I love the piano as an instrument because I play it all the time and mainly improvising, mainly jazz, but I love it as an instrument to compose for. And you've got these great pianists and they're at your back. They're thinking, well, you know, write me something good, you know, write me something for the piano because the piano is a beautiful instrument, right? You know, it really is. Right. Because it's an instrument. It's an instrument, isn't it? It can't sing. The piano can't sing. It's not singing, is it? But yet it does sing. If you write for it in the right way, it can sing as well as any other instrument.

How about orchestral work? How many symphonies did you write?

Well, I've written 15 symphonies and I keep trying to write a 16th symphony. But because I've spent the last 4 years writing operas, I'm getting a bit stuck now. So I start my 16th— I've started my 16th Symphony about 5 or 6 times now, and it goes very well up until about 4 minutes. And then I think to myself, well, hang on, somebody should come in and sing now. So somebody should be singing because I'm so now involved in this. It is a very involving world, the world of opera, where instead of just writing half an hour's music, you've got to write 2 hours plus. You've got a libretto. Which dictates to you what you have to write. And you have the dramatic concepts of narrative which inevitably make you write in a different way. And I'm quite finding it quite hard to write a long orchestral piece. I keep expecting someone to go in, burst in and suddenly go, 'Oh, the king is dead.' I think, oh, that's the end of that symphony. That one's finished.

Now that you mentioned about opera, I want to know more about this Blaze of Glory. And it's interesting, this opera was set in the 1950s Welsh valleys mining community. And then I saw the little bit of a mini clip of this opera. There were like a lot of audience reactions and your comments. And then There's like a few sections in the opera of this male choir singing. That, that's actually quite remarkable. It's different. So tell us a little bit more about this Blaze of Glory.

It is an unusual piece because it combines lots of different types of music because it's set in the 1950s and the libretto is very much of that time. It lays out quite clear— the librettist is Emma Jenkins, an absolutely marvellous writer— and it lays out quite clearly the types of songs and the types of music that are required that go with the story. So the basic story is that a Welsh male voice choir, its numbers have become decimated due to a pit explosion down the mines, and they're very depressed But there's a move to try and stimulate the choir master, Mr. Pugh, who's played quite magnificently by Geoff Lloyd Roberts in the production, to start the choir again. Come on, stop being miserable, we've got to— So the first quarter of the opera really is trying to persuade this rather downcast man that, no, we can still sing, and in fact that we must sing because it's our hope of salvation. And so, of course, the repertoire of the Welsh Male Voice Choir— it's difficult to say— plays an important part in the piece. So there are several set pieces and some pieces that we've actually revived from the old repertoire of pieces that were sung in the 1940s and 1950s. They form part of the opera. There's also a close harmony vocal group consisting of 3 ladies who are really like the Andrews Sisters, so it's got a lot of American influence in it, so there's quite a lot of jazzy numbers in which, which are right there in the text, and it also has a competition which has to be set to music, so there's a competition between choirs because of course in Wales there's a great history of competitive singing through the Eisteddfods, And the choir does eventually get going, and so far so good. It's quite male-orientated, it's rough miners in the bar arguing, but actually it's got two remarkable aspects to it, all based on fact, I might add. This has all been thoroughly researched by Emma and it's all factual, that they kidnap a countertenor from a rival choir. So this guy, and it's played by Fergal Fergal Mostyn Evans, who's got this marvellous countertenor voice, and he teaches the male voice choir to yodel. And it's all based on a true story. And there's also a character called Miss Price. Now, of course, like a lot of societies that on the surface at least, and perhaps even going quite deep down, they look 100% patriarchal, they look male-dominated. The men are, they're quite gung-ho, they're quite, you know, they think they're in control, but actually in a lot of ways they're not. They're really, their behaviour, at least to a certain extent, is being governed by their womenfolk, and it's in fact Miss Price who not only galvanises Mr. Pugh to start conducting again, but also excites his emotions. So there's a very improbable love story between these people who are deliberately portrayed as of a certain age. They're no spring chickens, and they form this rather unlikely bond, which, which I think when I read the libretto, I thought, gosh, I've got to write some nice music here because it's a very touching aspect to it. So it has a community feel to it because of all these different musical aspects that come into it. And it was an absolute joy to write. And I've been so lucky with the creative team. Caroline Clegg has produced this fabulous staging which almost never stops, it's this tremendous activity, and Ryan Upton has been consulting on the choreography, and I've got the marvellous Stevie Higgins in the pit who is just this wonderful kind of centre of calmness and musicality that keeps the whole thing going. So it came out of nowhere. Well, I— it was quite strange because I was doing my teaching and doing the occasional jazz gig and minding my own business, and I suddenly get a text from someone saying, you've got to go and meet David Pountney, the director, about doing an opera for WNO. And I thought, oh, well, at first I thought it was an April Fool's joke, but it was January. And I went and trusted and I got that job. The very next day I got another phone call from Jonathan Bookter, who runs Surrey Opera, and he offered me the job of doing an opera called Madeleine, based on Madeleine Smith, the famous Scottish poisoner, allegedly. So I had to suddenly, from not really doing anything, just minding my own business, I had two opera commissions on successive days. And so, of course, the first thing I did when I got home, I thought to myself, help! What am I going to do? Suddenly got all this enormous quantity of music. So it completely takes you over. So I'm up at 5 in the morning working till midday and then collapsing. Went on like that for years.

Wow. So you wrote—

you have two operas? Yes, Madeleine was performed last year by Surrey Opera, and Blaze of Glory is in, well, it's coming to the end of its run actually. We've done, I think, 4, 5 performances in Wales and 5 or 6, is it, in England. There are 2 more to go, and yeah, it's a lot of fun, and what pleased me actually, the audience The audiences have been lovely, and also the musicians appear to really enjoy doing it, which is obviously a bonus one.

Wow, amazing. Then you also wrote ballet music too in the past, right?

It's never been performed. A choreographer has not had a whiff of any of these pieces, although funnily enough, because I got to know Ryan, with WNO, he has suggested something. I won't say too much about it in case nothing ever happens, but, but he does have a desire to do at some point a full-length ballet. But watch this space. I think it's the best thing to say about it. It's a very, it's a very, very interesting subject, and I'm amazed it's not been done before. So I better keep quiet. About it in case it gets pinched.

Okay. Wow. Now, how are you composing all these different genres? I'm sure you attend a lot of opera concerts and ballet, and you know inside out about the industry too, but composing is a different thing, you know, especially, you know, when you think of opera, you, there's there are so many elements to it, not just the singers, orchestra pit, and also choreography being involved. And there's like a dialogue involved in a ballet. You have to think about choreography. And I honestly, I took just like a few years of ballet when I was a kid. That's the only knowledge I have with ballet. And then, wow, I can't even imagine what sort of knowledge you have to have to create.

Well, I can't dance for toffee. I mean, I can tread on people's toes, but I can't dance. But I can look at dancing and I can appreciate it. In fact, I find the ballet absolutely extraordinary because I'm a bit physically lumbering. I find that what goes on on a ballet stage is, to me, utterly miraculous. It moves me to see it and to think of the utterly glorious music that they have. What a wonderful life. I mean, I know it's terribly hard and they get injuries and it can be cutthroat, but what an extraordinary world to be involved in. But yes, so I watch ballet, I go to the ballet and I go to the opera because I think, you know, that's the way to learn. You've got the best stuff out there. I mean, who's going to write better ballet music than Tchaikovsky? Not me. But you can learn from it. You can learn how it's done. And the great thing about doing an opera or a ballet is that it's a collaborative thing. Obviously, when you're writing, the composer writes completely alone. I mean, I don't let people in to tell me what to write. I mean, I have to write it myself and then you let it go. Because it then has to go to the director and the musical director. And if I get a phone call— and this did happen, this happened with both the operas— you get a phone call and think, well, David, yes, we've got this bit of music here, but actually we only need to get 3 characters off stage and 2 characters on stage. But you've given us a 4 and a half minute entr'acte. 'Do you mind if we—' they want to cut it. So you think about it for a bit and you think, 'Yeah, well, yes, if it's going to make the drama flow, you've got to let things go.' So there's that collaborative aspect where your part of you, the egocentric part of you, wants to say, 'No, you must play every single thing I've written exactly as I've written it.' You can't do that. Because I'm not a director, I'm not a choreographer, they're the professionals, they know what's going to work on stage and I trust them not to do serious damage to my music, which they don't. I mean literally it's a few things here and actually sometimes they ask for more music because they've had a change of heart about how to do a scene change. A lot of these questions are about scene changes How much music do you need and what's actually going on? Somebody might need a costume change. Well, how long does it take to get in and out of a suit? You literally have to time it, you literally have to put stopwatch on the character and say, right, go! How can they come off stage, change clothes, come back on stage all safely in the dark with just a, you know, just a bit of light on them? Do that safely. Come on, that's the amount of music you need. So the composer has to think about that and not be too egocentric about things that need changing. And in the end, when you see it and you know they're right, you do it absolutely right, what they're asking you to do. And that was the case with both Jonathan, who not only conducted but directed Madeleine as well, and also Caroline, who, who's directing Blaze. All of those things, they were fairly minor things compositionally, but they all amazingly made so much difference to the dramatic flow of the totality, which you must have. Otherwise audiences get— they switch off, don't they?

Thank you. I never knew that part of compositional process, and obviously I'm not a composer, so—

You're not yet a composer, but who knows?

I don't think I will ever be. It's okay. So then, you know, you are multi-instrumentalist. You mentioned that you started learning violin first, not piano, because your brother was an excellent pianist, so you chose a different path. And also jazz music. Then you can play violin, piano, drum. You can also sing. Any other instrument you can play? Well, I have played other instruments.

I'm interested in in free jazz, completely freeform jazz. And intermittently over the last 20, 30 years or even 40 years, I have played freeform jazz, often using instruments that aren't my specialties simply in order to access a different voice. So for instance, I can get noises out of things like trumpets and clarinets, but I've quite deliberately not learned to play them properly. So that what you get is a series of sound effects. And I got two very, very old and very close friends, Marcus Wright and Paul Rogers, with whom I've done a lot of this kind of thing. And it's very, very interesting. I was inspired initially to explore this style of music by listening to Cecil Taylor and Ornette Coleman, who are two of my really great heroes. Cecil Taylor is an extraordinary pianist who appears to be playing free, but actually he's using an awful lot of patterns and things that he's worked out, often very bluesy, also using modes, of which he's a really expert improviser in the modes, but also quite chunky, almost late romantic piano textures. You hear him do things like this. That's a kind of Cecil Taylor type sound, which seems to me a lot of what he does is derived from Brahms's Second Piano Concerto. But only he's often playing quite atonally and he's a very percussive pianist. And I thought it was a revelation when I first heard him play. And so I thought, well, I want to try and do that. So I have done some free jazz piano playing. But often when I'm with Marcus and Paul, I think, okay, let's see what's going to happen with the euphonium, for instance, which again, I can make noises down. And I don't have any of these instruments here to demonstrate for you, alas.

It's okay. Wow. You know, you also composed pieces for like, you know, viola. I really enjoy listening to the Seven Versets for viola played by Peter Shepherd. I can't pronounce his last name. Peter Shepherd. Scarver.

He's a force of nature. He's one of those, he's one of those guys. The pianist Jonathan Powell is another one. Wonderful pianist who's played some of my music. They're kind of forces of nature because I mean, Lowell is a bit like this. The way Lowell can learn things so quickly and get deeply into them. Peter's like that. Peter can have a discussion with you, and his discussions are always incredibly, uh, lively and informative, and they go around all sorts of different subjects. And before you know it, you, you've talked yourself into writing a piece because there's some inspiration point that you've, you've grabbed onto. And so almost every time I hear Peter play, or I meet Peter and we have a discussion I think, oh, I've got— there's a piece coming, there's a piece of solo viola music or solo violin music coming out. And that's exactly what happened with the Versets. He'd given a concert. He gives concerts in the beautiful London churches, a series that's now been going on for many, many years. He gives quite a number of concerts yearly, every year, and he was playing on a particular viola. Which, if I remember correctly, and he will correct me if I get this wrong, it's the Jacob Raman viola, which I think is— it's 1600 and something. It's a very, very old instrument and it has an absolutely beautiful sound. And we got into this whole idea of thinking about instruments as having individual characteristics. It sounds an obvious thing to say, but most of the time as a composer, when you write a piano piece or a violin piece, you've no idea what kind of piano or violin it's going to be played on. Could be anything. It could be a, could be a honky-tonk or it could be a Steinway grand. You don't really know. It depends on the venue, depends what's available. So I became interested in writing a piece not just for an individual violinist or violist, but for an individual specific instrument. So that's how the versets came about. I also wrote a set of pieces for a violin that Peter often uses for his baroque recital work, which is a violin that on the belly there's a stamp which says Charles II on it. So this was a violin, probably one of many violins that Charles II owned because he had a violin group. So there's an extraordinary history buying this. It's a beautiful instrument. It's quite a soft instrument. It's not like the modern big sound. It's a gentle, soft, sweet tone. And I thought, I'm going to write a piece just for this instrument.

Now let's get into a little bit more philosophical questions. So, you know, I would like to know your vision for the classical music industry. So what is your thought on keeping classical music relevant in this classical music industry thriving in this really fast-paced society and especially in this post-pandemic era?

I think a lot of that has got to do with schools. School music— I can't speak for any other country, but I know from my own experience as a teacher of music and also from colleagues, I know that classical music is under a little bit of pressure. Partly because, of course, it's, it's often easier, an easier option to study other types of music, partly because there's a completely erroneous idea surrounding classical music to do with elitism, to do with having to have money or having to have class breeding or whatever you're supposed to have to play classical music. And I think that's damaging. Both of those things are damaging because I think classical music should be available to all. It's not easy, but then we wouldn't expect to do easy physics if we wanted to get on in science, would we? So I think it's, it's right to have those challenges. But at the same time, you shouldn't then have a hierarchy where you start to discriminate against other types of music, many of which, let's face it, don't have any notational aspect. So I think it's important to have a perspective and to have classical music as part of a general musical education, not instead of, and not within some kind of pyramid structure. I think with children, particularly young children, they don't know necessarily the differences between different types of music. It's adults that like to pigeonhole. So if you take, if you take a bunch of small children to a rock concert, I think, yeah, that's great. Then the next week, if you take them to a ballet, I think, well, that's great. They haven't necessarily had those non-musical aspects of reasoning that might be telling them, well, maybe it's not so cool to like this. Maybe I should not be liking this. There's also the other aspect that they simply might be bored. And that, that's okay. You shouldn't be— you can't force people to, to like things. But if you've decided from day one that classical music is difficult, it's elitist, it's for posh people, then you've already lost the argument. You're condemning it to a slow death. And we have actually seen in this country declining numbers of children, declining numbers in the uptake of, of music exams for secondary school children, for instance, which is a great shame. So I think it begins with the schools. I think also you mentioned something which I think is very interesting, the idea of the fast-paced society. I think it's a good thing to step off the hamster wheel. I think classical music is one of those things that allows you to do that. Some people meditate, don't they? They might have terribly stressful jobs and they come in, well, you know, I'm just going to get into a nice position, I'm going to meditate, I'm going to let the thoughts come in and I'm going to process them. I'm not saying that music is just therapeutic, but it can have a role if, for instance, we catch ourselves. I think even musicians, we catch ourselves doing this. We think, oh, I'm going to listen to music, but I'm going to do loads of other things at the same time. I'm going to wash the dishes, I'm going to cook a meal, I'm going to put the baby to bed, I'm going to do a resume, I'm going to do— actually, why not just do nothing but listen to music and see what it does to you. See what it does to your perception of time and energy and flow. Naturally, you find, oh, oh no, I'm now a different person when I'm listening. Absolutely. Thank you. Fast isn't necessarily good. Right. Yes. I think if the pandemic has taught us anything, if we've been lucky enough to come through it unscathed, If it's taught us anything, it's space and time. I think I can't speak for— okay, I'll just speak for myself. For me, I became aware of space and time. What happens? You don't have anything to do now. You can't go out. You can't work. You can maybe do a bit of work on a computer at home, but you can't really go to work. You've suddenly got all this space that you fill with thoughts.

Classical music allows you to do that, to create the space. Absolutely. Whether you are listening or learning the classical music instrument, Yes, absolutely. Now, so in relation to that question, how can we as classical musicians reach out to the 21st century audience in a more creative way?

I've seen a lot of amazing work done in— again, it's back down to schools again, really— with professional companies now having really fantastic outreach departments where instead of, as they might have done 30, 40 years ago, saying, 'Well, we're just going to put on a series of concerts and that's it. You can buy the tickets and come or not.' Now a lot of companies are going out into schools, into universities, into workplaces. They're also involving themselves with the handicapped, with the learning difficulties children, also with, in practical ways, actually inviting people who have got nothing to do with the music profession to participate in actual music making. And I think that's, that's, that's really good because that, that does help to break down those barriers, this erroneous perception of classical music as something that's up there and you can't reach it. So English National Opera, for instance, which has been in the news for all sorts of reasons, has an amazing set of initiatives and they started some of them in during COVID One of the things was how singing can help your health. I think it's called Breathe. I think that was their initiative, that singing is good for you because you get stuff in your lungs. And they've done a lot of things like that. Of course, one can't mention ENO without mentioning the fact that they— there was an enormous threat to their funding there's a problem here because on the one hand the government wants an expanding art sector that expands into areas where it traditionally wouldn't have gone into, but at the same time it's strapped for cash, so it's giving with one hand and it's taking away with the other. So ENO is tremendously successful, it's our local opera company if you like, we go there all the time, either to there or to Covent Garden. The amazing thing is you can get a seat for £15, which I guess is about $18, $19, something like that. So what's elitist about that? You could save up your pocket money and go once a month. A school kid could go. You could sit there and listen to Bergs Wozzeck for £15. It's unbelievable. It's for everybody. It really is for everybody. Yes, of course it's heavily subsidized because opera can't make money, it's just too expensive, and when the subsidy is pulled away, those opportunities, those areas where you want to expand into, into youth or into people that wouldn't necessarily think of going to the opera, they offer free tickets to under-21s, those schemes, those subsidized schemes are under threat and it then reduces the company's ability to do that outreach, to do that vital work because your future audience is always the young. Yeah, absolutely.

Yes. Now then, another question is: under the umbrella of classical music, how far can we push in terms of multidisciplinary works and performances, multi-genre, let's say?

Well, I think a lot of that stuff's been going on for some time. I remember Well, I don't remember. Yes, I do remember when I discovered something called fusion, where jazz musicians in the '60s were thinking, hang on a minute, these rock boys are getting one over on us. We're not, we're not pulling in the sales. We're not getting the gigs anymore. I know, get an electric guitarist, an electric keyboard player in the band, and we'll change our style a bit. Now, for jazz purists, this was a horror show. But for people with slightly more open minds, you could suddenly then go out and buy, you know, the latest Herbie Hancock album, for instance, where instead of just having your classic jazz quintet, your tenor sax and trumpet, piano, bass and drums, you've got a whole bank of keyboards and electric guitar players. Now, of course, the trick is you want to produce high-quality music in whatever genre. You're in. And the news out, of course, is there's a lot of stuff in all genres that is not very good, is not very interesting. It doesn't, doesn't last the test of time. But that's true also of traditional jazz as well as fusion. So it's not an argument against changing the style. If you refresh the style, it can potentially open up a new audience for the music who might in the end go back and buy Herbie Hancock's earlier albums. 'Hey, that Herbie Hancock's really cool. He plays acoustic.' A lot of that is going on. And I think, again, we've seen a lot of changes in concert programming where now most orchestras in this country, instead of just having a wonderful, wonderful series of classical concerts, they'll go into a school or they'll do a gig with a, with a, with a pop star, or they'll get together with some local musicians who are working with drum and bass or turntables or electronic music. And they said, okay, what happens if we put these two things together? Might be a bit of a mishmash, but let's see what happens. You have a symphony orchestra and a reggae band or whatever it is. Now, again, there's every hope of success and every chance of failure, but that's the true, true of any venture.

But, you know, honestly, I think your piano pieces, particularly because I'm a pianist, so I want to promote should be played more often, you know? I hope that your piano music, at least your piano music, will be available to a lot of people in the future. That's my hope.

I'm going to write something down. I'm going to write that down. Note to self: publish my own music. There you go. Great.

I hope you don't lose that note. Great, wonderful.

It's on your envelope.

Yeah, I will remind you every time I see it. Wonderful. So what's your next phase or step in your career? Is there any fun project coming up?

Well, I'm writing another opera as we speak. I've got another opera from Surrey Opera. Jonathan Butcher has very kindly asked me to do another piece. Again, I better not tell you too much about it in case someone pinches it because again it's one of those ideas where I think, my goodness, why has nobody thought of that story before? So I'm halfway— I finished the first act a couple of weeks ago so I'm having a bit of a rest and gearing myself up for the second act. So that will be finished by the end of the year and hopefully go into production next year and that's it really because that takes up all my brain space. I mean I'm always writing short pieces, little pieces, just to keep my juices flowing, really. So there'll be little pieces, but the main project is the next opera.

Wonderful. So before we go, this is a tradition that I usually ask to each guest: any advice for young upcoming musicians, composers?

Join an orchestra or a wind band or a choir, or form a string quartet, or form a band, form a jazz group, form a rock group, play together, find out what it's like to play with other people, and then start writing things for those groups. See what happens.

Thank you so much. So if you're interested in learning more about Mr. David Hackbarth Johnson, please go to his blog site. It's called dhackj.blogspot.com. And also Mr. Hackbarth Johnson has a YouTube channel. It's youtube.com/@dhrichjohnson. @dhackj, D-Hack J, so, uh, so that you can listen to his music, some piano music and orchestral music and some chamber music on his YouTube channel. So before I let you go, it's been a really wonderful conversation. What a wealth of knowledge you have, and, uh, it's a very privilege to really speak with you today. So, but however, we're not done yet. There's one more thing to do. It's called The Piano Pod with Yukimi Song with rapid-fire questions. And this is part of the show where I get to ask fun questions to each guest. Now, here's a little warning. As silly as these questions may sound, your answers may reveal who you truly are. So I hope you're ready.

But is the audience ready?

Ready or not, here we come, right? Okay, so please answer them with shortest responses possible, and no explanation is necessary. Question number 1: What is your comfort food?

Cornflakes.

That is so cute. Question number 2: How do you like your coffee? I don't like coffee. Cats or dogs? Cats. What is your word or words to live by?

Be kind to each other.

What is the most important quality you look for in other people?

Follows on, really, kindness.

Name 3 people who inspire you, living or dead. Haydn, Haydn, and Haydn. Who wrote like 105 symphonies, so hey, you have—

I've got a long way to go.

That's right. Alright. Name one piece in your current playlist.

Oh, Arnold Bax's Seventh Symphony.

Okay. I need to check it out.

Yeah. Great. Gorgeous. Gorgeous. Gorgeous.

So the last question, fill in the blank. Music is blank. Everything. Wow. Beautifully said. Which is also love. Love. Oh, music is love. Perfect. Great. Thank you so much. So this concludes the episode of The Piano Pod with Yukimi Song with David Hackeridge Johnson. Thank you, David, for joining my show today and sharing your stories and insights and expertise. And you can learn more about Mr. Hackeridge Johnson through his blog site at dhackj.blogspot.com. And you can also find his music on YouTube channel and other music streaming services if you are interested in his you know, symphonies and also piano music. The links are listed in the show notes. And thank you to my wonderful audience and fans for tuning in. If you enjoyed today's episode, please rate this, uh, rate and review it on whatever podcasting platform you use. Remember to hit the thumbs up button and subscribe to my YouTube channel if you are watching this episode on YouTube. Follow The Piano Pod with Yukimi Song on social media to get the latest piano news via Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and LinkedIn. I will see you for the next episode of The Piano Pod with Yukimi Song with Mr. Hackenbush Johnson. Thank you everyone. Great pleasure.

Thank you for inviting me.