Interview: Darragh Morgan

Violin and electronics

Violinist Darragh Morgan’s work has fascinated me for years. I first connected with him in 2017, when he released For Violin And Electronics, an album featuring six pieces that were, in one way or another, exactly what the title implied: him interacting with electronic sound, whether tapes or live signal processing or something else entirely. I interviewed him about it for Bandcamp Daily; you should read that piece before this one.

Another of his releases, a 2020 recording of Morton Feldman’s For John Cage with pianist John Tilbury, has the record of being the longest single CD I own: the music runs a stunning 83:49.

Morgan has just released For Violin And Electronics Volume II, and I sent him some questions via email. His responses, thoughtful and informative as always, are below.

Most of the pieces here were recorded between 2019 and 2023, but one — Frank Lyons’ Dazed by the Haze — is from 2006. Were you always planning on making another violin & electronics album after the first one in 2017 and just assembling pieces for it over time, or what was the gestational process?

Alongside often playing live core works for violin and electronics such as Pierre Boulez’s Anthèmes II and Steve Reich’s Violin Phase, I have always wanted to create another For Violin And Electronics album since the first volume in 2017, as I had already amassed such an interesting body of work.

I had also recently appeared on composer portraits of works of this nature by Linda Buckley (Exploding Stars on her NMC album From Ocean’s Floor) and Adrian Moore’s Contrechamps release of his Fields of Darkness and Light.

In 2019 I was awarded a Finzi Scholarship to research new music for violin and electronics in the USA which in turn led to recording sessions for a number of the works on this new volume. Those sessions were in many ways the creative catalyst to record much of the rest of the music on this album from then until 2023.

Frank Lyons and I met way back in 1998 and he had written for me one of the first ever pieces I played for violin and electronics called Blitzed! which subtly and creatively combined cells of musical material with room for improvisation, use of a stopwatch and an early Max Patch reacting to my violin material in real time. I thought Frank’s approach (and natural instinct for string writing) so effective that when a number of years later we were discussing our mutual admiration for Jimi Hendrix (Frank was a legendary Belfast guitar player in his formative years) the idea of a work encompassing source material recorded from my violin, then manipulated through software, with quotational references to the diminished harmonies of Purple Haze and paying homage to Jimi Hendrix’s famous solo from his Woodstock performance in the cadenza was the perfect fit. These creative conversations led to the premiere of Dazed by the Haze at Electric Spring in Huddersfield and soon after a studio recording, but for a long time, I was looking for the right project into which to embed this great work.

Are most of the pieces conventionally scored, or are they prepared in other ways? How much interaction and feedback (in the verbal sense) do you typically get from the composer during the creative process?

The scores for the pieces on this album appear in a variety of formats. I would describe both Ibukun Sunday’s and Robin Rimbaud’s works as studio-based compositions. No conventional classically notated score exists for these and the material was either, in Robin’s case, created layer upon layer through my recording of individual gestures, often in some way referencing my recording of Feldman’s For John Cage, or in the case of Ibukun, created in-studio using my improvisations as source material which he then used to create the electronics component of the work. Shiva Feshareki’s work Zohra has something of the graphic score concept in its notation along with a descriptive list for trajectory through the composition based on deep listening, perception of the sounds, space and time heard in the electronic playback. And with the violin scordatura tuning of D, D, A, D the challenge is in only using these open strings and harmonic equivalents, how to present an active yet reflective violin part of the work. All of the other compositions are entirely notated in the normal classical manner.

Regarding interaction and feedback, many of the composers on this album are long time collaborators of mine and over many decades of working together we have built a relationship of mutual creative trust. However, I always want creative feedback from composers about the stylistic aesthetic I have chosen for my approach to each of their works. It’s really very important for me to receive their stamp of approval!

Do any of these pieces incorporate improvisation (or “indeterminacy” in classical music terms)?

In Frank’s, Shiva’s and Ibukun’s works there is much freedom for improvisation. Frank uses lots of cells of material which I break free of in his cadenza and I have spoken above about Shiva’s and Ibukun’s processes.

When you’re recording a violin track to accompany a fully assembled, preexisting piece of electronic music, how does that feel? In chamber music there’s some interaction, some give and take between performers, but here you’re on your own — is there a coldness to it at times?

Many years ago, as violinist with the Smith Quartet, I frequently played and recorded Steve Reich’s Triple Quartet and Different Trains. These experiences had a profound impact on my approach to how one plays or records “with” an electronics/computer/tape fixed component to a piece of music which will not vary rubato-wise, unlike in most live chamber music settings. I have never felt as though the rhythmic attentiveness that is needed to play super accurately and cleanly has taken away from the musical components to my interpretation of such works. In particular in Zack Browning’s virtuosic Sole Injection, I really enjoyed the “locked in” aspect one had to embody to both nail his high-energy, fast, technically difficult writing but also play in an unabashed soloistic manner that I hope comes across as something convincing, never restrictive.

Irene Buckley’s Liminalis has multiple layers of me playing on it but as a slow, more drawn-out, contemplative work, I have the sonic space to create a very ethereal timbral approach to violin playing, and yet each of these layered violins needed to be played incredibly accurately in order to create the violin choir sonority that Irene was looking for.

Were any of these pieces commissioned by you, or written especially for you? How does that process work, for those of us who know nothing about that world?

Yes, at least half of the album was written for me. Mira Calix’s just one more thing was originally a work for double bass (Robert Black, Bang On A Can All-Stars) and one day on a Eurostar train back from Paris to London Mira and I were discussing lots of things including South Africa where I had lived and which was her motherland, but also how could we get a new violin work off the ground. And she mentioned this string piece for double bass and tape, and after hearing it I encouraged her to go away and see how, with input from me, we could recreate this as a new version of the work for violin and tape. The album is also dedicated to Mira’s memory.

Commissioning new music is an incredibly special and unique feature of our art form. Raising money for these commissions is both challenging and hugely time-consuming. That said, it is so important to keep encouraging not just new creativity but new work and looking forward to see where music can go, even this type of music, in the future.

Have you performed any of these pieces live, and which ones represent the greatest challenge as a performer? How much opportunity is there to perform this kind of music, generally, as opposed to more traditional classical/chamber repertoire?

I have performed live over half of this album and on multiple occasions in Europe, USA and Asia and Africa. Later this year I will bring some of this album to Huddersfield Contemporary Music Festival for a special performance. Obviously, any piece that has a fixed rhythmic tape part presents a strong challenge to synchronise with really accurately and energetically in a live performance, so knowing these tracks intimately helps! The sound worlds of all of these pieces in live performance are, as with any music, adapted to the space and I have to still project into the hall my sound, in balance with the electronics, so it is a kind of chamber music.

One of the challenges in encouraging promoters/curators to programme this type of repertoire is the tech crew/sound engineer/technology required in order to put it on. However, most of these pieces are “low tech” when it comes to playing them live. There are increasing numbers of spaces to perform this repertoire — I’m thinking from Café Oto in London to National Sawdust in New York — but they’re still definitely more “niche” than the venues/festivals available, say, for my own chamber group, Fidelio Trio, when we are performing our core classical repertoire.

That’s it for today. See you on Friday, when we’ll be celebrating the release of two amazing new albums on Burning Ambulance Music — Ava Mendoza/gabby fluke-mogul/Carolina Pérez’s Mama Killa and Cecil Taylor/Tony Oxley’s Flashing Spirits — plus some fascinating articles for paying subscribers.