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How did you become involved in writing material which was more more classically-oriented?
I've become more curious, or allowed my curiosity to lead me into collaboration, and into more studying and listening. I'm just doing with the music Pm encountering now what I've always done. Ever since I started out I've just synthesised everything I've ever learned. Pm a craftsman to some degree, and without discounting inspiration, in some sense I'm assembling things out of found shapes.
What kind of line — if any — do you draw between your pop and classical material?
I don't really see a boundary. Obviously there are signposts of convenience, basic points where people say "that's such-and-such a music," but I try to ignore these signposts and try to listen through the conventions. I think that's very important.
Music which we regard with an almost religious awe was in forward motion when it happened, and we shouldn't lose sight of that. This goes for pop music as well as for classical music, or jazz. When these things we really cherish happened, they were revolutionary.
A good example is Louis Armstrong, one of the forgotten revolutionaries of this century. He was absolutely startling to the music [environment] he was working in, yet in time his revolution was absorbed. It doesn't always follow that when you move beyond these points into new ones you do the best, most vital or spontaneous work, but that doesn't mean you shouldn't do it.
I'm musically simple compared with many people; I'm intuitive about things, and I don't feel that I necessarily have to be schooled, even in the forms I was working in to start with. You don't need to know every word in the dictionary before you can write a sentence. It's the same with music; you've got to get certain skills, then proceed along until they no longer serve you.
When you sat down to do The Juliet Letters, what models were you using? What were you trying to do that was different from what you do when writing pop material?
To be perfectly honest, I didn't really know what we were doing when we did that because it was completely new. Now that we've done it, I feel I've got some idea. I certainly had musical models in my head, types of expression that I hoped we could approach.
What really shocked me was the energy level generated by the live performance. That record is uncharacteristic for anything that uses classical music instrumentation. But we were inviting chamber music audiences to participate, to come and listen. And they did. It wasn't only the people who bought my records. It was a very large audience in classical music terms.
What's your opinion of the current state of music?
Things are changing very fast now. Just a few years ago I felt like "here we go again," everybody is digging themselves a huge trench in pop music, and everything's got to be like this, and we're going to defend it to the last guitar string. That happens about every five years.
Now we seem to be in one of those moments where anything can be a hit. And that counts right into the worlds that are nominally called classical and jazz, that involve all sorts of strange marriages and explorations, many of which can even have quite simple commercial agendas, which is OK if they're done well. It's a great time, because so many things are happening at the same moment. It's so diverse, and yet doesn't seem to be at all in conflict.
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