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Composer Hannah Kendall photographed in Greenwich, south London, August 2017.
Composer Hannah Kendall photographed in Greenwich, south London, August 2017. Photograph: Antonio Olmos/The Observer
Composer Hannah Kendall photographed in Greenwich, south London, August 2017. Photograph: Antonio Olmos/The Observer

Hannah Kendall: ‘I’m a millennial composer! I have to make money to survive’

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The composer on her forthcoming Proms debut, her jazz musician grandfather – and her dream collaborator…

The world premiere of Spark Catchers by the British composer Hannah Kendall launches the late-night Prom on 30 August at 10.15pm, when Chineke!, the UK’s first majority BME orchestra, makes its Proms debut with 2016 BBC Young Musician winner cellist Sheku Kanneh-Mason as soloist.

Born in London in 1984, Kendall has featured on Radio 3’s Composer of the Week and won a Women of the Future award for arts and culture. Her music has been performed by many leading ensembles and her opera The Knife of Dawn was premiered at London’s Roundhouse last year. This is her Proms debut.

What’s your new Proms piece about?
Spark Catchers is inspired by a poem of the same name by Lemn Sissay – a poet of Ethiopian heritage I’ve admired for ages. He was adopted by a white family in the north of England in the 1960s but ended up in care after they felt they couldn’t look after him any more. Writing was one way in which he tried to deal with that double rejection. His poem’s a tribute to the Bow matchwomen of the 1880s – and there’s a physical landmark at Olympic Park, the site where their Bryant & May factory was located. Lemn’s text is etched into one of the giant electricity transformers which power the stadium – a permanent piece of public art.

How will it sound?
It’s full of kinetic energy and driving rhythms. It’s punchy and dynamic. No one recites or sings the poem, but the words – like “strikes” and “sparks” – have inspired the work’s four sections. One part, Beneath the Stars, is more lyrical and crystalline but mostly it’s energetic and jumps off the page.

Your music is being played by Chineke! – an orchestra that is majority black and minority ethnic (it now has some white players too). How important is that to you?
It’s a big privilege. Chi-chi [Nwanoku, founder of Chineke!] wanted something celebratory. The orchestra has come so far since its debut in 2015. I was at that first Queen Elizabeth Hall concert and it was like nothing I’d ever seen before – the mood of buoyancy and energy, and an audience so completely different in its diversity. It dispelled all kinds of myths about who might like, or write, or play classical music. I’d been going to classical concerts since I was four years old. This felt like a moment in history.

What was your own musical upbringing like?
I was lucky. I grew up in Wembley, in north-west London in a family that was always open to music, ballet, drama. My mother is a head teacher in a state primary, one of seven siblings and first-generation immigrants from Guyana in the Caribbean. My grandfather was a jazz musician and encouraged any kind of musical or artistic creativity. As soon as I started school my mum signed me up for violin lessons. Then I did piano and eventually went to university at Exeter to study singing and composition.

This week a former Oxford student described her experience as a black female student as “alienating and elitist”. Did you encounter anything like that?
It’s really unfortunate for that young woman and obviously, without knowing exactly what her background was, I can sympathise and empathise. But I was lucky not to have had that sort of experience at Exeter at all. The teachers in the music department were the most encouraging ever, in every possible way. I wouldn’t have been a composer without that kind of support. As a musician I didn’t feel an outsider, and any challenges I had were never to do with race.

You’ve been vocal in addressing the need for two kinds of positive action: ethnic diversity and gender. Women are still only beginning to find their proper prominence as conductors and composers…
Yes, and the challenges you might face as a woman are different from those you have as a result of coming from a minority background. It’s across all aspects of life, and can’t be reduced to specific examples. We have to dispel the myth that prejudice is always there in front of you. It’s not. It all overlaps. The term “intersectionality” expresses it best.

So what can be done, beyond the good learning and participation programmes many arts organisations now have?
These are good – and certainly audiences at the theatre are more diverse, in a way they’re not at concerts. We have to look around and ask how we can be more inclusive. It’s thinking about how to make our work relevant…

And how do you?
For a start, by not making assumptions about who might or might not be interested. I talk to my hairdresser. It’s an important part of African-Caribbean culture. I now live in south-east London but I travel back to Willesden to see her! I tell her what I’m doing. She’s interested. She tells everyone in the Guyanese community. Many of them came to my opera at the Roundhouse last year.

You have a master’s in arts management and have worked at the Barbican, and part-time for the London Music Masters charity, combining these jobs with composition – but not everyone can multitask in that way...
I’m a millennial composer! I have to make money to survive financially in London. I realised early on you need a range of skills for that. As a composer it’s incredibly helpful for me to understand press and marketing and fundraising, as I’m likely to have to do it for myself. It’s not so easy juggling working in an office with teaching composition at the Junior Royal Academy of Music and then trying to write your own stuff.

What’s the process – computer? Manuscript paper? Keyboard?
All of those. I start with a graphic score, then I harmonise the structure at the piano and then I put it all on the computer.

What’s your top recommendation to a classical newcomer? From the present, and from the past?
I love Beethoven’s Symphony No 3 “Eroica” – the energy and drive of the opening movement encapsulates everyone I want to bring to music. And I love the work of Helen Grime [born 1981]. OK, she’s a friend, but all her orchestral music has such incredible beauty and intricacy. This morning on Spotify I was listening to Stormzy. He’s amazing. I’ve been thinking about how we can collaborate…

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