HN vol.1 Interview: Claire M Singer

Claire M Singer is a composer, producer and performer of acoustic and electronic music, film and installations. In recent years her work has focused on composing and performing a mix of organ, cello and electronics and her debut album Solas was released on Touch in June 2016 followed by her second release Fairge in October 2017.

For her performance at Hidden Notes she was joined by cellist Sandy Bartai from the BBC National Orchestra of Wales and the instrumental rock group the Pirate Ship Quintet.

By Sean Roe
Hidden Notes vol.1
September 2019

Do you come from a musical family? When did you start playing music and what was your first instrument?

My Great Grandma played the melodeon and piano and my Grandma took organ lessons. Through some recent family tree investigation I found out that my Great Great Grandma was an organist at a small church in Aberdeenshire. I’m hoping I can record on that organ at some point, which would be really special. I started with the cello at the age of seven and then continued on to piano at eleven. I started playing organ when I joined the Union Chapel in 2012. I have been composing for organ since 2006 but the early pieces were written for another organist to play. Since I had keys to one of the most beautiful organs in the world (Father Henry Willis, 1877), I used to sit for hours on end and experiment.

You are a music director at the Union Chapel in London from where you organize the experimental organ festival; Organ Reframed. How did the festival came about and what’s been your highlights there?

The idea of the festival has been a long time coming since I wrote my first organ piece back in 2006 and wanted to share the secret of how amazing the organ is - but it didn’t come into fruition until October 2016. The first three years of my time as music director of the organ at Union Chapel was transitioning the organ from its full restoration into developing a program of concerts and educational workshops around it. This three-year program was called the Organ Project, which was funded by the Heritage Lottery Fund along with the full restoration of the organ. The Project gave me a chance to test the waters with different ideas and develop a regular organ concert presence at the chapel of all different genres. After completion in 2016, I felt ready to finally consolidate these ideas into a festival and organ reframed was born.

The organ has one of the largest repertoires and has a strong Classical concert organ scene and that is equally important. In my opinion, we should embrace its historic repertoire but also help it to grow. There aren’t many contemporary composers writing for the organ as access can be tricky; most organs are in churches so you need to know someone with a key! In order to really explore and write innovative music you need time with the instrument. The main aim of organ reframed is to commission artists and composers to write new works; to allow them time on the organ to develop ideas and ultimately help develop the organ repertoire and show that this is an instrument that is very much capable of being at the forefront of new music today. To have the opportunity to build on the organ’s rich history and bring it to the attention of a new generation of artists feels hugely important.

Each organ reframed has been hugely special and unique it’s hard to select specific pieces. Two commissions I thought I would only ever be able to dream of was Éliane Radigue who wrote her very first organ work for organ reframed in 2018 and commissioning Low in 2017, both were super spine tingling epic!

Claire M SInger, Hidden Notes vol.1, Sept 2019 by Tom Jacob

For your performance in Stroud I understand you’ll be using the organ in St Laurence - Do you know much about the organ? Will you get a chance to test it before the show?

I haven’t had a chance to visit yet but I will be making several trips to practice prior to the concert. Each organ is different with their own set of stops producing different palettes of sound, they vary in size and the space is very much a part of the instrument - you are effectively also playing the room. This is really exciting as you can experiment with the acoustics and of course each time you play on a different organ you have to learn that instrument and space, making each performance very site specific. I experiment a lot with the mechanical stop action, which lets you precisely control how much wind enters each pipe. This requires a lot of practice and exploration to learn each incremental sound the organ can make. As every organ is unique, the piece will differ on other organs but that’s what makes writing and working with the organ so fascinating.

However it gets really tricky because there are two types of organ: electric stop organ (where you can’t play with the wind) and mechanical, and I need mechanical to produce everything live. When the organ is electric stop action I have to approach my set in a different way by using pre-recorded wind sounds combining them with the electric stops. The organ in St Laurence is electric stop action so I need a lot of preparation time to make sure these sounds blend perfectly with the instrument…

You have released two albums, Solas and Fairge - can you tell us about these recordings? Are you working on anything new at the moment?

My first album Solas (2016) was an accumulation of 15 years of work. The organ material was all new, but one of the tracks is actually the first piece I wrote in the studio at Goldsmiths. The second release Fairge (2017) was a commission from Oude Kerk, a church and gallery space in Amsterdam. What was particularly interesting about this commission was that the performance would take place at the same time as Dutch artist Marinus Boezem’s exhibition of new site-specific works. The exhibition included a multi-speaker sound installation, which featured field recordings of Boezem’s 1987 work De Groene Kathedraal (The Green Cathedral) and as part of the brief I was asked to incorporate his installation into my live performance. After the concert, I decided I wanted to release it as a standalone piece without the installation. It’s exciting when you’re working to a spec as you’re forced into thinking differently.

I’m currently working on my new album which I’m hoping to release later next year but in October my vinyl Trian comes out on Touch which features all the tracks from Solas apart from The Molendinar (It’s too long for vinyl) and Fairge.

W: clairemsinger.com Label: touch33.net

Sean Roe runs Stroud based independent record store Sound Records with Tom Monobrow. He is also an artist, DJ and musician and member of Wool Heads – a new musical collaboration with performance artist Uta Baldauf.