September 2020

Simon discusses with Maya her album  ‘All English Music is Greensleeves’, released on Another Timbre

Can you tell us a bit about your background, and how you came to experimental music?

I’m from Belgium and grew up in the city of Ghent. Even though my parents aren’t musicians, I have always been, as far as I remember, attracted to making music and performing. Schools did not offer music lessons but luckily the evening music schools in Ghent were really good and very well subsidised. When I was 13 years old I was extremely lucky to end up in the class of Marc Maes. Every Thursday evening he was supposed to teach me piano accompaniment, he however noticed my interest in composition and started teaching me composition instead. He had often worked with Karlheinz Stockhausen and was the perfect person to trigger my curiosity in the world of (experimental) contemporary music. When I became 18, Marc suggested that I study at the Royal Conservatoire of The Hague in The Netherlands.

The composition department in The Hague welcomed experimental views and it wasn’t difficult to find like-minded students to create an ensemble with. We supported each other a lot and spent lots of time together experimenting. To name a few of these people: Leo Svirsky, Andy Ingamells, Robert Blatt, David Pocknee, Grzegorz Marciniak, Jeremiah Runnels and Teodora Stepančić. Other composers also travelled to The Hague to work with us, for instance I remember Joseph Kudirka coming in 2011. During these years (2008 – 2012) I developed a very broad view of the possibilities within contemporary music.

The pieces on your CD all involve processes that probably aren’t apparent to the listener, who doesn’t have to know about the processes to enjoy the music. But can you say something about ‘Lark’, first of all. What is it based on, and how does it work?

I’m using the double meaning of ‘Lark’, as in ‘escapade’, but also as the English translation of the French ‘Alouette’. Alouette is a children’s song and I remember having it in a music box and listening to it every evening. I found some old cassettes with recordings of myself as 4-year-old, improvising songs. In 2013 I became curious about these improvised melodies and started to transcribe them. I realised that all the melodies were in some way inspired by the song, Alouette, which makes complete sense as it was one of my only musical reference points at the time.

Read full interview here