“The lack of dogma in avant garde music these days makes it exciting”: Dr Leo Chadburn reflects on success and musical experimentation

The album is “transparent and minimalist” and uses piano, strings and synthesizers. Dr Chadburn describes the music as harnessing the very simplest “building blocks” of music – such as a scale or a single chord – and then examining them from all angles “like specimens of rock.”

All the tracks are reworkings of music he originally wrote 25 years ago and is entirely instrumental. Recounting the production process, he said:

To record the tracks, he enlisted the help of fellow City St George’s musicians Ben Smith (pianist) and Mira Benjamin (violinist), together with Angharad Davies, Chihiro Ono and Amalia Young (violinists).

“I was lucky to have an amazing team of musicians, all of whom are real experts in new music,” he said.

Dr Chadburn believes contemporary classical music is a genre that cannot be neatly defined.

While some composers draw on the lineage of western classical music­, they’re just as likely to be inspired by dance music or improvisation. He said:

English Dancing Master is nominated for an Ivor Novello award

English Dancing Master, which was nominated for the Ivor Novello Award, is a small chamber composition. On his nomination, Dr Chadburn said:

He wrote the piece at the end of 2023 for London based new music group Phaedra Ensemble,­ who Dr Chadburn calls “wonderful friends and collaborators to work with.”

The half-hour piece is written for strings and includes disembodied, pre-recorded speaking voices. Dr Chadburn describes it as “a kind of kaleidoscopic radio documentary with musical examples”.

The piece is about the human experience of movement and dance and touches on all manner of topics: 90s rave culture, drag shows in Blackpool, mediaeval “dancing plagues”, baroque dance forms, the chemistry of adrenaline, animal locomotion, the movement of glaciers.

The composition was written with a performance that is “dense and strange and rather theatrical”.

The positive audience reaction to a live performance of the piece last year was “brilliant” and he hopes to perform it again in 2025.

Educating the next generation of performers

Performance is a key part of Dr Chadburn’s work.

At City St George’s, he is in charge of the programme of the University's public concert series, its undergraduate performances, and leads performance workshops.

He hopes that the students he mentors will take the experimentation into their work.

He shared advice to aspiring musicians:

An eclectic creative career

The diversity of these musical projects speaks to Dr Chadburn’s eclectic creative career.

A composer and a performer from London, his repertoire ranges from ensemble music to solo performances that merge vocals and electronic music to film scores.

He is also known under the moniker Simon Bookish, under which he released subversive, investigatory pop and remixes for international artists.

Find out more about Dr Leo Chadburn’s music by visiting his website.