What a year it’s been! All of us at Nonclassical would like to thank our artists, audience, funders and wonderful supporters for their support of our work throughout 2023. We’ve released over 240 minutes of music, collaborated on seven concerts with more than a thousand in attendance, and supported more than 100 artists across our label, artist development schemes and live programming. Read on to see some of our favourite moments…
artists in residence
The 2021-23 Associate Composers (L-R Atefeh Einali, Elischa Kaminer, Emily Abdy and Simon Knighton, Image © Dimitri Djuric)
2023 kicked off with our 2021-23 Associate Composers completing their time on the scheme with the premieres of their four new orchestral works for Southbank Sinfonia. Whilst their time on the scheme has now sadly come to a close, we’re looking forward to what they go on to do and hopefully working with them again in the future - watch this space!
Since beginning their work with Nonclassical in October, our four composers (read more about them here!) have jumped straight into producing their scores for the Contemporary Music for All Festival in March 2024, gearing up to record their releases for Outside the Lines, Vol. 7, and started their coaching and mentoring.
We also managed to - with the support of our incredibly generous audience - raise £15,000 through the Big Give’s Christmas Challenge to fund their orchestral commissions for Southbank Sinfonia and Her Ensemble!
You can experience the work of our AiRs live in March as part of the CoMA Festival - dates to be announced in the new year - and at our Southbank Centre takeover on the 4th May, 2024. Get your tickets via the link below!
sat 4 may
nonclassical at 20: outside the lines
Featuring music by Simon Knighton, Blasio Kavuma, Chihiro Ono, Beatrice Ferreira, Harry Górski-Brown, Kendra Chiagoro-Noel and Nneka Cummins.
Label
This year we’ve released over 240 minutes of music on our label, supporting 26 artists making adventurous new music. Our music has featured in The Wire, The Quietus, on BBC Radio 3, in Jazzwise and Ransom Note. Disruptive Frequencies has made end-of-year lists in The Wire, DJ Mag, and The Quietus! Click on each of the albums below to listen and find out more!
"You will not witness a more surprising, engaging, mindblowing collection of experimental music in 2023 because these are people whose music provides blissful and bruising counterpoint to the dead-end, blanched out, racially parochial narratives of so much experimental UK music. The start, just the start, of something tremendously special. Highly recommended." – The Wire Magazine on Disruptive Frequencies
"a veritable kaleidoscope of hallucinogen-tinged fantasias; Pink Floyd out of Aphex Twin via Morton Feldman." – Limelight Magazine on Machine Dreams, Zubin Kanga
“Unfamiliar methods of distortion create the sense that this is all a distant dream, or, as Scrutton’s voice becomes more overwhelming and antagonistic, a restless nightmare." – The Skinny on Interzone, Nichola Scrutton
We’ve got plenty more in the pipeline for 2024 that we can’t wait to share with you. Get everything we release instantly with a Nonclassical label subscription, plus more exclusive subscriber perks – find out more.
watch the music video for ‘i will fix myself (just circles)’ performed by zubin kanga and composed by nwando ebizie!
our label manager, daniel, picks some of his favourite releases from 2023!
Events
Anders Waller, Hannah Thomas and Alex Lyon perform at Battle of the Bands 2023 (© Dimitri Djuric)
This year we’ve produced and collaborated on 7 events, exploring new partnerships and engaging new audiences. We kicked off 2023 with our annual Battle of the Bands showcase featuring dancers, homemade instruments and spanners(!), before our Associate Composers premiered their orchestral works for Southbank Sinfonia.
NikNak performs at the launch of Disruptive Frequencies (© Stephen Akinyemi)
Katherine Tinker and Yshani Perinpanayagam perform Claudia Molitor’s Polymer Hauntings at the Barbican (© Mark Allan)
The rest of the year featured a wonderfully eclectic range of events, from our collaboration with London Handel Festival at Village Underground, to our Barbican Conservatory concert the greenhouse effect. We also launched two of our albums – Machine Dreams and Disruptive Frequencies – with gigs at Rich Mix and King’s Place, both receiving acclaim in reviews published in The Wire and on Planet Hugill.
We’ll be back in 2024 with a number of thrilling classical club-nights and more to celebrate our 20th anniversary (where did the time go?!) – we hope to see you at one of our events! Make sure to follow us on social media and / or sign up to our mailing list so you don’t miss out on any of our activity.
Thank you for following us in 2023 – we couldn’t make any of these things happen without your support. In this difficult time for the arts, please consider supporting Nonclassical with a donation so we can continue to support emerging artists making exciting and adventurous new music. If you’d like to find out how you can support Nonclassical longer-term consider supporting us with a regular donation via the link below or subscribe to our label from £50 a year. Stable income sources make a huge difference to our small charity without core funding so we can put more of our energy into supporting more artists.