Anoushka Shankar is our guest on this latest episode of Composing Myself, beaming in from her home in London for a captivating chat with Wise Music Group Creative Director and CEO Gill Graham and Dave Holley. During the course of this enchanting conversation we learn how a childhood discovery of Peter and the Wolf led to a realisation of the power and imagery of music and her subsequent interest in playing the sitar, how studying with her father Ravi Shankar shaped Anoushka's musical...

It’s a real privilege this week to talk to one of the world’s most complete musicians, Rufus Wainwright, beaming in from a Philadelphia hotel room to join hosts, Wise Music group CEO and Creative Director Dave Holley and Gill Graham. In this fascinating chat we discover how a guitar case came to be Rufus’ first crib, the key difference between critics and composers and why “if there is no turmoil in the process it’s probably not a very good piece”, and a passion for opera bringing forth two...

We travel to early-morning Santa Monica in this latest edition of Composing Myself, where multi-million-selling songwriter, record producer, music supervisor and label executive Richard Rudolph is bright-eyed, bushy-tailed and fizzing with energy in his creative headquarters. In this fascinating hour-long chat, helmed by Wise Music Group CEO Dave Holley and Creative Director Gill Graham, we take a journey through Richard’s illustrious, six-decade career - including a stop, of course, at a...

Norwegian vocalist and composer Maja S. K. Ratkje joins Wise Music Group CEO Dave Holley and Creative Director Gill Graham in this latest episode of Composing Myself, beaming in from her basement home studio on the fringes of Oslo. Maja talks about how as a child her sound world of birdsong and languages influenced her music, the intention of “using classical music to say something about the lives we are living in our time”, studying at the Norwegian Academy of Music and the first piece she...

Cameroon-born, London-raised choreographer and composer Dickson Mbi is our guest on this week’s Composing Myself, beaming in from Glasgow for a riveting chat with Wise Music CEO Dave Holley and Creative Director Gill Graham. Hot topics discussed with this engaging and charismatic creative polymath include: - how Youssou N’Dour and Neneh Cherry’s ‘7 seconds’ “was the song that smashed it for me” and pulled a young Dickson away from football - getting into dance “because of girls” - a chance...

British-American composer and force of nature Tarik O’Regan meets Wise Music Group CEO Dave Holley and Creative Director Gill Graham in this whirlwind of an episode of Composing Myself. Conversational ping-pongs gently batted about the table this week include: - driverless taxis in San Francisco and “the dominance of tech” in our everyday lives - John-Paul Jones and the aborted arrow dance - a brief stint in banking - what the devil is a fugue? - long childhood car journeys listening to Led...

Scottish composer Helen Grime is this week’s guest on Composing Myself, talking to Wise Music Group CEO Dave Holley and Creative Director Gill Graham about her life in and out of music. Melodic motifs on the conversational score today include her formative years studying the oboe, why a first rehearsal is more nerve-wracking than a premiere, experiences at Tanglewood - the summer home of the Boston Symphony Orchestra, why passing knowledge forward through teaching and learning is so...

It’s an exciting first for Composing Myself this week, with this episode’s guest holding a position in none other than The Royal Household of the United Kingdom. Judith Weir - Master of The King’s Music (and former Master of The Queen’s Music) – talks to Wise Music Group CEO Dave Holley and Creative Director Gill Graham about an illustrious life of creative adventure, from a fortuitous mentorship by Sir John Tavener to being appointed to a Royal position by Queen Elizabeth II. Stops along the...

Welsh composer Paul Mealor is our guest on this week’s episode of Composing Myself, presented by Wise Music Group CEO and Creative Director Dave Holley and Gill Graham. Topics covered across this warm and inspiring conversation include: - a childhood discovery of Iron Maiden -“people were just singing from the heart; they didn’t care about anything other than the music” - why boys get into heavy metal - the “visualness” of Debussy and Ravel - being “step friends” with Aled Jones - the...

This week’s guest is British composer Cheryl Frances-Hoad, who talks to Composing Myself hosts Wise Music CEO and Creative Director Dave Holley and Gill Graham about her fascinating life in and out of music. Starting with her formative years leading to her getting a place as a cellist at the Yehudi Menuhin School, Cheryl talks about being a shy child and how finding composition at an early age gave her a voice she might otherwise not have discovered. We also learn about her work with young...

Wise Music Group CEO Dave Holley and Creative Director Gill Graham beam out to the south of France in this latest episode of Composing Myself, to chat to American composer, performer and founding member of The National Bryce Dessner. Stops on this week’s conversational journey include: - learning how to play at a school with no music department, utilising the musical skills of a rebellious English teacher - why taking time off is as critical for creativity as the creative process itself - the...

This episode of Composing Myself sees Wise Music Group CEO Dave Holley and Creative Director Gill Graham venture - digitally, naturally - to the wild hinterlands of northern Finland for a highly illuminating conversation with Outi Tarkiainen. Winding through subjects as diverse as motherhood, how synesthesia affects and influences the compositional process, foraying into the world of jazz, and breaking down long-standing taboos in classical music, this is forty-five minutes you’ll be glad to...

We travel to Gdansk in this latest episode of Composing Myself for a chat with Polish composer Hania Rani. During the course of this wonderful forty-five minute conversation with Wise Music CEO Dave Holley and Creative Director Gill Graham we learn about Hania’s early love for Beethoven’s sonatas and the struggle of having to choose between Britney and J-Lo, her accidental, into-the-frying-pan introduction to singing, her work on the posthumous music of Polish rock musician and composer...

The tenth episode of Composing Myself sees Wise Music Group CEO Dave Holley and Creative Director Gill Graham once again stretch their hands across the ocean to New York to embark on a wonderful journey of memories, anecdotes and musings with veteran composer John Corigliano. The conversation covers John’s formative years growing up in a musical family and how the lingering nerves he reserved for his father affected his professional journey (“for the first ten or fifteen years of buy...

Composing Myself starts 2023 as we mean to go on, with Wise Music Group CEO Dave Holley and Creative Director Gill Graham embarking on a bracing, invigorating meander through the conversational hills with Icelandic composer and multi-instrumentalist Ólafur Arnalds. Subjects broached include the minutiae on how phonographs work and Ólafur’s formative teenage hardcore punk band Cone Heads, the long and winding road from hardcore bands to composing theBroadchurch score, and the development and...

American composer Missy Mazzoli joins us from her home in New York for this latest episode of Composing Myself. It’s a customarily broad-ranging chat with Wise Music CEO Dave Holley and Creative Director Gill Graham. Topics on today’s conversational menu include Missy’s childhood obsession with Beethoven and learning to play on a piano bought in a flea market, how writing made her feel like she was “putting the world in order”, getting stuck in to the Pennsylvania Riot Grrrl scene as a...

Icelandic composer Anna Thorvaldsdottir beams in from Reykjavik to join Wise Music CEO and Creative Director Dave Holley and Gill Graham for this seventh episode of Composing Myself, for an illuminating conversation spanning her raison d’être and innate need to create music, the influence of Icelandic culture and geography on her compositions, the crucial importance of communication between composer and players, and the “magic in the dimensions” unique to an orchestra of 80-100...

Joby Talbot is the only living composer to have written the music for three full-length ballets for The Royal Ballet in London. In this sixth episode of Composing Myself Wise Music CEO and Creative Director Dave Holley and Gill Graham catch up with the genre-bending maestro to talk about his “horrible” jobs before he became a composer (Night shift at the local mortuary! Laundry at a mental institution!), working with Nigel Godrich and their close professional bond, the key differences between...

The fifth episode of Composing Myself sees Wise Music CEO Dave Holley and Creative Director Gill Graham convene with French-British composer Josephine Stephenson for an illuminating and insightful meander through the fertile meadowlands of conversation. Topics covered include; - a formative introduction to the works of Mahler (“powerful music for a tiny child”) - how you really know when something is finished - collaborations with Damon Albarn, Arctic Monkeys and Radiohead - redressing the...

The big red beachball of conversation is kept resolutely in the air in this fourth episode of Composing Myself, with Wise Music CEO Dave Holley and Creative Director Gill Graham speaking to the effervescent Rod Argent, mastermind of The Zombies and Wise Music composer in his own right. Subjects of import covered in this terrific ramble through the wilds of Bantershire include: - the 'secret jazz’ element of She’s Not There, and the Dick James offer that led to the timeless classic’s...

In this third instalment of Wise Music Group’s special fiftieth anniversary Composing Myself series you can hear Wise Music Group’s CEO Dave Holley and Creative Director Dave Gill Graham chat to Academy Award-winning film composer Rachel Portman. Spanning her formative influences, a first job via the great David Puttnam, coping with writer’s block, composing for The Cider House Rules and The Little Prince and the differences between writing for film and opera, to her passion for raising...

In this second episode of Wise Music, hosts Dave Holley and Gill Graham speak to Wise Music composer Nico Muhly, beaming in from Paris. Freshly cooked and piping hot gourmet dishes on the conversational menu today include a run-through Nico's "fantastic" studio in New York and his trusty mobile rig (includes globally-scattered MIDI keyboard collection!), diligent daily writing discipline ("I'm scared that if I didn't write every day I'd forget how to do it!"), the all-important routine at...

In this inaugural episode of Composing Myself, hosts Dave Holley and Gill Graham speak to genre-bending Leicestershire husband-and-wife duo and Wise Music writers The Daydream Club. Tune in to hear them discuss the myriad joys of studio life, the difficulty of picking the greatest Björk and Radiohead songs, LIPA life, the intricacies of playlist curation, the hidden mystery of a simple coin toss and Dave’s lovingly-crafted Beatle Premier League. Plus, an introduction to The Daydream Club’s...