THANK YOU THANK YOU THANK YOU: Gabriel Prokofiev and Nonclassical

Sergei Prokofiev wrote Neoclassical, and his grandson, Gabriel, writes Nonclassical. The elder was and is still a huge figure in instrumental music, and the younger will certainly be hailed as one of the most important figures in updating the classical tradition.

Gabriel Prokofiev has set up concerts in clubs that include chamber works and remixes, as well as a record label that puts out albums with an instrumental work and a series of remixes. The upcoming release, Cortical Songs, includes mixes by Thom Yorke and others:


Prokofiev describes his frustration with classical music in an interview at timesonline:

I got very frustrated because I knew that at least 50 per cent of the people who came to hear my music had white hair and the other 50 per cent would all be composers or academics themselves...I wanted my friends to hear my music. Classical music has kept itself isolated in a lot of ways. It’s time to loosen up and take a look around and stop being afraid to embrace other genres.

Another producer of 'club classical' talks about his path towards this type of concert setting in the same article:

When Matt Fretton set up This Isn’t For You, he realised he was in uncharted territory. “I felt it needed to be done,” he says. “Someone had to take the initiative and look at the way classical music was being presented. I hated the fact that people were not allowed to clap or make any noise during concerts. And I don’t like the ridiculous waiters’ outfits. Musicians are not there to serve people; they are artists and should be respected.”

So Britain has its counterpart to what Mason Bates and company are doing on the U.S. West Coast. Prokofiev wrote a Concerto for Turntables and Orchestra recently (video below); the orchestra makes vocal noises and plays motives as DJ Yoda scratches similar sounds on his tables. Violinist/composer Daniel Bernard-Roumain has made a lot of music with DJ Scientific, including a piece for turntables and orchestra (performed by Scientific and the ACO) in 2006. Hip things are happening...
again, like nonpop, in nonclassical, we have a term of negation rather than a new word in itself, but I think in this case, it's an important first statement in the postgenre era - the stuff is an embrace of classical music, but a conscious rejection of the entire culture that still surrounds it.

NonPop with Scott Unrein

What does nonpop mean? Is it some kind of value judgment, like the term 'high art'? Wikipedia's tiny entry calls it a meta-genre, whose classification originated in 2001.

Its originators, Dennis Bathory-Kitsz and David Gunn, likened the term to the fiction/nonfiction duality. In doing so, they're calling nonpop everything that is not pop, in the same way that nonfiction is everything that is not fiction. In thinking about it, it seems to make sense to classify text the other way around, giving 'the real' one term, and the fictitious its negative. Regardless of which way you frame it, this brings up all kinds of questions as to what is real, to which Baudrillard, Hal Foster, and many others would have compelling theories. Most grade school English classes don't get too deep into these types of questions, when they probably should. The nonpop term is problematic because of its enforced binary between pop and everything else; in affirming this duality, it undermines its original intent to describe a meta-genre that may or may not find influence in popular music. In the end, I don't think nonpop constitutes a value judgment but is a transitional term meant to describe the utter genre synthesis happening today. Perhaps in the future a better term will come about, an earlier term will be reawakened (fusion), or (in the best case, I think) the need for such a term will dissolve.

Scott Unrein hosts a great podcast/blog called NonPop. Its name is thought provoking, as is its music, and is thus appropriate.