Mark-Anthony Turnage

Presenter0:01

BBC Sounds, Music, Radio Podcasts. Hello, I'm Lauren Laverne and this is the Desert Island Discs Podcast. Every week I ask my guests to choose the eight tracks, book and luxury they'd want to take with them if they were cast away to a desert island. And for rights reasons, the music is shorter than the original broadcast. I hope you enjoy listening.

Presenter0:44

My castaway this week is the composer Mark Anthony Turnage. Celebrated as one of the most successful composers in modern classical music, he's known to thrill and surprise audiences with the intensity and imaginative breadth of his work. He's an Ivan Novello and Olivier Award winner who's also been nominated for the Mercury Prize. His influences go way beyond the greats of the classical world, taking in jazz, visual arts and popular culture too. Francis Bacon, Beyoncé and his beloved Arsenal FC have all made their way into his compositions. He grew up in Essex in a family who loved music and started composing when he was just nine. He gained entry to the Royal College of Music when he was 14 and there found the confidence to push himself and audiences too. He says, I hate the idea of easy listening. I want people to be surprised, maybe even to annoy them slightly or nag them. Music that just washes over you and you use as background is really against what I believe in. Mark Anthony Turnage, welcome to Desert Island Discs.

Mark-Anthony Turnage1:44

Thank you. Great to be here, Lauren.

Presenter1:46

So let's start with that idea, Mark, of listening to music as an active experience. Is it like that for you as a music lover as well as a composer?

Mark-Anthony Turnage1:54

I need to be challenged. I know a lot of people don't, and they want to just fall asleep to music. I like things that are complicated, and that's unusual. I mean, not unusual amongst sort of musician friends. So, the idea of easy listening, when I was a kid, I used to find that department or that compartment in a record store. I used to like, you know, think, oh, easy listening, come on.

Presenter2:14

It's a contradiction in terms for you. You have been obsessed with music since the very beginning, a very, very young age. How old were you when it really became an obsession? And how did that manifest itself?

Mark-Anthony Turnage2:25

Initially it was football, strangely, but I wasn't I wasn't any good. All my mates were much better than me. So I had piano lessons for the age of six. My parents sent me to a teacher called Mrs. Chick, who was quite severe. She had this little annoying little poodle called Simone. Used to be yap at your feet. And I didn't really

Mark-Anthony Turnage2:43

Like it that much at six. Something must have clicked. W about the age of nine.

Mark-Anthony Turnage2:49

Something happened and it was all classical music in my household, you know, that my parents uh or my mum particularly listened to music, classical music. Something like a light bulb moment, it just clicked.

Presenter2:58

What changed between six and nine then?'Cause you were nine when you started writing. Was was that it? Was it realizing that music was something that you could create as well as play?

Mark-Anthony Turnage3:07

Well, realising what you create was difficult because I had no role models, I didn't know any composers, I was from a sort of working class background, nobody went to further education, so I didn't think you could do that. So I was improvising quite a lot, and that's how a lot of composers start. So I was playing little piano pieces that I had to practice over and over again, and that was boring. So I just used to make things up, and I think my parents were probably fooled by that a little bit. But I didn't know how to write it down, I wasn't very good at music theory. So the idea of being a composer, you know, they're all dead and they're old. And I had these little ladybird books of composers like Hand or Bach and I used to be obsessed with those.

Presenter3:44

Didn't you used to go around knocking on doors in your neighbourhood asking people who their favourite composers were?

Mark-Anthony Turnage3:48

That was very odd. In a way, composers and composing sort of collided a little bit with football. I got less interested in football, but I used to have teams of composers. So I'd have Chopin at right back and I'd I'd have Bartok in goal and I'd have Beethoven up front. You know, it was very strange. So started off doing this, making lists of composers and their dates. And I did this thing where I wanted to do a slight survey. So I don't know where I got the idea there.

Presenter4:13

I've got the idea that's like a collector's mentality. I can see that. That's a a big attraction of sport for kids.

Mark-Anthony Turnage4:16

Yeah, I can see.

Mark-Anthony Turnage4:19

Yes, and and stamps. I I didn't collect stamps, but I collected sort of information about composers. So I I would go door to door and and I'd have this clipboard with all the composers' names and then, you know, I'd sort of you know, lots of people obviously like Mozart and Scheer, but some people just say, I don't like any of them Lots of people shut their door and slam the door in my face, you know, it was it was just very odd. Thinking about I was a very, very shy kid, but I still had the gumption to go and knock on people's doors.

Presenter4:42

B

Presenter4:45

Well, and that's interesting in itself, isn't it? Because that's the kind of classic artist combination. Look at me, don't look at me, you're shy, but you also have this compulsion to to put out there what you're interested in.

Mark-Anthony Turnage4:52

Shy, but

Mark-Anthony Turnage4:57

Yes, and like writing music is very exposing in that way. Tell me about writing now. What does a good day?

Presenter5:03

His work looked like for

Mark-Anthony Turnage5:03

When I'm really working hard on a piece, I would start probably five or six o'clock in the morning. I mean, I go for a walk quite often, but then I start work. I like working early in the morning because it's quiet. And also, I love the smugness of saying, Oh, I've done four hours' work before nine o'clock. It feels really good to just get that work done. I still work after that time, so a real intense day would be five till nine, and maybe have a bit of breakfast, and I'd start and do more work. It's obsessional as well. That's the thing that I see in composers that I really admire and have known over the years. You've got to be obsessed with it, you've got to be absolutely, you know, that's all you want to do.

Presenter5:42

And are you still, does it still feel like that to you?

Mark-Anthony Turnage5:44

Yeah,'cause I love it.

Presenter5:46

And what about when it's no longer a sound that's in your head and you hear a composition for the first time? Because you relish writing for a big scale, especially full orchestras. What's it like, you know, standing, hearing a piece of music come together, being played by a full orchestra that that you've created?

Mark-Anthony Turnage6:02

Still get the buzz. It's nerve-wracking and I've heard a lot, especially of orchestral music. I've written a lot of orchestral music and I've had lots of performances by great orchestras. Still, when they play that opening chord or whatever, or opening moment of a piece, I still get the same buzz. But it's nerve-wracking because even when you're experienced, you miscalculate things. So you spend a lot of time sometimes fixing little details. But again, it's a challenge. I don't like concerts. I don't like being in a concert because I'm always worried about people getting bored. I'm always aware of people around me.

Speaker 16:27

Two.

Presenter6:37

of their reaction. to the music.

Mark-Anthony Turnage6:40

Yeah, so I've had a few occasions where

Mark-Anthony Turnage6:42

I've had people sort of like grumbling about it next to me or in front of me and they go, Oh, this is awful and I mean I've heard them say that and then then I get up to take my bow and then when I come back to the seat they look at me and think, Oh, they're sort of horrified because they wonder if I did they hear did he hear me?

Presenter6:45

My own fun

Presenter6:54

Yeah.

Presenter6:58

Yeah.

Presenter6:59

And are you okay with that? Like, you know,

Mark-Anthony Turnage6:59

And are you

Mark-Anthony Turnage7:01

Yeah, because I got used to it. I had a funny couple of occasions. I remember like um I went to the Ben's toilet in the QEH and there's two g guys each side of me in the Urinal. One guy said to the other guy, his mate, he said, What twisted person would write this sort of rubbish?

Mark-Anthony Turnage7:18

And I felt I'd put my hand up against me.

Mark-Anthony Turnage7:21

But I just sort of skulked out of the loo and went back to my seat and didn't see him again.

Presenter7:25

Well, speaking of of difficult music, it must have been difficult for you to get your music list down to just eight discs today.

Mark-Anthony Turnage7:32

Almost impossible. And I've thought about pieces that meant something to me in certain periods of my life. So, you know, there's loads of other things I love, but, you know, it was really hard.

Presenter7:41

All right, Mark. Well, we appreciate you putting the effort in. Let's get started with your first. What are you taking to the island first and why?

Mark-Anthony Turnage7:44

Let's get started.

Mark-Anthony Turnage7:48

It's the second movement from Beethoven's Symphony No. 9. So my mum was obsessed with Beethoven and just loved his music so much. So I sort of grew up with this, especially when I was very little. And there's something really amazing about the intensity of Beethoven's music, the rhythmic drive. It's not just that, but it just moves me hugely.

Presenter9:08

Part of the second movement from Beethoven's Ninth Symphony performed by the Berlin Philharmonic conducted by Sir Simon Rattle.

Presenter9:16

Mark Anthony Turnerge, you were the eldest of three kids, born in Corringham, Essex, in 1960, to Pat and Roy. And as you mentioned, your mum and dad both loved classical music. Did they play?

Mark-Anthony Turnage9:28

My mum played the piano and

Mark-Anthony Turnage9:31

The cornet. She was in a brass band with her dad, her my granddad, my m mum's dad, but he was musical and my dad sang. But classical music everywhere in the house, very present in your childhood.

Presenter9:41

In your childhood.

Mark-Anthony Turnage9:42

But also lots of religious music as well.

Presenter9:45

So your parents, they were very religious. What was their faith and how much did that shape family life?

Mark-Anthony Turnage9:51

They were Pentecostal, which I've always struggled with because it was the sort of form in actually you see in America.

Presenter9:58

So the Billy Graham kind of

Mark-Anthony Turnage9:58

Billy Graham, I saw Billy Graham five times when I was a kid. At least I went to one of those where everybody sort of moves forward to the front of the stage and you know when they're saved in the Pentecostal church my parents belonged to there was a lot of laying on hands and speaking in tongues which when you're a little kid is pretty scary and I obviously went to church a lot I went three times on a Sunday and sometimes Sunday school on the middle of the week but I did find it very I found it very hard and when I later on I really well even to this day rejected it

Speaker 110:16

Yeah.

Speaker 110:30

And why not

Mark-Anthony Turnage10:34

In a way, what happened with me is that I music was a bit of an escape from it as well. Um I was allowed to do things during these really long boring sermons about being burnt in hell and and and and all you know, it was'cause it was all hell fire. And I was allowed to write music in when I was in this. So I did sort of s sit there writing music out.

Speaker 110:38

Right.

Presenter10:47

Hmm.

Presenter10:54

How would that work? Would you d would you just be sort of thinking about it?

Mark-Anthony Turnage10:57

Yeah, I'd actually be writing. I'd have manuscript paper and I'd be writing things out. And that was my escape from that to some extent.

Presenter11:00

I'm not sure.

Mark-Anthony Turnage11:05

I was able to sort of go into my own world.

Presenter11:07

Because was that traumatic? I mean, you know, you're talking about the fire and brimstone. Were you scared of that?

Mark-Anthony Turnage11:12

Yeah, I was very scared. It was all about the second coming. And I always remember like this idea that you'd burn in hell, but also that you'd be left behind, which is a thing as a kid, really scares you. And I remember like even up to the age of 17 or 18, which is, you know, I started to get disillusioned with it when I was 15 or 16. But even then, I thought, you know, is this... And maybe I've got a residue of that now, but is something going to happen?

Presenter11:35

Did you play organ in the church organ?

Mark-Anthony Turnage11:37

No, I did later on. I didn't when I was little, but later on I did play the organ in the chat.

Presenter11:39

Uh license.

Presenter11:40

And how did you feel about Right now.

Mark-Anthony Turnage11:42

I felt very conflicted because I felt like I was my parents really wanted me to do that, but I never felt comfortable. I used to play the hymns apparently very fast, but maybe that's'cause I wanted to get them over with.

Presenter11:53

Did you find anything in the music that was part of the services that you were going to?

Mark-Anthony Turnage11:57

To some extent. And it is interesting that I really like black gospel music. I love all that stuff because I love a lot of RB and it all comes from that. So it is interesting that you think I wouldn't like that at all because that was part of my background that I really struggle with. But it's funny, I can sort of listen to that music without believing any of the words. The sincerity of it is amazing. I understand that. And sometimes I cry to it, but it's not because what they're saying, it's because of the actual intensity of the music. People talk.

Presenter12:04

And it will come.

Presenter12:25

A lot about the intensity of your music, and it's very present, that, isn't it? You've actually talked about. Creating a sound world that's almost overwhelming. I got swept up in that. You know, that's something I want to convey.

Mark-Anthony Turnage12:36

Yeah.

Presenter12:36

And all of that does call to mind an almost kind of religious zeal, doesn't it?

Mark-Anthony Turnage12:41

Yeah, and that's I suppose part of me has sort of tried to cut it off, but it's come out in other ways. The music is almost like a religion to me.

Presenter12:50

Hmm.

Mark-Anthony Turnage12:50

It's something that that is so vital.

Presenter12:53

Well, I think we better have some music on that note, Mark Anthony Turnage. What are we going to hear next?

Mark-Anthony Turnage12:58

Well I absolutely love Bach St Matthew Passion. To pick anything by Bach is very hard because I think he's almost the composer composer. He's perfect. Every note is perfect. And I feel that the opening of St Matthew Passion even before the chorus comes in is perfect and it always just gets me every time.

Presenter14:23

The opening of Bach's Saint Matthew Passion performed by the Bach Collegium Japan conducted by Masaki Suzuki.

Presenter14:31

Mark Anthony Turnage, you were nine years old when you started composing, which is such a striking fact and sounds incredibly impressive. What was the reality of that? What what were you writing? What kind of thing?

Mark-Anthony Turnage14:41

Well, I wasn't very good at theory. I found it very hard. So, a lot of the things I was writing really didn't make sense. I was able to play things on the piano to some standard. You know, I wasn't a prodigy. But again, it's a bit like the lists of composers. I had a list of works I wanted to write, and I had like 18 symphonic poems, five piano concertos, I don't know, ten symphonies. I mean, I'd write the keys as well. I'd go, you know, symphony number three would be an E flat, and you know, and it'd be like these. I even wrote a piece once that was a tribute to Blue Peter. I was obsessed with writing down

Mark-Anthony Turnage15:14

demisemiquavers and so they'd have all it'd look very black, the score would be all like covered in notes, but nobody could play it and it really wasn't thought out. It was just the idea of writing stuff down on paper. And I think I even thought you should write things with a quill because, you know, I'd seen in my lady book

Presenter15:32

Did you manage to get a quote?

Mark-Anthony Turnage15:34

No, I don't think I did. I think I got a candle because I thought you know, again, looking at these Ladybird books, all the composers like Handel, Mozart, Bach, they were writing by candlelight. So I had this idea that that would make me a real composer.

Presenter15:48

What did your friends make of this ambition and who did you share it with? Because obviously, you know, you talked to your friends about your love of classical music, but did they know that you actually want to be a composer?

Mark-Anthony Turnage15:54

Exactly.

Mark-Anthony Turnage15:57

Yes, it was very funny. I I wasn't bullied at school and I still to this day can't understand why I wasn't.

Mark-Anthony Turnage16:03

Because I was a really irritating child, I think. Well, I must have been at school and you know and I convinced my schoolmates that my middle name was Wolfgang, which is very odd.

Presenter16:14

You're really committing to the bus.

Mark-Anthony Turnage16:16

Yeah, I really was. So I so they believe that. I saw at school I was known as Wolfie, that was my nickname, which is very sweet. And they all knew that I write music and I used to play the piano and that I suppose that was fairly impressive for them. So I'd play to them.

Presenter16:28

And what about your parents? Were they supportive?

Mark-Anthony Turnage16:30

My parents are amazingly supportive. I mean, I've talked about the religious stuff, which was not great for me, but they both really believed in me. They really thought that I was going to be a composer. And it's tricky because I was at a school where actually the music teacher didn't believe in me, and she thought I was a bit of a charlatan. There was one teacher who actually liked him very much, but he was sort of depping on the school report. And by this time, I was at the junior department of Royal College of Music. Yeah, so you started...

Presenter16:57

Yeah, so you started there at fourteen.

Mark-Anthony Turnage16:58

14. I remember at the end of the school report, it ticked tries hard. My parents were so horrified, I went up to school and said, you know, he's just got into Royal College of Music at June department. What are you talking about? And then he re-ticked the box. Excellent. So that's the sort of strange teaching I had in a way. And I remember, like, you know, the school colours just before I went to sixth form. And I remember there was a lot of my fellow students. Some of them weren't that serious about music. And you got a school tie. And I remember that all of them got that, and she just left me out. I was actually excluded.

Presenter17:30

What was that about, do you think?

Mark-Anthony Turnage17:30

I don't know. I still to this day don't know. I had an amazing English teacher called Keith Houghton who did believe in me. He got me to write music for the plays and I used to play the flute very badly, but they used to get me to do all this. But the music teacher wasn't interested or just actively opposed me. I was another teacher there who also went through a stage where I was obsessed with Johan Strauss and I was writing a lot of waltzes and my parents went up to the school and said, you know, we want advice. So they went to not the music teacher because he was so against me. And he looked at stuff and he said to me,

Mark-Anthony Turnage18:03

Well, you've seen Andre Previn on the TV, you just want to be famous. And I thought, what a strange thing to say to a child of like 13 or 14.

Presenter18:11

Yeah, but luckily your talent was recognised by the Royal College of Music and you started there as a student when you were 14.

Mark-Anthony Turnage18:18

Yeah.

Presenter18:18

So you would make the trip to London was it every Saturday?

Mark-Anthony Turnage18:21

Yes, every Saturday morning. You were studying composition? I was studying composition and piano.

Presenter18:25

I want to find out what happened next, Mark, but I'm desperate to hear your next piece of music, if you wouldn't mind. It's disc number three. What you've got for us.

Mark-Anthony Turnage18:31

This is by my teacher and great friend and composer Oliver Nussen. And it's the opening of the first minute of Tour Ghana.

Presenter18:41

Why have you chosen it?

Mark-Anthony Turnage18:43

Well, because I loved him. He was so amazing to me. He was my teacher and friend, but he he believed in me.

Mark-Anthony Turnage18:52

I came from a situation other than my parents where people were suspicious of me, they didn't think I could do it, I didn't think I could do it really. And he told me I could, he said, you are a composer. I remember going to the first lesson with him, maybe the first or second lesson, and he said, what is this about? Why are you so insecure? And he said, you are a composer. I know you can do this. And that was amazing. So this is the first movement to all Ghana.

Presenter20:18

The opening of the first movement of Oliver Nelson's To Organa, performed by the London Symphonetta, conducted by the composer. So Ollie, as he was known, a hugely important person in your life, Mark, and I think meeting him it sounds like that was the turning point for you.

Mark-Anthony Turnage20:34

It was totally the turning point because

Mark-Anthony Turnage20:36

He was a wonderful teacher because he managed to

Mark-Anthony Turnage20:40

Teach me and criticise me as you, you know, I mean, I was, I really couldn't do much, but do it in such a positive way. I'd always feel uplifted after every lesson. He was only eight years older than me. The most amazing thing, my parents didn't have a phone at that point, and I used to go out to a phone box and I used to phone him up at least four or five times a week and reverse the charges. And he'd talk to me for an hour and really talk me down from feeling bad about things. Or he had this amazing ability and he really cared. And I remember like when I first met him, I went to my first lesson actually. I remember walking up the stairs at Royal College of Music and arriving at the room. And he was really tall. He was like six foot four, six foot five, and really big guy. And I'd heard one of his pieces sort of the last previous summer. This is in January when I met him. And he opened the door and I said, oh, you're Oliver Nussen. And he went, oh, wow. And he's like, I mean, I know he was meant to be there, but still, I'd recognise him from the picture in the Proms Prospectus. And something clicked. I always remember that I said to him, Look, this is not going to happen for me. And he goes, you will be played by Orchestras in America. You will be played by the Chicago Symphony. And now I think, how did he know that? That's happened.

Speaker 420:47

Hmm.

Presenter21:55

Well, he was in your corner from the beginning and and for the rest of his life.

Mark-Anthony Turnage21:57

And

Mark-Anthony Turnage21:58

Yeah, I miss him every day. He died in July 18. And he was just somebody who was kind.

Mark-Anthony Turnage22:06

Yeah. Uh

Presenter22:07

A really, really precious friend to treasure, definitely. So you stayed on at the Royal College of Music and you were studying composition there. But alongside your studies you were also discovering a a world of different sounds and different styles of music. You were the the keyboard player in a band. What kind of music were you playing?

Mark-Anthony Turnage22:09

To try.

Mark-Anthony Turnage22:25

To get away from Royal College Music, because although I had a great time with Ollie, I found Royal College of Music's senior department from so sorry from the ages of 18 to 22 quite oppressive and I was sort of slightly feeling I know it sounds a bit sad really rebellious so I got into it's an it's sort of an ethics scene of like jazz funk yeah so I then started finding out about the history of jazz and all jazz music from sort of early on and I became quite obsessed with jazz and I only listened to it and yet I was at the Royal College of Music writing you know contemporary classical music and and doing all my studies but I think I was always looking for something that was kicking against things.

Speaker 422:44

Yeah.

Presenter23:04

Let's have some more music, Mark Anthony Turnage. What are we going to hear?

Mark-Anthony Turnage23:07

This is Blue and Green f by Miles Davis. Why this one?

Presenter23:11

Why this one?

Mark-Anthony Turnage23:12

I always knew if I ever appeared on Desert Island Disc, and a lot of people fantasize about it, let's be honest. I grew up with Desert Island Discord. Never mind a lot of people.

Presenter23:19

Never mind a lot of people. Have you been fantasizing about it? We want to know. I have, yeah.

Mark-Anthony Turnage23:23

Yeah, um to be honest. And this oh this was always a mainstay. I just love the melancholia of it. I love Miles, I love pretty much everything that Miles did, even the difficult later stuff which people don't like very much, so I still love that. And there's something so incredibly visceral but also melan yeah, it's melancholic, it's it's so sad, but it's just hits you.

Presenter23:24

Yeah.

Presenter24:19

Miles Davis and Blue in Green.

Presenter24:24

Mark Anthony Turnage, you composed your first opera, Greek, when you were 28 years old. Now it received a rapturous response at its world premiere in Munich, but when it came to the UK it wasn't initially as welcome. Now a few years later the same critics who hadn't liked it changed their minds. It's now viewed as one of the best operas of the late 20th century. How did you feel about the reaction to it?

Mark-Anthony Turnage24:47

It was difficult because when I was writing it, I always knew, if I was really honest, it was gonna create a stir because it because of subject matter and also because Stephen Berkhoff, whose play Greek is based on, um so it's Oedipus Rex, it's got lots of swearing. Swearing in opera seems to offend people. I mean in theater you wouldn't or on T V you wouldn't think about twice about it or being offended by it, but in opera it's being sold

Presenter25:01

Yeah.

Presenter25:13

When it's being sung at you quite forcefully by signaling.

Mark-Anthony Turnage25:16

Yeah, yeah. You do have more way, don't you? I know how to set swear words. A bit of an expert on that. I've seen a lot of them. But the thing is with Greek is that I wouldn't have got a commission in England at that point. It took my teacher and mentor, Hans Woner Hensa, another connection with Ollie. Ollie knew him, introduced me to him, and he had this festival in Munich and he said, I want you to write an opera. That just wouldn't have happened in the UK.

Presenter25:40

So what I can't think it it was that you would have known it might cause a stir. You must have been wanting to cause a stir a little bit because this is a retelling of Oedipus Rex with the setting changed to the East End of London. You've got bundles of swear words, operatic cockney accents, football hooliganism.

Mark-Anthony Turnage25:54

All hooligan is

Presenter25:56

I mean there's a certain amount that kicking against that you were talking about.

Mark-Anthony Turnage25:57

Is he said

Mark-Anthony Turnage26:00

Yeah. So me and Jonathan Moore, who wrote the libretto and also directed the show, we thought, well, the Germans are just going to be s just perplexed by this because of all the things you just mentioned. It's also anti Thatcher, sort of sort of saying how dreadful the UK was at that point. So it did go down very well in in Munich.

Presenter26:18

The UK Premiere was at the Edinburgh Festival, I think. Your parents invited themselves along.

Mark-Anthony Turnage26:20

Yeah.

Mark-Anthony Turnage26:22

My parents, yes, they did. How did that go? That was horrifying for me because I've never sworn in front of my parents. So every swear word that was coming out really hit me and sort of horrified me. My dad did say something very amusing when I asked him what he thought. He said, Well, I don't like the words, but I really like the music. And I thought, well, I said, well, I didn't write the words. But then part of me now thinks that I was doing a lot of this to sort of, in a sad sort of way, being quite rebellious, sort of kicking against something even with them. Because, you know, all my operas, apart from

Presenter26:25

How did that go?

Speaker 126:52

Because you know

Mark-Anthony Turnage26:54

Silva Tassie have got and Coraline, I wrote this children's opera, have got really bad swearing in it. They're about families, but also they're about sort of extreme subjects.

Speaker 126:57

Uh

Presenter26:57

Of course.

Presenter27:04

Let's go to the music Mark Anthony Turner's your fifth choice today. What's it gonna be?

Mark-Anthony Turnage27:10

A Living for the City by Stevie Wonder

Presenter27:12

Why this one?

Mark-Anthony Turnage27:13

I think Stevie Wonder is probably the only living genius at the moment. I think Stevie Wonder is incredible. Not only an incredible musician, but just everything about him. I.

Mark-Anthony Turnage27:23

Wish I could play the keyboards like that. You know, sing. I mean, imagine, imagine. I always think. He can do everything. I think, imagine being Stevie Wonders, just sitting there. I love a lot of black RB and soul. As soon as he starts singing, I find it very emotional. But it's just knowing his life and knowing that time, especially early 70s, and with all this incredible soul music. So I couldn't be without it.

Speaker 427:47

A prize bond.

Speaker 427:49

In Hardy, Mississippi, surrounded by

Speaker 427:54

For Walton ain't so pretty. His parents give

Speaker 427:59

And love and affection to keep him strong.

Speaker 428:04

Moving in the right direction. Living just enough.

Speaker 428:09

Just enough for the sit tae

Presenter28:17

Stevie Wonder and Living for the City, Mark Anthony Turnage. And your own music, like his, has never been afraid to have a social conscience. I wonder how much your personal politics influence how you approach your work and what you write?

Mark-Anthony Turnage28:31

I'm not that public about it, but I think it does inform everything. I do things quite privately, although I have talked about them a little bit. I volunteer in a food back on Tuesdays because I think that's I really care about that and these amazing people I work with. I do feel sometimes that I should do more and I feel guilty for that.

Presenter28:53

Well, you do quite a lot. So you volunteer at a local food bank. You've done that for years. And you also have worked on music projects in prisons for a long time.

Mark-Anthony Turnage29:00

Yeah.

Presenter29:01

Why is it important to you to do those things?

Mark-Anthony Turnage29:04

They're important because of meetings people that I'd never usually meet. I mean, when I was I worked a lot in Wormwood Scrubs, especially in the 90s, and you'd meet people that were sometimes from, I mean, I met one guy who was actually from the same area as me. He was in for life, he'd murdered somebody. So I worked a lot with lifers, which I found very emotional. They not always tell you their life story, but you would hear things. And it was something that was very important to me. I believe in prison reform. The idea that you just let people rot in a prison. I mean, it's just so against what I believe in. I really found them very emotional. Quite often we do long projects, two-week projects, where at the end of it we'd have a performance and then the families of the prisoners would come in. And that was also amazing to see the parents or the children of these people you've been working with for two weeks in a very intense situation. And you really appreciated that, you know, I could get out at the end of the day and go home and they would start there. And I know some of these people did quite often, you know, really bad things, but

Speaker 130:02

Go horror.

Mark-Anthony Turnage30:09

Quite a few people I work with were actually came out on appeal and they were actually, you know, they were innocent. And that's the other thing that I've found very strong when we're working with people that they were just born in the wrong place and their situation was so extreme in the same way that when you at a food bank you meet people and you think, oh, I sort of feel so lucky. I feel so lucky that what I was born into.

Presenter30:29

I feel so

Presenter30:31

It must have really brought home those projects in prisons, the function of music, like the power of it, what it can actually do for people.

Mark-Anthony Turnage30:38

A lot of prisoners learn to play instruments, I mean, particularly guitar and keyboard, but you know, there was one guy playing the clarinet. A lot of them like to learn theory as well, because they're in there for a long time sometime and they want to get the qualifications and stuff. I remember one day working with one prisoner, this really struck me. He could play the piano, and I remember it was quite a few of us, and we were working with the London Finetta and

Mark-Anthony Turnage31:00

I remember laughing at something we'd come up. We came up with a tune or something, and I said, Oh, that's really cheesy.

Mark-Anthony Turnage31:06

And this prisoner stopped me and he said, How dare you say that? He said, I think it sounds really nice, but you come from your background and you're just, you know, I wasn't taking the mic, I was just making a joke with a couple of people, but he just said, you know, you've got this gift, you've got to really make the most of it. And things like that happen in prison. There's these moments where people are, well, usually really honest and say things.

Presenter31:29

Mark, you you went through a very difficult time in in nineteen ninety five that I want to ask you about. Your younger brother, Andy, died from a drugs overdose, and it came as a complete shock to you and your family.

Presenter31:44

How did you cope? And when you look back at that time, what do you remember?

Mark-Anthony Turnage31:48

It was a real surprise because he was a gentle soul, barely drank. You know, if you go out in the evening he'd he'd nurse a half a lager. Clearly got him with the wrong people at some p stage in his life. And we still don't really know what happened.

Mark-Anthony Turnage32:06

As kids, although I did all my music and I was involved in all that, we were only two and a half years apart and we used to be dressed quite often in the same matching clothes. We weren't twins, but and he was blonde and I looked more like my dad, I looked more like my mum. I think the drugs, from what I hear, because I never he sort of cut himself off from the family for a while, I think the drugs gave him confidence.

Speaker 132:17

But the

Speaker 132:30

But like

Mark-Anthony Turnage32:32

You meet people who've lost siblings and you talk to them and they say in some ways your part of you still thinks they're gonna turn up.

Presenter32:39

It remains unresolved.

Mark-Anthony Turnage32:40

It does, yeah, and I I still can't believe it happened. And I sort of wrote pieces. I I played a piece for his funeral. Elegy for Andy, which I played and

Presenter32:51

So energy for the

Mark-Anthony Turnage32:59

I mean, I don't mind talking about it, but it it is hard. I've got a picture of him.

Mark-Anthony Turnage33:06

Above my work desk, and I look at it, but I still think.

Mark-Anthony Turnage33:14

Maybe he's still alright. I don't know why, you know, isn't that ridiculous? I know he's dead.

Presenter33:18

Does writing about it help? Because you have, you know, written elegy for Andy and and uh Junior Addict as well and you know he's he's made his way into your music.

Mark-Anthony Turnage33:23

This is well.

Mark-Anthony Turnage33:26

Yeah, and I think that's the thing I do. I write a lot of memorials. You know, obviously, as you get older, you lose friends, and writing pieces about it or in memory of people, friends, and colleagues, is a way of dealing with it to some extent because you can just, you know, I did that with Ollie when he died in 2018. I wrote a little piano piece and then I expanded it. I didn't really know how to cope with that at all. I found myself crying all the time, but also.

Mark-Anthony Turnage33:52

Writing pieces that just got that out of my system, or just sort of.

Mark-Anthony Turnage33:58

Helped. Yeah. It really helps. And I think they do help. It's like, you know.

Speaker 433:59

Yeah.

Speaker 133:59

Uh

Mark-Anthony Turnage34:02

It's marking something, but also it it it's just um helping my grief, I suppose. I also write pieces for people's birthdays. That's quite good. Especially when you'd had less money. You could just say, Oh, people really like that because I write it out quite neatly and they sort of often frame it.

Presenter34:18

Oh, that's a lovely idea.

Mark-Anthony Turnage34:19

Hopefully I do.

Presenter34:22

Alright, let's have some more music, Mark. It's time for your sixth disc today. What are we going to hear next, and why are you taking this one to the island?

Mark-Anthony Turnage34:29

I love Puccini. I sort of discovered opera quite late and Puccini is a composer that's just so generous hearted and a lot of people are snobby in classical music. I have big arguments with really good friends because they go, well it's just too obvious, sentimental. But I love that fact. I'm going to pick One Fine Day from Madame Butterfly because my brother really liked this and it was played at his funeral so this means a lot to me.

Speaker 435:14

Cause he is so

Speaker 435:34

Fish fipping all the

Presenter35:58

Pagini, one fine day, from Madame Butterfly, performed by Mirella Frani with the Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra, conducted by Herbert von Carrier.

Presenter36:07

Mark Anthony Turnage, in 2021 you combined your two passions in life, classical music and football, when you were invited to write a score to accompany a famous Arsenal Liverpool game from 1989. Now Arsenal beat Liverpool to win the league, as I understand it, but apparently you weren't keen on this project at first. It sounds like a dream scenario for the boy who used to create imaginary football teams out of his favourite composers. Why didn't you want to do it?

Mark-Anthony Turnage36:37

Well, because I thought I'd have to write 90 minutes of music to what is, apart from the goals, really not a very good match. In those days, you could pass back the goalkeeper. So there's a lot of that going on in the match. Or 90 minutes of, you know, I'd have to write sort of, you know, there'd be like bass claric solos where the ball would go back to Lukic. So I sort of kept batting it away. It was suggested by Hugh Humphries of the Barbican. I had a meeting with Hugh, I remember, and he said, look, you don't have to do the whole lot. You can just do selected highlights. And I went, right, okay. And he said, I've got one other thing that I think you're going to absolutely want to do it if I tell you this. He said, I want you after the concert to be on a panel where you interview some of the players that are in the game. And I went, sign me up.

Presenter37:19

Blow us.

Presenter37:22

Yeah.

Mark-Anthony Turnage37:22

I've never met a real footballer, seriously.

Presenter37:26

There was, of course, the practical matter, those creative nuts and bolts that we were talking about before, of having to translate the drama of the game.

Mark-Anthony Turnage37:29

Talking about

Presenter37:34

into music. So the final piece is called Up for Grabs.

Mark-Anthony Turnage37:37

And I actually went up to Salford to work with a guy who worked for Match of the Day and we had to just you know find the highlights and I managed to get 25 minutes of exciting stuff and I probably enjoyed doing that piece more than any other piece I've ever written in my life because it was just sheer fun. It was hard because I had to do it time codes. When Alan Smith kicks the ball over for when Michael Thomas scores out the goal that won it, I was having to time sort of how long that kick was and also it was a lot of in-jokes. It was the BBC Symphony Orchestra who I'd worked with a lot and I knew that the principal clarinet was a massive Tottenham fan.

Mark-Anthony Turnage38:16

So I thought I'm really so I'd have clarinet, so I'd have clarinet solos, yeah, yeah, no solos for him to play. That is cold, but uh, do you know what happened in the end? He took the gig off, he didn't do it, he didn't have the gut because I don't blame him if you're Tottenham fan, you don't want to be there. I mean, I really respect Kenny Dalgleason, but I did have sort of slightly jokey moments when he was looking and looking a bit sad when the well, certainly when the first goal went. It was just amazing. And then just to meet and then do I did an interview and I was sitting there just watching these players thinking, I'm up on the stage with these legends.

Speaker 438:18

Uh

Presenter38:18

Doing it.

Speaker 438:18

So that's

Presenter38:18

Have you added solar?

Speaker 438:20

Uh

Presenter38:20

Uh

Presenter38:22

To play.

Presenter38:51

Mark, you are on record as saying that we don't celebrate classical music enough in this country. Why do you think that is and what would you like to see happen? Because obviously talking to you about that piece, that's an example of you playing your part in trying to take that music out there to different audiences and new ears.

Mark-Anthony Turnage39:08

Well, I think people are scared about the formal aspect of it. You know, I've got people in my family who are not.

Presenter39:14

Do you mean they kind of come into the concert dressing up and sit sitting down and putting trapping at the right place and all that kind of thing?

Mark-Anthony Turnage39:15

Do you mean they can't come?

Mark-Anthony Turnage39:19

Yes, I think people are worried about how they should react and how they should behave, you know. I mean I hate that when people sometimes when you get people clapping in between movements, say of a symphony, and then people are going shh or like looking really horrified and I think that's awful because one, historically that happened anyway, but also people just feel intimidated. I understand all these things, but I've grown up and been to concert for so long that I'm sort of used to it. But I think people do find it tricky and I think they particularly find it tricky in when they go to opera because opera is really intimidating.

Speaker 139:40

No.

Presenter39:53

So what needs to happen to open it up to people?

Mark-Anthony Turnage39:56

I I don't know. I've thought about this all my life really, and I I don't know if I know the answer. I mean the LSO is doing these sort of relax concerts I mean they're doing concerts where you don't have to be so full when you can you know, I don't have to sit on your phone, I hope not really, because I hate phones and concerts, but just to being a bit less precious about it is tricky. Um, taking drinks in?

Mark-Anthony Turnage40:16

Sometimes you can do that.

Presenter40:18

Well, what about this? As a composer, how do you like to see your work performed? What's the perfect kind of venue audience experience for you then? Let's reverse engineer it.

Mark-Anthony Turnage40:29

Uh

Presenter40:30

I'll just

Mark-Anthony Turnage40:30

Glad it's been played in the first place anyway, but I've noticed that in less formal situations it's more fun.

Presenter40:37

It's time for your penultimate disc, Mark Anthony Turnage.

Mark-Anthony Turnage40:41

Yeah.

Presenter40:41

Yeah.

Mark-Anthony Turnage40:41

It's the final moments actually of Stravinsky's Symphony of Psalms. I'm sort of obsessed with Stravinsky.

Presenter40:49

Uh

Mark-Anthony Turnage40:49

Why?

Mark-Anthony Turnage40:50

I love every note. I love all the periods that, you know, he went through different things, not just the Rite of Spring. I love the way it sounds. I love the effect it has on me. I love everything about his life. I mean, he wasn't probably such a nice guy, but I mean, I found picking a piece of Shawinsky harder than anybody else, really, because I love all of his music. There is something that happens at the end of Symphony of Psalms, and again, it's not what they're singing about. It's just the way the oral thing, something happens with, it's a technical thing, but the chords, the way they move, and something happens with the bass notes as well. It's like it's very unique. But yeah, that's the thing about Shravinsky. Even though he went through different stages in life writing, you know, different sorts of music in a way, he always sounds like himself. And so he is such a huge personality. And I think a lot of composers of generations before me, but my generation, it's hard to get away from him because he was so towering. He's a towering figure for all of us. And it has everything really. It has this incredibly moving harmonic. It has a rhythmic drive, which of course is in the Rite of Spring. But it has this thing that I find.

Speaker 442:00

Yeah.

Speaker 142:00

Yeah.

Mark-Anthony Turnage42:06

The sound world, I just love the sound world. I love being sort of enveloped in this sound world, but the thing is it's hard to get away from it in a way.

Presenter43:15

Stravinsky Symphony of Psalms, performed by the English Bach Festival Choir and the London Symphony Orchestra, conducted by Leonard Bernstein.

Presenter43:23

Mark Anthony Turnage, one of the things that people who work in contemporary classical music worry about is that although there are premieres of new works, it can be quite difficult to get further performances. You're nodding. So is that something you fret about?

Mark-Anthony Turnage43:37

I mean, what can you do? It does happen. Strangely, the pieces that I've had played the most, the things I thought I'm least likely to get performed again. You can't worry about it. It's just one of those things. For instance, having pieces that played at the proms, quite often you perform with standard repertoire, which I really like that very much. But there's a lot of opposition. I remember once reading, I think it was like GQ magazine, where it listed the biggest turnoffs, and contemporary classical music was number one on the list. Number one. Number one. And I was like, that was my world. And I was thinking, oh, come on, that's sad. I mean, I don't write music that's not Stockhausen. It's not really, really difficult music. But still, it doesn't get played.

Mark-Anthony Turnage44:20

much or at all on classic FN.

Presenter44:22

And what's that about, do you think? What's the resistance about there?

Mark-Anthony Turnage44:25

I don't know. I think then people in concerts I think they're trapped. Or they feel they're trapped. If you go to an art gallery and there's a picture you don't like, you just move away straight away. But if you're in a concert where this music is being played, you're in the middle of the row. People are polite. They don't walk out. And so I think people feel a bit oppressed by it. I do actually understand it. I mean and I have difficulty with a lot of contemporary classical music, obviously naming no names.

Presenter44:53

You've been composing since you were nine.

Mark-Anthony Turnage44:54

Yeah.

Presenter44:55

You're now in your sixties. Does the job get any easier?

Mark-Anthony Turnage44:58

Dething.

Presenter44:58

Yeah.

Mark-Anthony Turnage44:58

Yeah.

Mark-Anthony Turnage44:59

Um

Mark-Anthony Turnage45:01

I'm not sure. I think it it's certain aspects of it get easier. I mean, I think you get to a stage where you think, Well, I can do this. I'm thinking about solving puzzles, but also loving what I do. I absolutely love it. I love writing music. And in a way, it's when to some extent it's when I'm the happiest

Presenter45:20

Well, what you're doing next, Mark, I can actually tell you because we're about to cast you away to a solitary life on your desert island. How do you feel about the prospect?

Mark-Anthony Turnage45:31

Well, I like being on my own, if I'm honest. I mean, I found the pandemic sort of I wouldn't say found it easy, but at certain aspects of solitariness, because that's what I do. I'm not very practical, though, so that would be a problem.

Presenter45:43

The survival skills side would be the challenge rather than the psychological the isolation, the loneliness.

Mark-Anthony Turnage45:46

Ecological

Mark-Anthony Turnage45:49

I'm sort of useless really at doing any of that.

Presenter45:51

What will you miss the most?

Mark-Anthony Turnage45:54

Family, that would be very hard. I'd probably miss Arsenal as well.

Mark-Anthony Turnage45:59

Will you still write on your island? Yeah, definitely. I can't think I'd ever uh stop writing. That's something that would e even if I didn't have manuscript paper, I'd probably still think things, dream up things in my head.

Presenter46:13

Well, we'll let you have one more track before you go. What's it gonna be?

Mark-Anthony Turnage46:17

Well, it's sort of a joint venture, really, with the jazz guitarist John Schofield. Me and John wrote this piece called Scorched, which is Scorched meaning Sco, because that's John Schofield's nickname, Sco orchestrated Scorched. We thought that was very clever at the time. I don't know. I was always worried about this because I thought I'm not going to pick a piece of mine. It's not by me. So the tune is by John Schofield, but I orchestrated it. And it's a tune called Let's Say We Did. I love John Schofield's playing. He is my favourite guitarist. And when we worked together on Blood on the Floor in 1996, a bit like with the Arsenal players, I was like, oh, I can't believe I'm working with John Schofield. And I mean, John Schofield was with Miles Davis in the middle 80s. When we were working on Blood and the Floor, I know it was music inside out, and I said, Well, I'd love to work with you, like just working on your tunes, just mucking around with them. And he just gave me permission. And this is what came out of that. And I'm so this tune is so beautiful, and John is such a beautiful person. You won't have it on your

Presenter47:19

Or island.

Presenter47:20

Uh

Presenter47:52

Let's Say We Did, composed by John Schofield and Mark Anthony Turnage and performed by John Schofield, John Patatucci, Peter Erskine, Frankfurt Radio Symphony, HR Big Band and Hugh Wolfe. So, Mark Anthony Turnage, it's time to cast you away to the island. I'm sending you away with your discs of course, but you can also have three books: The Bible, the Complete Works of Shakespeare, and anything else that you like, what you fancy.

Mark-Anthony Turnage48:18

Rebecca by Daphne DeMaurier

Presenter48:20

Bye.

Mark-Anthony Turnage48:20

I just love it. I I think she's a really underrated writer and I love all her work and and I sort of discovered it a bit late really'cause I I really got obsessed with Dickens and Hardy, although I read quite a bit when I was younger, but I've particularly in over the last couple of years, but I was really struck by this book.

Presenter48:37

It's very atmospheric, it strikes me, and you've got quite an atmospheric music list here too.

Mark-Anthony Turnage48:41

Yeah, I suppose so. I didn't really think of it like that, but I recommend it to

Presenter48:46

Everybody. You can also have a luxury item, something for sensory stimulation or to make your time on the island more enjoyable. What will that be? A grand piano. Oh, of course.

Mark-Anthony Turnage48:57

I've never owned a grand piano, but I always thought if I'd had less to do, as I probably would have on a desert island, I'd like to practise more because I my technique as a pianist has has really sort of gone down the drain. I mean I I wasn't bad when I was sixteen, but um to have a piano and I thought about it as you know, if I retired, if I I never am going to retire, I'd love to practise the piano like six hours a day like I did when I was thirteen. The only problem of course is tuning it.

Presenter49:25

Oh, so do you think the desert will be a difficult environment for

Mark-Anthony Turnage49:27

That, but also, how'd you tune a piano? I'd have to have a manual as well if you'd allow me that.

Presenter49:32

Okay. Yeah, I think I can do that. Would you need what, like, a tuning fork as well?

Mark-Anthony Turnage49:35

No, I think you need that. Well, you need all those sort of proper. You need a kit. You need to. Yeah.

Presenter49:37

Yeah.

Presenter49:40

The things to tighten the string

Mark-Anthony Turnage49:42

But you'd have so many hours to sort of learn that, really. So that'd be quite.

Presenter49:42

But you'd have

Presenter49:46

You could come back with a ch Trade. Briskly, yes. Perfect. It's yours.

Mark-Anthony Turnage49:47

Yeah.

Presenter49:50

And finally, and I know this is perhaps going to be the most difficult question of all for you, which of these OneDisks would you choose to save above the others?

Mark-Anthony Turnage49:59

It's this is almost the hardest, but I think I'd pick Bach St Matthew Passion.

Presenter50:04

Why?

Mark-Anthony Turnage50:06

Just because it's perfect, and it's just that opening. I can't, you can't be that.

Presenter50:11

Mark Anthony Turnage, thank you very much for letting us hear your Desert Island discs. Thank you. It's great to be here. Real pleasure.

Presenter50:30

Hello, it was lovely to chat to Mark, and I hope he's happy on his island practising on the piano and learning how to tune it. There are more than 2,000 programmes in our archive that you can listen to. We've cast other composers away over the years, including Sir James Macmillan, Erilyn Wallen, and Sir John Rutter. You can hear their programmes if you search through BBC Sounds or on our own Desert Island Disc's website. The studio manager for today's programme was Duncan Hannant, the production coordinator was Susie Roylands, the assistant producer was Christine Pavlovsky, and the producer was Sarah Taylor. Join me next time when my guest will be the artist and musician Laurie Anderson.

Speaker 151:35

Hello, Russell Kane here. I used to love British history. Be proud of it. Henry VIII, Queen Victoria, massive fan of stand-up comedians. Obviously, Bill Hicks, Richard Pryor. That has become much more challenging for I am the host of BBC Radio 4's Evil Genius, the show where we take heroes and villains from history and try to work out were they evil or genius. Do not catch up on BBC Sounds by searching Evil Genius if you don't want to see your heroes destroyed. But if, like me, you quite enjoy it, have a little search. Listen to Evil Genius with me, Russell Kane. Go to BBC Sounds and have your world destroyed.