Catch­ing up with the Lon­don Con­tem­po­rary Orches­tra ahead of Phan­tom Thread live

Hugh Brunt and Robert Ames met at uni­ver­si­ty where they quick­ly bond­ed over their mutu­al love of music. The pair found­ed the Lon­don Con­tem­po­rary Orches­tra 10 years ago, quick­ly earn­ing a rep­u­ta­tion for pro­duc­ing excit­ing, inno­v­a­tive scores. Since then the ensem­ble has gone from strength to strength, col­lab­o­rat­ing with the likes of Radio­head, Frank Ocean, Vivi­enne West­wood, Beck and mem­bers of Arcade Fire and pack­ing out pres­ti­gious venues around the world.

The LCO are per­haps best-known today for their work with Jon­ny Green­wood, who first approached them to record his score for Paul Thomas Anderson’s 2012 film The Mas­ter. ​“It was a real­ly pos­i­tive and reward­ing expe­ri­ence,” remem­bers Brunt, one which led to a num­ber of sub­se­quent ses­sions and work­shops, LCO Soloists shows, and record­ing the string and choir arrange­ments for Radiohead’s ​‘A Moon Shaped Pool’ in 2016. ​“Jon­ny is fas­ci­nat­ed in draw­ing new colours and tim­bres from the instru­ments avail­able, and equal­ly sen­si­tive to the per­son­al­i­ties – in the char­ac­ters and the dynam­ic of the ensem­ble, not just the instru­ments the play­ers are holding.”

Most recent­ly the LCO have been in the stu­dio with Green­wood record­ing scores for Lynne Ramsay’s You Were Nev­er Real­ly Here and Anderson’s Oscar-nom­i­nat­ed Phan­tom Thread, which received its pre­mière at London’s Roy­al Fes­ti­val Hall last month. ​“It’s great to per­form live with the same team who record­ed the sound­track,” says Ames, ​“key play­ers with solo parts like Kather­ine Tin­ker (piano), Galya Bisen­galie­va (vio­lin) and Oliv­er Coates (cel­lo) real­ly have a strong voice through­out the movie so it had a real authenticity.”

Brunt explains that the process of re-arrang­ing an orches­tral score for a live per­for­mance is a lot more intri­cate than peo­ple may realise. ​“We start­ed by going back to the orig­i­nal sheet music used for the record­ing ses­sions, tracked the edits made to these cues as heard in their final state in the film, and then re-edit­ed/re-orches­trat­ed the sheet music to reflect the changes and account for the live orches­tral forces.

“There’s a move­ment from Hec­tor Berlioz’s ​‘Sym­phonie Fan­tas­tique’, for exam­ple, which is used dieget­i­cal­ly – almost audi­bly – and over­laid with a Bil­ly Stray­horn track, but it felt impor­tant to include the Berlioz as part of the live per­for­mance, so that need­ed to be reduced for the size of the live band and then played incred­i­bly soft­ly but with tonnes of energy.

“One of the final stages of the process was hav­ing a print of the film pre­pared with the music stripped out for the live mix; the mix in the rehearsals and con­cert being a con­stant con­ver­sa­tion between the on-stage per­for­mances, the film’s audio and the room’s acoustics, requir­ing a huge amount of skill and aware­ness of the moments where a par­tic­u­lar ele­ment (be it the music, dia­logue or sound effects) needs to come to the fore, or be shad­ed off to make way for anoth­er layer.

“And last­ly, our friends at Spit­fire Audio helped us with a real-action, MIDI-com­pat­i­ble upright piano to trig­ger both the elec­tron­ics and the felt piano sam­ples so that all con­ceiv­able ele­ments were being ren­dered live. Spe­cial men­tion to Eri­ca Frau­man, Graeme Stew­art, Simon Hendry and Ben­jamin Woodgates who were all instru­men­tal through­out the process.”

The LCO’s aim, Brunt says, is to be ​“inquis­i­tive, bold, curi­ous, focused and free,” a cre­ative ethos which has cer­tain­ly set them in good stead so far. ​“Hugh and I spend a load of time lis­ten­ing to music, try­ing to dis­cov­er new com­posers and artists,” adds Ames. ​“Our musi­cians all have real­ly inter­est­ing ideas and are real­ly gen­er­ous with sug­ges­tions of poten­tial collaborators.”

Now is an excit­ing time for film com­pos­ing, and the LCO have been cen­tral to this devel­op­ment over the last decade. But what has been the main fac­tor in this trend? ​“It’s hard to pin the change in scores to one thing,” says Ames. ​“We spend most of our time per­form­ing live shows of real­ly cut­ting-edge exper­i­men­tal music across gen­res. It’s real­ly excit­ing to hear the sound world we inhab­it becom­ing more and more part of main­stream film making.

“We’ve had the plea­sure of work­ing with Thom Yorke, Jon­ny Green­wood, Jed Kurzel, Mica Levi as well as com­posers such as Anne Nikitin, Paul Saun­der­son, Dan Mul­h­ern and Ben Lovett. They have all real­ly embraced the method­ol­o­gy of search­ing for new and inter­est­ing sound worlds which is what we live doing.

“It’s invig­o­rat­ing con­duct­ing an LCO ses­sion, the musi­cians are all fan­tas­tic play­ers, can sightread incred­i­bly accu­rate­ly, make a beau­ti­ful sound but more impor­tant­ly push the bound­aries of what is pos­si­ble on their instru­ments. You nev­er hear ​‘That’s not pos­si­ble’ in an LCO ses­sion we either make it work or dis­cov­er some­thing even more inter­est­ing along the way.”

Find out more about the LCO at lcorches​tra​.co​.uk