North Sea Radio Orchestra (generally abbreviated to NSRO) is an English contemporary music ensemble and cross-disciplinary chamber orchestra (plus chorus).
The NSRO was set up mainly as a vehicle for the compositions of its musical director, Craig Fortnam, but has also performed works by William D. Drake and James Larcombe. The ensemble is notable for its post-modern fusion of Romantic music and later twentieth century forms, and for its bridging of the worlds of contemporary classical music, British folk music, London art-rock and poetry (setting music to poems by W.B. Yeats, Thomas Hardy, Alfred, Lord Tennyson and Daniel Dundas Maitland).
The North Sea Radio Orchestra is an ensemble of varying size, drawing on a pool of up to twenty members. It performs compositions which range from single-instrument solos and voice-and-guitar duos up to full chamber-orchestra-and-choir pieces (and all points in between, including assorted trios, quartets, quintets etc). The instrumentation within the ensemble features woodwind, strings, orchestral and electronic percussion, nylon-string guitar, chamber organ, piano and the human voice. Between six and ten members sing as "the North Sea Chorus".
Compositionally, the NSRO favours original material with elements of the following – tonal/melodic classical composition, English choral and festival music, modern and ancient folk music, and minimalism. Some improvisation is also encouraged. The NSRO themselves cite influences including Benjamin Britten, television composer Vernon Elliott, The Incredible String Band, Vaughan Williams, and more metaphysical influences such as “London clay, water from the Thames and shingle from Bankside”. [1] Various critics have also made comparisons to the music of rock/classical/crossover musicians such as Simon Jeffes’ Penguin Café Orchestra, Sean O’Hagan’s High Llamas, Frank Zappa, Clogs, Sufjan Stevens, Max Richter, Nick Drake, Virginia Astley, Kate St John and Peter Warlock. Since 2010, the band has displayed a stronger influence of Krautrock.
Another frequently-cited compositional influence on the NSRO is Tim Smith, leader of the British psychedelic rock group Cardiacs (which incorporates influences including Early and baroque music). The NSRO is generally regarded as being part of the collection of varied musical groups connected with Cardiacs: it includes in its lineup one former and one current member of Cardiacs, plus at least five other musicians associated with the band.
"There's no pining for anything, we don't walk around in waistcoats. But it is very much informed by certain types of English music, those are my influences."
For much of its existence, the NSRO was nostalgic in presentation and themes. Between 2002 and 2010, the poetry chosen for musical settings tended to be classic 18th /19th/ early 20th century pre-modernist material, chosen for "its natural song-like meter and rhyme".[3] Craig Fortnam has also set modern texts written in the same nostalgic vein. The ensemble's subtler post-modern elements are generally restricted to the musical content. Since 2010, the band's work has focussed on setting Craig Fortnam's original lyrics.
While growing up in Kingston-upon-Thames and playing in psychedelic rock bands as a teenager, Craig Fortnam gravitated towards the cluster of bands surrounding the long-standing British psychedelic band Cardiacs. He went on to study composition and guitar at Dartington College of Arts. Graduating in 1990, he returned to London. During this period period he composed material written for a variety of classical genres and ensembles, but also became involved with the London underground rock scene as a guitarist. One of the bands which he played in was the psychedelic acoustic band Lake of Puppies, led by Fortnam's friend (and former Cardiacs keyboard player) William D. Drake. The band gigged infrequently and recorded a few tracks, but never released an album. However, the band also featured singer and bass guitarist Sharron Saddington, whom Fortnam fell in love with. The two would also become longtime musical partners, and following their marriage, she would become known as Sharron Fortnam).[2]
In 1995, Craig and Sharron teamed up with two other former Cardiacs (saxophonist/keyboard player Sarah Smith and drummer Dominic Luckman) to form Shrubby Veronica, soon to be renamed The Shrubbies. This band gigged enthusiastically in London for several years and released one EP (1997’s The Shrubbies) followed by the Memphis In Texas album in 1999. However, Fortnam began to become disillusioned with the poor etiquette and atmosphere he encountered at rock concerts, later recalling "I began to realise that most people were there for a social thing, and people were talking all the way through. That just started annoying me and I thought, 'I'll write music that doesn’t have drums, that isn’t loud, and we'll play places where people sit down and then they won't talk."[2] The Shrubbies split up in 2000, and the now-married Fortnams opted to pursue a more ambitious and flexible project which could showcase both Craig’s contemporary classical compositions and Sharron’s unconventional singing voice (which blended elements of classical mezzo-soprano with folk and pop stylings). Recruiting several other musicians, they set up the North Sea Radio Orchestra.[2]
The North Sea Radio Orchestra first appeared in public via a series of successful concerts in various antique churches within the square mile of the City of London - St Martin, Ludgate; St Clement Eastcheap and St Olave Hart Street. Taking place during 2002 and 2003, these concerts were publicised mainly by word-of-mouth. They were very much self-motivated occasions with a slightly antique/Edwardian feel (complete with home-made art-deco-styled concert programmes designed by Sharron Fortnam).
"It was thirty quid to hire a church in the City of London, so I thought, I know, we'll just do gigs in city churches, and it'll be like this weird thing, this funny band who play in churches. And the music I wrote, I was really aware of the acoustic potential, so some songs were definitely written so I could have this amazing piano chord that just goes 'ching!' and just let it ring for a bit. It's just a way of creating your own world, isn't it? Nobody else is doing that, so that's half the battle — doing something different."
Members of NSRO for the first concert included the Fortnams, percussionist Hugh Wilkinson, cellist/composer Harry Escott and organist/composer James Larcombe (of Stars In Battledress), all of whom would continue in the ensemble long-term. Other performers included Nick Hayes (clarinet). Inspired by the success of the first few concerts, the NSRO began to expand (ultimately becoming a twenty-person ensemble). While the instrumentalists were mostly drawn from the classical world, the vocal chorus contained former Shrubbies concert-mates and collaborators from the Fortnams’ time on the London art-rock circuit. These included current and former members of Stars In Battledress, The Monsoon Bassoon and Sidi Bou Said. Stars In Battledress frontman Richard Larcombe (brother of James) also shared some lead vocal parts with Sharron Fortnam. Later on, the Fortnam's former Lake Of Puppies bandmate William D. Drake joined the ensemble as chorus singer and occasional solo pianist.
A few demo CDs were also made available at this time. These included early recordings of Craig Fortnam’s settings of Tennyson’s "The Flower" and "Every Day Hath Its Night" and the Zappa-esque "Nest Of Tables". Early (and very positive) reviews of both the EP and the concerts appeared in underground publications including Organ and Evophonic.
In October 2004 the NSRO played a concert at Bush Hall in West London which was reviewed by John L. Walters in The Guardian. Walters drew attention to the initial difficulties in classifying the ensemble’s music but drew positive conclusions: “Is it ironic? Romantic retro? Or post-minimalist post-modernity? Behold the eleven-piece chamber orchestra beneath the chandeliers of Bush Hall, and you realise that Craig Fortnam, their leader and chief composer, is utterly serious in his quest for accessible, intelligent, non-trivial music…. What makes the NSRO special is Fortnam's gift for orchestration, the deft and original way he puts deceptively simple materials in the hands of sophisticated performers. Melody pours from his pen on every page.” [4]
In 2005, the NSRO released their first formal EP The Flower (on seven-inch vinyl) on the tiny London independent label Oof! Records. It contained a re-recorded version of “The Flower”, plus two more Tennyson settings (“The Lintwhite” and “Move Eastward Happy Earth”) and three instrumental pieces (“Music For Two Clarinets And Piano”, “Organ Miniature No. 1” and “Nest Of Tables”). On October 22, 2005, the NSRO played their first concert at St Martin in the Fields, Trafalgar Square, London.
On July 31, 2006 the North Sea Radio Orchestra performed at the Spitz, East London at a Music Orbit evening (a spin-off of the iF Festival) alongside NEM and Makeshift. The evening was presented as "a combination of gamelan, improvisation, electronica and lyrical chamber music." In September 2006, an NSRO track appeared on the nu-folk compilation album Folk Off: New Folk and Psychedelia from the British Isles and North America - this was the Craig Fortnam solo performance of “Guitar Miniature”.
The NSRO performed at the Spitz again on October 28, 2006 (supported by William D. Drake). This concert received a five-star review in the Daily Telegraph which nominated the "superbly disciplined chamber ensemble" as "the kind of deserving enterprise the BBC should really be throwing money at," and singled out praise for Sharon Fortnam’s voice as possessing "dazzling, pre-industrial clarity." [5] Reviewing the same concert, underground e-zine Bubblejam commented on the intimate quality of the music and the quality of the concert itself - "not unlike being at a church service or a poetry recital -- the crowd were completely rapt and utterly silent." The reviewer also concluded "for an all too brief time, they evoke an atmosphere of timeless beauty in the otherwise harsh environs of the East End. If I met an extra-terrestrial and wanted to communicate the concept of Englishness quickly and easily, I could do a lot worse than to play them the music of the North Sea Radio Orchestra."[6]
In October 2006 the NSRO released their debut album – North Sea Radio Orchestra – on Oof! Records. The album was recorded, engineered and mastered by former Cardiacs member Mark Cawthra and contained much of the ensemble’s live set from the past three years. Tracks included Fortnam’s settings of Thomas Hardy’s “Shelley’s Skylark”, Yeats’ “He Gives His Beloved Certain Rhymes” and “He Wishes For The Cloths Of Heaven”, plus new instrumental "Kingstanding" and the part-instrumental/part-choral "Chimes". Other members also contributed material. William D Drake provided “Bill’s March” and “Mimnermus in Church” – the latter a Drake setting of a poem by William Johnson Cory with orchestrations by Craig Fortnam - and Sharron and Craig Fortnam co-wrote the folk song "Joy To My Heart".
"It's funny, because for our first album we did a lot of recordings in St Olave's, which is a beautiful, pre-Fire of London church that survived, just behind Trinity Square. And the sound of that record, to me, is like London. It sounds like timeless London to me. Like the Thames, the shingle when the tide goes out. "
The album received plenty of critical praise. Word Magazine called it "a beautiful debut.... unreservedly recommended," while Leeds Guide praised "a style of songwriting and a lyricism (nostalgic, pastoral, quaint) which is peculiarly English and suddenly, in their hands, timeless" and their reviewer dubbed the recording "one of the best albums, whatever the genre, that I have heard this year." Playlouder.com claimed that "North Sea Radio Orchestra splash colour into every corner of the speakers with a regal splendour and effervescent celebration of God, Nature or whatever it is you may wish to call it."[7]
In the underground press, Art Rocker praised the NSRO for "doing something really quite special.....in their ability to ebb and sway and permeate through styles without erring away from the constant series of lush orchestrations", and hailed the record as "the most beautiful album of the year… could surely sway even the most ardent distortion-pedal freak to step back and open their minds and hearts to this." Foggy Notions called it "an everchanging trip, blooming with melody and twinkling beauty from start to finish," while Subba Cultcha commented that the ensemble’s music was "stepping easily between genres, sometimes classical, sometimes indie; inspired and compelling and often magical, like the soundtrack to a film that hasn’t been made yet. It’s a thoughtful, melodic and calming record that is sure to attract fans way beyond its classical base." [8] A review in Boomkat (while drawing attention to the NSRO’s "idiosyncratic bombast", "cartoonishly baroque melodies" and "unbridled eccentricity") praised the orchestra's "considerable performance skills and elegant arrangements", and concluded that the album was "a fairly surreal experience all round."[9]
On January 26, 2007 the North Sea Radio Orchestra returned to Bush Hall for another concert (supported again by William D. Drake). On March 3, they played their first concert outside London, at St Michael’s Church, Blewsbury, Berkshire. This was followed by another appearance at St Giles in the Fields in London on April 27. On July 2 the NSRO released the 7-inch vinyl-only EP End Of Chimes. This featured an edit of the album centrepiece “Chimes” plus three entirely new tracks (“Guitar Miniature No2”, “Hurdy Gurdy Miniature”, ”The Tide Rises the Tide Falls”) and was hailed as “a highly entertaining discovery” by Drowned In Sound [10] and as “gentle, lush and frankly beguiling” by SoundsXP. [11]
Later in the year, the NSRO performed two of their highest profile concerts to date – the first being a slot at the Green Man Festival in August, and the second being a performance at the Roundhouse, Chalk Farm, London, on November 19. In December 2007, the NSRO version of the hymn “O Come O Come Emanuel” appeared on the compilation album The Arctic Circle Presents: That Fuzzy Feeling ( a collection of Christmas songs). The NSRO played live to promote the album at a concert at the Union Chapel, London on December 5, 2007 (alongside Ellis Island Sound, Mara Carlyle, David Julyan and The Dollboy Windpipe Arkestra).
2008 saw the North Sea Radio Orchestra performing more concerts outside London. During the first half of the year they made an appearance at the Jacqueline Du Pre Music Rooms in Oxford in January 2008, and performed at the Friends Meeting House, Brighton on March 16, 2008 supported by Crayola Lectern.
The Brighton concert was notably in that (despite a very positive audience response) it generated the first negative press for the ensemble. The Stool Pigeon criticized the nostalgic quality of the NSRO’s music commenting that “it’s frequently a fine and lovely thing. But in some ways it can’t help feeling like a retreat… Certainly there are moments of beauty, but ultimately it’s like stepping back into an alternate, pre-war England where rock’n’roll - not to mention mass industrialisation and immigration - never happened. Which is fine for a night, but I wouldn’t want to stay.” [12]
Notorious underground music commentator Everett True was considerably more scornful in his Hugs And Kisses blog (reprinted in The Village Voice), castigating the band for “po-faced snobbery” and “baroque warbling” and comparing them unfavourably to their more post-rock inclined support act: “Crayola Lectern tick the same high musicality boxes as the band that followed, sure: but possess one crucial factor that the North Sea Radio Malarkey just don’t, just don’t get. They have heart.” [13] Conversely, Chris Anderson of Crayola Lectern - in his own blogged review of the same concert - described the NSRO as "perfectly formed and rather marvellous... a magnificent creation."[14]
The NSRO played in Malvern in July 2008 (although with only a two-person lineup) and returned in full strength to the Green Man Festival in August. On September 27, 2008 the NSRO performed an “open rehearsal” at the Purcell Room, Southbank Centre, London in a double bill with Ted Barnes. This was part of the Open Weekend event (itself part of the 2008 Cultural Oympiad). [15]
A second North Sea Radio Orchestra album – Birds - was released on December 1, 2008 on Oof! Records (with the band performing a concert at St Martin in the Fields on November 18, 2008, in order to promote it). The album contained a version of previous EP lead track "The Flower" and another long-standing NSRO Tennyson setting, "Move Eastward Happy Earth", plus further settings of poems by Geoffrey Chaucer ("Now Welcom Somer") and William Blake ("The Angel", "A Poison Tree" and "Golden Cage").
Reviews of the album were generally positive. Isle Of Man Today described Birds as "effortlessly beautiful to listen to… NSRO manage to take you back centuries to an ancient form of music while retaining an eerie ability to remain thoroughly modern… Birds has a distinctly non-conformist sound but nevertheless achieves its aim with quiet, reserved gusto. NSRO aren't about to go on a media rampage shouting about how good they are; the whole project is far too middle-class for that. But by putting out Birds they are giving their audience a knowing wink. They realise they've created a fine piece of work and you can feel the confidence growing from track to track."[16]
Cambridgeshire Times called the album “an intriguing proposition (which) feels at times like it's just been unearthed from an archaeological dig alongside some ancient flagstones. Organ, violins, clarinet, bassoon and oboe feature heavily alongside acoustic guitar, drum, percussion and choral parts, conjuring up images of royal court musicians… (The album) straddles the less crowded end of 60s folk and revives traditional chamber music, managing to sound timeless and refreshing rather than hopelessly outdated. A calming record of quality musicianship and carefully woven melodies.” The review also praised Sharron Fortnam as being “a beguiling embodiment of a cut-glass English Rose singer, delicate, classical, strong and capable.”[17]
Reviewing Birds in issue 181, Mojo described the album as sounding like "Tortoise reworked by Howard Goodall" and suggested "there's charm and melody aplenty, but the churchier excursions suggest bourgeois smugness - Blake would not approve."[18] In the underground music press, the Name Someone That’s Not A Parasite music blog hailed the NSRO as "(the) band British Sea Power wish they could be! These guys are like a latter day Incredible String Band mess of uniquely Anglican eccentricity."[19] Describing the NSRO’s music as "kitchen-sink folk" Subba Cultcha commented that Birds was "something quite magical, but at times cringingly twee and fluffy, but in terms of artistic endeavour, it’s a tour-de-force in no uncertain terms. Part classical, part folk, part something entirely new, if you fancy dipping your toe in something a bit different, then this is a great rock pool to do it in."[20]
Organ lavishly praised the album, saying that “North Sea Radio Orchestra are blossoming in a rather fine way now with their inviting mix of delicate English prog and 20th century classical pastoral folk. Harmonically rich and fluid in a Henry Cow, Art Bears, Incredible String Band kind of way... A fine mix of delicate English folk and something that has evolved out of fine traditions of chamber music… Birds is an album pulling gently in two distinct ways. One direction; nice, simple, sitting in a sunny field, female-voiced acoustic folk, the other towards a rarer thing, this fusion of English medieval progressive classical, chamber orchestral music, via Vaughan Williams, Cardiacs, Vernon Elliott, Henry Cow. In the end, it all works as a melodic spirited integral classical whole. Always more than just decorating modern music with classical instrumentation, at its core a real orchestra, this is something that’s both timeless and enchantingly beautiful – a very fine, very enjoyable rather magical album.”[21]
Following the release of Birds, NSRO appearances and activity became rarer, partly due to Craig Fortnam's concentration on a smaller-scale project called Arch Garrison, the live lineup of which also featured Sharron Fortnam and James Larcombe. (The project's debut album was released on Double Six/Domino Records in February 2010.)
Despite this, North Sea Radio Orchestra performed several concerts in 2009. On May 29th, they performed a free concert in Brixton Library, London, as part of Lambeth Readers and Writers Festival. On July 11, they performed at the 'Les Tombees de la Nuit' Festival in the Opera House in Rennes, Brittany. On October 22, they played at the Union Chapel, London, as part of the Marginalise Concert Series organised by the Arctic Circle label, performing the music of one of their leading influences, Vernon Elliot (arranged by Craig Fortnam and fellow composer Laura Rossi). The playlist featured music from the animated television series The Clangers, Ivor the Engine and Pogles Wood.
In December 2010, an NSRO cover version of the Cardiacs song "March" appeared on Leader Of The Starry Skies: A Tribute To Tim Smith, Songbook 1, a fundraising compilation album to benefit the hospitalised Cardiacs leader Tim Smith.
The third North Sea Radio Orchestra album, I a Moon, was released on July 4 2011. Craig Fortnam composed the music for the album during the winter of 2010/2011, and the album was recorded at various locations in southern England on his laptop computer.
Prior to release, the band announced a number of changes in approach. Firstly, the album would have a "darker, less pastoral sound" with new influences including Krautrock and experimental indie band Deerhoof (and with more emphasis on synthesizer and percussion than previously). Secondly, that there would be a move away from setting poetry in favour of setting self-written lyrics. The band also announced that 'I a Moon' would be released on their own new label, called The Household Mark, on July 4 2011.[22][23]
The band also announced a series of live dates for summer 2011, including a repeat performance of the Vernon Elliot music at Kings Place, London, on June 10, further visits to the Quaker Meeting House in Brighton (July 10) and St Martin-in-the-Fields (July 15) and appearances accompanying indie-folk band Stornoway at the Eastleigh Festival (July 8) and at London's Somerset House (July 9).