Ben Comeau is a London-based pianist, composer and organist, active in classical music, jazz and more. He graduated top of his year in music from Cambridge University, UK, where he was organ scholar at Girton College for three years, and he subsequently taught pastiche composition and practical musicianship at the university. He also studied postgraduate jazz piano at Guildhall, London, and in Cologne.Ahead of him coming to Bradford Cathedral to perform at March’s Earth Hour concert we spoke to him fresh from a break in Amsterdam to find out more about his music, what to expect from his concert, and his thoughts on the importance of music in bringing important issues to the attention of the public.Could you give us an introduction to yourself?I used to be a chorister at Truro Cathedral, and grew up surrounded by musicians, and classical music, with Bach as a particular favourite. A focus on music was always a clear path for me. As a teenager I became more interested in other types of music and increasingly jazz, and eventually did an undergraduate academic classical degree at Cambridge University and was the organ scholar at Girton College, which helped me build up lots of connections in the world of Anglican choral music, which is still something I keep in touch with.I still play the organ but alongside that I’ve been doing different types of music and I did a postgraduate degree in jazz piano at Guildhall, which I completed quite recently, and which included an exchange semester in Cologne, which was amazing.I’ve got a really hungry appetite for exploring different styles: I play jazz, I play classical piano and organ, and I’m always fascinated by the differences, and similarities, between different styles. For example, there are all sorts of links between Bach and bebop players such as Charlie Parker – but it’s also crucial to acknowledge the differences, not just in the music itself but also the differing cultural contexts where the music has come from.What attracted you to the style of jazz piano?Initially I really got into Gershwin, who was my way out of just focusing on classical music. I got interested in a lot of the 1930s pianists like Fats Waller and Art Tatum. They really resonated with me. But what I enjoy more generally now is the capacity to improvise: I love when music can be left up to the spur of the moment. I enjoy that spontaneity in performing. I love classical music so much but I do find it frustrating that there is not a lot of scope to be spontaneous during performances. It’s amazingly refreshing to be able to get on stage and just play the first thing that comes into your mind, even if you’d only thought of it five seconds ago!Do you enjoy the excitement of discovering where the music can lead you?Totally yes, and it can go in so many different directions than you might think. Sometimes when I got on stage I’m feeling quite mellow and will play something quiet, but then maybe half-way through the performance my mood will pick up and I’ll suddenly launch into something more upbeat and I didn’t know that was going to happen. It’s also good to be able to bounce off the other musicians as well. Though my concert in Bradford will be solo piano, it’s also incredibly fun to be part of an ensemble, as there might be musicians from very different backgrounds, or who might be feeling very different to you psychologically on the day, but you have to make something work. Something very productive can happen when you’re playing with a musician who has a very different mentality to you, which can be very powerful.As well as classical music you do adaptations of music by Bjork and Pink Floyd; do you enjoy exploring the mix between classical and more modern styles?Definitely. I’m interested in everything; I like so many different kinds of music. But I increasingly feel it’s crucial to be aware of where music originally came from, and the stylistic context. When I was younger, as soon as I heard something I liked, even if it was in a style that I knew nothing about, I would try and immediately recreate it on the piano – though sometimes not very well! These days, I play some more off-the-wall music like Bjork but I try to back it up with more detailed research into the style, and I consider how it relates to the classical music and jazz that I’ve formally studied. But I do like exploring beyond that as well. At the moment I’m playing percussion in a samba band, which is a rigorous discipline, and it’s very different from what I’ve done before. It’s been a very good education!Has percussion been something you’ve played before, or are you learning that as you go?I did some orchestral percussion in a youth orchestra once but not to a big level, but samba drumming is a totally different discipline. It can be very repetitive, but you have to be very accurate and very precise and if you don’t know the style you don’t necessarily know all the details that are going on, and there’s so much detail. It’s challenging, but very fun.What can people expect from your concert with us in March?It’s going be reflect a wide mixture of my influences. I think a lot about the links between classical and jazz music and I’ll be bringing up those links in the concert. I haven’t decided what pieces I’m doing yet but I’ve been working on a lot of my own compositions which really bridge between those styles, and I’ll be playing some of those. I’ll be particularly exploring, through my compositions, the counterpoint that comes a lot from, particularly, Bach, but with more jazz harmonies and rhythms. That’s something I’m interested in, the counterpoint of Bach mixed with the jazz rhythms. I haven’t decided the exact pieces I’m going to play, yet, but I like to take my favourite aspects of classical and jazz and put them together.You talked about composition and mixing styles. You recently adapted a piece by the White Stripes about Donald Trump?That was very fun, and a bit of a joke. Again, it does stem from my love of Bach and his counterpoint.You are playing at our earth hour concert; do you think music has an important place in the big issues of the day whether that’s politics or the environment?I absolutely do. I’ve been thinking about this question an awful lot, and there are no easy answers, but when you play music it connects to parts of people’s brains that go beyond where conversation would hit. It can really make people connect with the emotions behind an issue, rather than just the facts and figures. I’ve been a passionate environmentalist for quite a long time, before it was as popular as it is now, and it’s amazing to see people talking about the climate a lot more than they were a few years ago. I’ve been taking part in a lot of environmental activism in London with a lot of the protests that have been seen on the news in the last year and music has always made a big difference and unifies people when you’re marching.Of course the music in the marches is very different to what I will play in Bradford Cathedral; it’s a lot more based on drumming, that’s very repetitive and rhythmic, and quite hypnotic, particular and exciting. I don’t know how it all works; the psychology of music is such an interesting thing and I don’t know how it gets through to people, but from the results you can see it clearly does.With groups like Extinction Rebellion and the work of Greta Thunberg being more prominent now, as well as the awful fires in Australia, we’re at a turning point now where people are actually sitting up and taking notice about climate change?I think we are. A lot of politicians are lagging behind on this but I’m hopeful that we’re getting to a turning point, and that ordinary people are taking notice. You only have to look at the news from Australia and how dramatically bad that situation is: as catastrophic as that is, the more people see it, the more we realise what we need to do. And unfortunately we’ve only seen the beginning of the extreme weather – a certain amount of dangerous heating is inevitable at this point – but as the effects become more obvious, hopefully it will be enough to persuade politicians to take the action that’s required to avoid truly apocalyptic scenarios.Finally what are your plans for the rest of 2020?I am planning something of a sabbatical, to go travelling and exploring other parts of the world very shortly after the Bradford concert, so I’m not really setting up any big musical projects. I’m more interested in discovering more about the world and myself: I’m hoping to take a trip around the world without flying, and I’m working on the logistics now. I’ll probably be taking the Trans-Siberian railway to East Asia and I will be exploring some of the musical traditions there, and I’m investigating how to get to India via land. I have lots of exciting plans!The Candle-Lit Concert for Earth Hour with Ben Comeau takes place from 8:30pm on Saturday 28th March 2020 with refreshments from 8pm. Tickets can be booked at the cathedral office, online at https://bradfordcathedral.org/music/earth-hour-candlelit-concert or you can turn up on the night.
A visit to the Broadway in Bradford inspired Allan Stansfield (pictured, left) to investigate whether work he did as a fifteen-year-old in Bradford Cathedral was still there. Not only did he find his handiwork still there – work which includes one of the angels in the nave and the consecration crosses etched into the building work during the building’s extension in the 1960s – but he discovered a picture of his younger self in the cathedral’s archives, taken during his time there.Allan, now 71, reminisced about his time working in the cathedral back in 1963. “[Work at the cathedral was done by] Booths the building contractor, who got the stone from the quarry up in Bolton Woods. Booths subcontracted out some of their work, like the painting, and I got involved through working at Caygill signs.“One of the first things we actually did at Bradford Cathedral were the two large candlestick holders, which were gilded, and two smaller ones. After that, work was on-going for a couple of years.“We also did other internal work like the angels and the inscriptions. In those days the cathedral had pews so we had to put two ladders up and a plank across. We had regular work at the cathedral including all the engraving, and it took some time to do. “I wanted to see if the things still existed, and they do. It was incredible to see, and how the 24-carat gold has survived and hasn’t discoloured.”It was a trip to Bradford that prompted Allan to return to the cathedral.“Whilst at The Broadway I said that I needed to go in to see if my work was still there, purely out of curiosity. To my surprise, everything is still there in-tact.”It was whilst looking around Bradford Cathedral that Allan met Maggie Myers, Director of Education and Visitors, who revealed something surprising from the archive.“When I came in, Maggie told me that she had a document of a young boy working on the consecration cross from the York and County Times, and when she came back, lo and behold, there was me!“Seeing myself working on it at fifteen years old really took me back. It was strange to see, to have that print of me still around.”Following his time working for Bagnalls, Allan later went on to work for Butterfield Signs before moving into the exhibition industry, which involved travelling for work in Europe. He later went on to set up a graphics department in Brighouse.“Obviously everything has now gone digital. It all used to be handwritten – signs, windows, everything. We used to do a lot of the windows in Bradford, for solicitors and such like, and it would take a week with every day being a separate process.“Digital printing means there’s sadly not much of our signage work left in Bradford that I did as a young man, so it was strange to be in the cathedral to see all my work still there!”Having re-discovered his work, Allan plans to return to the cathedral next month to show his family. “In the half-term I’m going to bring my grandchildren down to show them the work, especially the angel that I was commissioned to do. It was very interesting work and I’m glad it’s still here to be remembered.”And for Allan Stansfield, it wasn’t just his work that connects him to the cathedral.“Dr Donald Coggan, once Bishop of Bradford and later the Archbishop of York, and then Canterbury, was the person who confirmed me at Bradford Cathedral!”
Graham Thorpe became Bradford Cathedral’s new Assistant Director of Music and Sub-Organist here in August 2019 and will be the first organist up at the first season of organ recitals in 2020. We spoke to him about his upcoming second organ recital in the job; what you can expect from the series if you’ve never been before; and his future plans for playing the organ abroad.How did you find your first organ recital at the Cathedral?Absolutely terrifying! More so than I would with a normal organ recital because you know that this is now your place of work, and everyone is looking to you to play well. Occasionally organ recitals do go wrong and you don’t want that to happen in the place you play every day!How did you pick the pieces for your organ recital programme?I’d like to say by panic and using a pin on a long list! When choosing a programme you are restrained by the length of the recital; what you think will sound well on the organ; and what you actually really want to play. I chose the Landmann Variations on a theme by Händel, the final piece first, and then tried to construct a programme around that. The first piece in the programme is another piece that’s based on a Handelian theme. It’s actually a harmonium piece, but it works very nicely on the organ.These two composers are both German. Karg-Elert was late-romantic and Landmann was 20th century, but the pieces they’ve written are based on Handel’s music.The three pieces in the middle, was another consideration. You don’t want too much too loud; you want a nice balanced programme. For the middle we have two chorale preludes to make a mirrored programme. One of the compositional techniques of the baroque style was writing a variation on a hymn tune, so we have two of those, one by Georg Böhm and that’s based on the Lutherian tune for the Lord’s Prayer, and the other chorale prelude is An Wasserflüssen Babylon, which a setting of psalm 137 ‘By the waters of Babylon, I sat down and wept’, the Gentiles’ lament about being in exile.Then, the central piece of the programme is a large praeludium by Dietrich Buxtehude who wrote in a similar style to Böhm; Bach was inspired by both composers, they were roughly contemporary with Handel and they’re all German, so the programme has lots of connections.If people are coming to an organ recital for the first time in 2020, what can people expect?An organ recital is a programme of contrasting musical pieces that tries to show off the performer’s interests, the organ and new repertoire. They tend to be slightly less formal than in a concert hall and certainly at Bradford we try to keep it really friendly. We offer a buffet lunch and refreshments beforehand, and a chance to meet the performers.Having created your programme, what is the timeline now as you head towards your organ recital?Again, absolute panic! I’ve already played a lot of the repertoire. We’re not learning a new programme from scratch, which is where we differ from concert pianists, who will learn a brand new programme and then take it on tour for a year. Because of the nature of our jobs, we’re performing different music every day, so we have a lot of repertoire that we can get back under the fingers very quickly. But, we also like to throw in new pieces as well.The process now will be to check that I can play all the notes – that’s quite important! – and make sure it’s all registered on the organ, which is choosing all the stops and sounds, and thinking about how they will then project down to the audience. It’s a different experience being sat at the console from being sat in the nave. You have to think quite carefully about how the sounds you’re choosing will sound when you go beyond the chancel arch.I will definitely be playing some of the repertoire as my service voluntaries because that’s a really useful way of giving them a dry run, to make sure that everything works and is lying under your fingers, and it also balances that performance pressure which is the thing that will show up any weak parts in your playing.I’ll come in the night before the recital for some final practice time, and then on the recital day it’ll be knowing what I want to say about the piece, and having everything set-up and ready to go, and then it’s off into the recital!Do you have any dates for any touring recitals this year?I normally find that the best way of keeping track of my recitals, is to look at organrecitals.com instead of digging through a diary! Most end up on that website, which is a useful centralised place for me!Excitingly I’m going to Germany this year at the end of July to give a couple of recitals, which will be the first time I’ve played recitals abroad. I also have a few recitals coming up at Halifax Minster, St. Michael’s Cornhill and St. Paul’s Cathedral. At the moment it’s nice to do recitals, but it’s not one of the main focusses of my work, as I have quite a busy job!Will you be playing the German pieces over there?Absolutely, but you might not necessarily want to take the repertoire that they’ve heard hundreds of times and know how to play better than any Englishman, allegedly! It can be really exciting to take English repertoire and see how it plays on German organs; it adds a new perspective for the person playing it. Perhaps you’re even showcasing pieces that the German recital audiences haven’t heard before.Are there many differences with organs in other countries?Obviously the sounds are different. If you go to Germany, you can play organs that Bach played. We don’t have anything as old as that in the UK. I think the earliest we can get to is the end of the eighteenth century. They do feel different. We have electronic actions as well as mechanical actions, so the way you have to play them is different; the keys are different; and the pedal sizes are different. There are so many different variables you’ll often find that if you learn how to play really well on an early instrument you can actually get it to speak in a much more satisfying way than with any modern instrument.Join us for our weekly Wednesday@One Organ Recitals from Wednesday 15th January 2020 at 1pm, with a lunch buffet available from 12:30pm. Graham Thorpe will be playing the organ on that first Wednesday with pieces based around the work of Händel. More information on this recital, all others and this season’s coffee concerts can be found in the programme available to buy from the recitals and concerts.
