Cultured clubbing

Every few years, classical music lovers are confronted by the recurrence of an alarming question: could the type of music they patronise mutely, in historic, purpose-built concert halls, be snatched from them by fashionably dressed trendies performing it more naturally — and popularly — in warehouses, clubs and cellars?

At such moments, critics tend to ask if classical music has “gone cool” and traditionalists hoot with indignation — but the latest projects from London’s musical avant-garde mark an even more radical development: classical clubbing.

Last Friday, the Bussey Warehouse in Peckham hosted a club night at which a newly commissioned opera will be performed. It is the latest venture from an innovative group of young musicians called Carmen Elektra, who are making waves in their attempts to “rehabilitate opera” with their evenings of short, accessible opera-type pieces interspersed with DJ sets and dancing.

“Democratisation is an established trend in classical music at the moment — whereas an authentic classical clubbing experience is relatively new,” says Will Gardner, Carmen Elektra’s musical director.

At the nights he organises, clubbers don’t listen to Don Giovanni or Carmen — the emphasis is on new music that challenges the conventions of both opera and clubbing.

Their latest event was called Timberbrit, a new opera performed by two vocalists, an electric bass, an electric guitar and pre-recorded electronic samples that reimagines Britney Spears and Justin Timberlake as doomed lovers “pulled into the surreal tragedy of Britney’s celebrated victimhood”.

It’s experimental stuff, says Gardner: “We don’t want to just put an old piece in a new venue, we want to do more than that.”

A week ago at the Roundhouse in Camden, clubbers were enjoying a similarly original experience. Contemporary classical composer Gabriel Prokofiev has had years of success with his Nonclassical company, performing challenging music in club venues. In the past his performances have tended to resemble gigs more than parties, but recently that has changed.

“The non-classical nights start as mainly classical nights and become more club experiences, and we are experimenting with the meeting of those two things,” Prokofiev tells the Standard. At the Roundhouse people started dancing towards the end of the contemporary classical remixes he was DJing, and the place had a “real festival atmosphere”, according to Prokofiev.

He says there is a “hunger for new sounds in the clubbing environment” and thinks people are becoming more comfortable with dancing to the type of classical music he is composing and performing. “What we’re saying is that if you go clubbing you don’t need to be restricted to repetitive, conventional clubbing music. It’s great to have more challenging music in clubs rather than playing it safe,” says Prokofiev.