The shock of the new

Manchester, 1991. The sun was rising on a decade-long night out that featured the likes of the Happy Mondays, the Stone Roses and the Haçienda nightclub. A short walk away at the city’s Free Trade Hall, Kent Nagano would soon become principal conductor of the Hallé Orchestra – its new home at the Bridgewater Hall didn’t open until 1996 – while Peter Maxwell Davies was named the associate composer/conductor of a different Manchester group, the BBC Philharmonic. That year also gave us Mariah Carey’s Emotions, Michael Tippett’s final string quartet and, thanks to enterprising Royal Northern College of Music percussion graduate Tim Williams, an ensemble called Psappha. After three decades as its artistic director, Williams steps down this year, leaving an imaginative legacy of learning and creativity for audiences, composers and performers alike.

Today, Manchester is a great place to be a composer. There’s no shortage of groups, professional or otherwise, performance spaces and contemporary music festivals – but, as Williams recalls, things looked different back in the early ’90s. ‘After I left college, I realised there was no real outlet in the north of England for contemporary chamber music. Composers would study in Manchester but then head to London, where there were groups who could play their music.’ That said, it’s worth remembering that even the London Sinfonietta, that great doyen of British new music groups, was then only just over two decades old. The Birmingham Contemporary Music Group, an offshoot of the well-established City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra, gave its first performance in 1987 (with a young Simon Rattle as its patron), while Liverpool’s Ensemble 10/10 didn’t appear for another ten years. ‘There was a group of like-minded players in the northwest who wanted to be challenged musically and technically, so we got together and Psappha gave its first concert in September 1991,’ says Williams. The group takes its name from a solo percussion piece by Iannis Xenakis, while its 1991 debut included a performance of Harrison Birtwistle’s Cantata, a setting of poems by Sappho. ‘For years people have told me that the name is ridiculous, that no one can spell it and no one knows what it means. But I like it.’