Adopt a Composer: the first meeting

In our first 2019/20 Adopt a Composer blog, Carmell Smickersgill reflects on her introductory workshop with Junior Leeds College of Music Ensemble Creative.

I'm Carmel, a composer who has been adopted by the Junior Leeds College of Music (LCoM) Ensemble Creative as part of the Adopt a Composer project. I was thrilled when I got the call saying that I’d been accepted onto the scheme. Having left education a couple of years ago, a lot of the projects I’ve been involved in as a freelance musician have been based around collaborative writing, with community groups and professionals alike.

I prefer working this way because I feel that you can learn about your own composition from everyone you work with and it’s way more fun than working away on a masterpiece by yourself. I came across Adopt a Composer from talking to other composers who’d had really positive experiences from the project.

As someone who grew up in Leeds, and was in each member of the group’s position not too many years ago, I was looking forward to finding out what their experience was like being a young musician in Leeds. 

Last weekend was the first time I met Ensemble Creative. Like all first meetings, I was interested to see how expectation compared with reality. I knew that the group was made up of young musicians aged 15-18, who were all fairly competent players and very committed to what they do. Even better was that most of them had experience writing music as a group, so the potential might be there for some really exciting collaborative work.

I also knew that most of the group are keen to to go on to study music once they leave school. As someone who grew up in Leeds, and was in each member of the group’s position not too many years ago, I was looking forward to finding out what their experience was like being a young musician in Leeds. 

I spent some time playing ‘composing games’ with the group just using clapping and vocal sounds. This was to help the musicians lose the hierarchy of who might be more or less proficient on their instruments and let everyone put forward creative ideas without judgement.

Before the workshop I checked in with my mentor Emily Crossland. Having someone to bounce ideas off and ask the right questions is so useful in a creative process. We went through my plan for the workshop and chatted through what might be challenging or what might happen, giving me chance to have a few options in my head should something go wrong. 

After having a tour of the Junior LCoM, we were greeted by Ben Gaunt, the ensemble director, whose enthusiasm for the project and support is amazing. I wasn’t planning on writing any music with this being the first session. If anything, all I wanted to do in this initial session was get to know the ensemble and figure out how I might go about writing for or with them.

We started the session with brief introductions from Ben and myself, explaining why I was there, what the Adopt a Composer project is, and what we’ll be working on over the next few months. I then spent some time playing ‘composing games’ with the group using just clapping and vocal sounds. This was to help the musicians lose the hierarchy of who might be more or less proficient on their instruments and let everyone put forward creative ideas without judgement. It also emerged that most of the players prefer not to use notation, a very useful thing to know for when the writing really starts!

I think it’s important for me to write a piece that the group enjoy working on, so starting with a big chat about musical interests was necessary to know which direction to take the piece in.

After the games we had a big group discussion about music, what instrument(s) everybody plays, what music they’re listening to, whether they write themselves, and what genres they enjoy playing. Ensemble Creative is made up of around 15 performers who play a mixture of instruments.

It was particularly interesting to see that for a lot of the ensemble the music they were listening to, writing, and playing, was quite different. I secretly thought, “yes - the broader the musical tastes in the group, the more influences were being brought into the room”. Instrumentally, there were a lot of guitars as well as saxophone, voice, piano and drum kit. It was clear that there were particular areas of mutual interest in terms of musical taste, with a strong preference for Jazz, especially Funk, Nu-Jazz and Jazz-hop. 

It also emerged that most of the players prefer not to use notation, a very useful thing to know for when the writing really starts!

I’m looking forward to going back to the group in a month and trying out some ideas. I think it’s important for me to write a piece that the group enjoy working on, so starting with a big chat about musical interests was necessary to know which direction to take the piece in. For now I’m going to get started on a bit of research, and hopefully when I go back in a month, we’ll have a slightly noisier session.

Follow on social media:

Carmell Smickersgill - Twitter / SoundCloud

Junior Leeds College of Music -  Facebook / Twitter


The Adopt a Composer project matches vocal and instrumental leisure-time music groups with some of the UK’s most promising composers to collaborate on creating a new piece of music. The project leads to a premiere performance and broadcast on BBC Radio 3. If you’re a music group or composer and you’d like to take part, find out more.