Episode 9 — Naked gigs, choral musings and Filament Choir with Hackney Colliery Band LIVE at Wilton's Music Hall
This episode moves from Peak Hackney to a full-body wall of sound. Steve reports back from Hacknaky, a life drawing event where he performs a naked solo set for conch shells, trumpet and electronics, and reflects on playfulness, vulnerability and why experimental music belongs in everyday spaces. Then we jump to the first live Origin of the Pieces show at Wilton's Music Hall, featuring Filament Choir and a stripped-back Hackney Colliery Band lineup.
At Wilton's, choir director Osnat Schmool and members of Filament talk about non-auditioned choirs, global vocal traditions, movement, embodiment and community; Steve shares the stage with his partner for the first time; and a mini HCB setup reworks material with Filament's harmonies in one of London's most characterful acoustic spaces. The whole thing doubles as a manifesto for taking music seriously without taking yourself too seriously.
What we cover
Naked ambient Hacknaky set: Life drawing, shells, trumpet and electronics; what changes when performer and audience are both exposed.
Conch shells & origins: Shells as ancient instruments, breath, drones and why they keep surfacing across the podcast.
Wilton's live podcast: Turning the show into a live event with narrative, humour and properly dynamic sound.
Filament Choir approach: Osnat Schmool's mix of amateurs and pros, taught by ear, rooted in respect for South African and other global traditions.
Community vs "proper" musicians: Breaking fake hierarchies while still backing fair pay and craft.
Mini HCB set: Trumpet, tuba, drums and choir reshaping Hackney Colliery Band tunes in Wilton's unique acoustic.
Further listening & links
Full Transcript
Verbatim transcript, reflowed for readability only. No wording edits.
Hello, my name is Steve Pretty. I'm a musician, performer and composer from London, and welcome to my podcast, Steve Pretty On The Origin Of The Pieces. This is the show that helps you to hear and understand music in new ways. So, it's lovely to be back. As always, thank you very much for tuning in. If this is your first time, I'm aware that we have got some new people who've been listening, which is fantastic. We're looking to always expand, and we have new ears on this, so thank you very much for joining. Yeah, if this is your first time to the show, welcome. It's a show about all things music, really. We try and look at what music is, where it comes from, why it exists in the first place. And on the last episode, we had a really fun deep dive into UK hardcore, and I made a kind of happy hardcore version of the theme song to this show, which is a lot of fun. So do go back and have a listen to that. There's a walkthrough on how I did that and the different aspects of that genre. Because every episode or most episodes, we do a thing called the genre tombola, which is where I look at a completely different genre as picked for me by the internet from a list of the 1300 or so genres listed on Wikipedia. And last episode was UK hardcore. So do go back and have a listen to that. And I also sing the virtues of the LSO, the London Symphony Orchestra and their brilliant schools outreach programme. So there's a little clip of the LSO on there and there's some UK hardcore, some break beats. What else do you want from a show about music? Well, I'll tell you what else you might want. You might want what we have in today's episode because we have another special episode today. I'm actually not going to do the genre tombola this episode. You may remember that I was chosen Cowpunk by the gods of the internet. Cowpunk is the genre that I'm supposed to be making some music in and diving into. But with the live show and everything, I've been super busy with that. And we've also got all sorts of other goodies for you today. So I'm going to park that until the next episode. So episode 10 in two weeks time is going to be some Cowpunk. I'm going to be learning what that is, listening to it, and maybe talking to someone who can help me find my way through that crazy sounding genre. But instead on this episode, we have a kind of live special, I suppose, a live podcast special, because between the recording of the last episode and this episode, you may remember that I had the very first live podcast recording at Wilton's Music Hall on the 20th of January, a few days ago, as I'm talking to you now. It was really, really special. More about that later. But yeah, thank you to everyone who came down. It was a really fantastic night, and there's gonna be bits and highlights of that show sprinkled throughout some of the coming episodes, including today, so stay tuned for that. But first, what you are listening to now is some audio I recorded from another gig that I had last week. This, you may remember I alluded to it. If you heard the last episode, I alluded to wearing strange things for gigs, and this one was possibly the strangest yet.
Over the years, I've worn a lot of weird stuff for gigs. You know, there's different costumes I've worn when I've been doing theater shows and that kind of stuff. In fact, incidentally, I have the proud record of having the biggest head in showbiz, I think semi- officially. So I've done shows at the Royal Opera House, at the National Theater, and at the Globe Theater, amongst others, and the wardrobe people, so the people who look after the costumes, in each of those places have each said that I have the biggest head they have ever measured. The circumference of my head is extraordinary. So I hate to show off, guys. I have got a massive head, and it's been proven by the Royal Opera House, the National Theater, and the Globe, very experienced costume people. Anyway, I've worn a lot of weird and wonderful things over the years. For those of you who've seen me perform, you may have seen me in some silly costumes for theater shows or for other gigs. A few years ago, we did a Hackney Colliery Band thing for GQ Magazine, a big event in Covent Garden, and for that, they dressed us as cheerleaders. There was a sort of gender reversal thing. We did a performance with the brilliant Gato Chocolat, the drag artist, and yeah, it was lots of fun, but I was dressed as a cheerleader, playing the trumpet and the bass drums. So I'm not a stranger to putting on silly things for gigs and for performances. And I've talked in the past about how, you know, I think it's really important to have a sense of fun with music. I take music incredibly seriously, as I'm sure you can tell from the fact that I'm doing this podcast, and I've been a professional musician for, well, nearly 20 or so years, I suppose. And so yeah, it's obviously very important to me, but I also don't mind leaving my dignity at the door in the name of fun every now and again. I talked about it on the last episode with the harpist of the London Symphony Orchestra dressing as a dog and crawling onto stage to play a beautiful harp cadenza. I think in the right context, if there's a good reason for it, putting on silly clothes or whatever the gig requires is fine and can be quite a good thing, can lend something to a performance. But this was a new one on me because for this gig, the gig that I just did last week, it was an event called Hacknaky, which may give you some idea about what it was because I did a gig naked, people. I played a gig naked. Not only that, I played a gig naked, mainly playing the shells, the conch shells. If you're new to this show, I imagine you're probably quite confused by now. I've just said quite a lot of confusing things in a row, but I play the conch shell, and if you go back to episode one in particular, I talk about that, and I talked about it a lot in the live show, so there'll be sprinklings of this coming up. But basically, I've become slightly obsessed with the kind of early origins of music, hence the name of the show is about the evolution of music from its earliest origins. And for me, that is represented very well by shells, because they're very primitive instruments, but they're very beautiful and they can be very haunting. And so, yes, for this set, it was for a life drawing class. And so there was a model who was obviously naked, who people were sketching.
And I did some sketching to start with, and having not tried to sketch anything since, it was about 14, probably, maybe younger than that even. And I was terrible then, and I think I'm even worse now. But it was a really fantastic event. So I did some sketching in the first part of it. And it was really well run by a brilliant person called Emily George, who set this up as a kind of interesting, accessible life drawing class for people who maybe haven't done it before. There are some very experienced, very good artists there, but there were lots of newbies as well, like myself. She does lots of things like she screws up a big bit of paper and then gets you to start sketching on this screwed up bit of paper once you've unfolded it again. So that the idea is that it's not, you know, nothing's perfect. You're starting with an imperfect beginning and therefore whatever you do, you know, you can kind of let go and feel natural and enjoy it like that. So it was, I really enjoyed the sketching element, even though it was quite terrible. You do things like don't look at the page while you sketch or I did a sketch with the person next to me where you're sort of guiding each other's hands as you draw, which is quite fun. But then it was my turn to play. So the model was still in place and the kind of unique thing about this event, I suppose, is that they have live music and that the live musicians are also naked. So I did a solo performance on, mainly on shells, as you can hear, and obviously trumpet as well. A kind of ambient improvised set, I suppose, two 15 minute sets with shells and electronics and trumpet. And it was a really, really interesting experience. It's, I just wanted to take this time and sort of report back because it's not something that I guess many musicians have done. But I, funnily enough, I was obviously a little bit nervous going in. I'm not super squeamish about being naked, but obviously you're in a room full of people. It's January, by the way, so it's cold. Just to emphasize, it was cold, guys, it was cold. So it was, yeah, it was really, it was, it was really fun, to be honest, because it was a solo set, and I have been doing a few of those recently, but it's a relatively new area of work for me, playing totally solo with just electronics and shells and trumpet and things. It's, you know, there's quite a lot going on technically and musically to kind of coordinate. So it was really, I was mainly focused on that, I think. And then you kind of take a mental step back halfway through and think, hold on, I am doing this naked, I am playing the shells naked. As I said at the end of the first set, I think it might have been Peak Hackney. So I am based in Hackney in East London and it's an area that's often very easy to sort of laugh at. From the sidelines, you know, on social media, it gets a lot of kind of hipster, hipster bashing and I can understand why that is. But I think there's a lot to stand up for in Hackney as well as a lot of really interesting ideas, a lot of really interesting stuff goes on. And yes, some of it can seem a bit sort of indulgent and silly, but the world needs more indulgent and silly things sometimes I think. So this I thought was a really wonderful event. I do suggest you check it out if you're into life drawing. And if you'd like to draw
naked musicians as well as naked models. I had some really interesting conversations with some of the people there about what the music adds. And I think a lot of them said that it just creates a completely different atmosphere, a more kind of focused atmosphere somehow, but also a more relaxed one because it is trying to create sort of these ambient soundscapes, washes to go with the drawing. And it was, yeah, I really recommend going and checking it out. If you'd like a bit of sort of sketching with your music, or if you'd like a bit of music with your sketchings, it's called Hacknaky, do check them out on social media and everywhere else. And thank you to them for having me and giving me the slightly unusual opportunity to play the conch shell naked. It's probably how they were played initially, I suppose. Conch shells are found all over the world and still played all over the world. So yeah, it's a deep part of our humanity and our shared history as I've talked about. And since we probably would have played them naked back in the day, what's wrong with playing them naked now? That's what I say. So I'm gonna leave you, I'm gonna play you out with a little excerpt of that performance that I did. And yes, just remember as you're listening, I was naked whilst doing this. So I'm sorry for that mental image, but there we are. Enjoy. Okay, it is time to shake that mental image from your head, and we're gonna move to talk about what happened on Saturday, because it was my first live podcast recording. And I decided I didn't want to do one episode straight through, recorded, in the format that the show often goes out in, but instead to make a live gig with lots of chat that was then gonna be cut up and sprinkled through future episodes. And so today is gonna be the first chunk of exactly that. But before I play that audio, I just wanted to say thanks again to those of you who came down to the live show on Saturday at Wilton's Music Hall in London. It was really a very special evening for me. And I think a lot of people responded to it really well. So I thank you very much for all the great feedback. I think it's fair to say that it's gonna be the first of many. I hope to do a lot more. I've got some coming up in the late spring and summer that I will be talking about down the line. But I think I'm gonna try and do some more regularly in London and I would love to get out and about around the UK and eventually further afield to do some live shows. So if you run a venue or you know a venue in your local area and you'd like me to come and do a kind of version of this podcast, but also very much a live show that will be nice for a live audience, please drop me a line at Steve Pretty on social media or if you go to my website stevepretty.com, you'll find all the contact details with email and things there. But I think it's quite a flexible format. I think it can accommodate everyone from sort of solo singer-songwriters to neuroscientists through to amateur choirs or orchestras even. So if you'd like me to do that, please drop me a line. So turning my attention to this clip that I'm about to play, as I mentioned, we had the fantastic Filament Choir who are run by an old friend of mine, Osnat Schmool, who is a wonderful musician and
composer and kind of vocal arranger, I suppose. We met when we were both working at the Roundhouse. She used to run the Roundhouse Choir, who are in fact featured on the theme song to this show. You can hear the choir, listen out for them at the end of the episode. But since then, we have worked on a few other bits and bobs. We both work in theatre quite a lot, so our paths cross there sometimes. But Osnat started a choir in the local area. She's also based around me in East London. And she started up this choir that is both open to professionals and amateurs, completely un-auditioned. Everyone welcome. And it's a really fantastic mix of people of all backgrounds and experience levels. So I wanted to invite this great choir down, and we had 27 of them singing on stage at the show. And we opened their bit by them all kind of getting up from the audience. They were all sat in the audience and all walking onto stage singing, which was a really beautiful moment. But the clip I'm gonna play is the last tune they did on stage, and then there's a little bit of a chat. I chat to Osnat and then a couple of the choir members too. So I'm gonna hand over to that clip now. Enjoy the Filament Choir live from Wilton's Music Hall on the 20th of January, 2024. Yeah, thank you so much for being here, guys. Little did you know there was a choir amongst you. I was watching the first half, beautiful first half, Steve, and I was thinking, I wonder if people are wondering why everything's squashed on that half of the stage? Because there are a lot of us, as you can see. Lots. And so we're just gonna take five minutes and chat about this, this amazing thing. And I don't know if anyone else wants to speak, because we've got one more mic. I'm checking it out, we can pass it around. And so yeah, the main thing I wanted to talk to you about, because we've known each other for a while and done some different projects together. And I think we've got a kind of similar aesthetic in terms of embracing lots of different musical traditions and being, I think it's a challenging thing to do, I think, and to do respectfully. But for me, we were talking about it the other day when we were planning this and we were saying how it's really, I think, important to honor the traditions that you're working with and to try and get inside them. Have you got any thoughts on how to do that? It's a very challenging thing to dig into. I think, for me, I've been, so I've realized I didn't introduce any of the songs. Hello, I'm Osnap, by the way, and this is Filament Choir. And the first song we sang were a combination of songs. Emily Roblin is a composer who works a lot with community choirs. Amazing, amazing, inclusive music, really. And the second song is taken from a Filament show, so Filament is also a theatre company, and that's felt a little bit more traditional in kind of what we think of as classical, kind of contemporary classical choral music, and that's called Earth Makes No Sound. So we've been in the stars quite a lot in the first half, and a lot of our music is actually tonight, really about the ground and the earth. And then the last song is a South African song in Zulu, and it's kind of, I guess, for me, it's always understanding what they
mean. And it's a song about kind of collecting water in the morning and waking up and getting on, and again, like caring for the earth. So I think that especially when it comes, and we've sung music from lots of other places, I think as long as I've got, you know, a respect that it's not always my tradition, there's some different musical traditions which are mine and from my own heritage. I'm really happy to share them, but I've sung with other, especially with South African musicians and singers, they're really generous with their music. It is for sharing. One of the sort of second or third songs is shared by my colleague Rathi, and Rathi grew up in Canada, so I'm just speaking for you. She could just pass the mic and tell her, but a very early song she taught us, and she went to Namibia in South Africa when she was younger, and learnt directly from musicians there with her kind of choir community from Canada, but I then learnt this song and then met South African musicians, and we were just jamming and saying, oh, you know, we sing this song. Well, we started singing it. We didn't say, we sing this song. We just started, and they just joined in in the most joyous way as opposed to a judgmental, why have you got my music way? And I think that's testament to that generosity of going, we know it comes from you, but we're enjoying it and we're respecting it and understanding things like, the movement is so much part of that tradition as well. We can't, I mean, I don't think if anybody sings in the audience, you'll appreciate this. I think music like that, you can't sing it without making it inhabit your whole body. Otherwise, you're not honoring that as well and you don't make the right sound. You don't enjoy it in the same way. When I was talking to Claude Depu, who's a wonderful South African trumpet player and composer on a few episodes ago, he was saying the same thing we were talking about, Umber Klanger, which I still can't quite say, which is a South African musical tradition. He was saying exactly the same. He was saying that music is for sharing and as long as it's done respectfully and not exploitatively for money or anything like that, it's something that should be shared. I just want to talk to some members of the choir. I don't know if anyone wants to chat. I wanted to just ask particularly, this is quite an unusual choir in that it's a combination of quite experienced singers and very, very new singers, maybe singers who've never sung before. Do you want one of each? Yeah, I think so, maybe. And I think it would be nice to talk about how those things combine, because again, something I talk about a lot on the podcast and something I feel very passionately about is breaking down the barriers between amateur and professional musicians and the fact that community music can do that so effectively. And there shouldn't really be a distinction because in our distant past and even in most of our present around the world, there's not really a distinction between the professional class of musicians and amateur musicians, so-called. Because yes, sometimes you get paid, sometimes you don't. As a musician, that's also true. And so, you know, the lines are quite blurred. And whilst as a professional musician, obviously, you want to stick
up for the rights of professional musicians, at the same time, music is a very... it is something that we all inhabit and all own and we all should share. It's not like these people can do music, these people can't. So, yeah, I just wanted to sort of maybe have a couple of voices from... one of whom, in fact, could be... because this is the first time ever that I have shared a stage... It's a historic moment, Steve... .with my own partner. My own partner, Jokehead, is on stage. Yeah, so... since you're there... So, I mean, what... when you... because you sort of surprised me. It came out of the blue, almost, when I said, oh, isn't that Stainless Choir? You said, oh, right, okay. And you decided to join. Why did you leap at that chance? I think because being... I've always enjoyed listening to choral music because of that thing of a wall of sound. And if you're in a choir, you're in the wall of sound. And it's just phenomenally beautiful. And so I'd never done any performance of singing. I've sing plenty, like, to our children and riding my bike. It's true. It's really embarrassing. But even at the first rehearsal, in being in this group of people, and I didn't know the songs and didn't know even my range. I didn't know where to sing at all. But just stopping and listening to all these amazing voices is just so beautiful and a joyful thing. And I think... I mean, I think everyone should do it probably because it would be good for your soul probably. I think you've got vacancies, haven't you? Yeah, that's really interesting. I think, yeah, you're right, being part of a musical ensemble is really something that everyone should try at least once if you can. But interestingly, we were talking about it the other day, and I said, are you looking forward to the gig? And he said, sort of, but I don't really like performing. I don't do it for the gigs. You do it for the singing and for the being in there. Yeah, it's not for you guys. No, it's for... I mean, the sound is lovely. And, you know, there's a kind of... Obviously, there's, like, an adrenaline thing, but I don't... I certainly don't get off on the adrenaline thing. I don't want to look at any of you. It's nice to... It's nice to be in the music, and it's nice that it's being appreciated, but if you're with a group this big, if you're just in rehearsal, everyone's enjoying it and everyone's listening. We do an exercise at the beginning of every rehearsal where we're all... It's a kind of physical warm-up, and then Oznat leads us kind of doing humming, and then we're all just improvising and singing. I don't even know how long it lasts. It feels like it could be an hour, or it could be five minutes, because it's this crazy dream space where beautiful sounds are coming out of everyone's mouths and everyone's listening, and yeah,
just that is so gorgeous to do. Amazing. Well, I wonder if you could pass the microphone along if anyone else wants to chat. Yeah, so what's it like, because you're a professional, could you just give us a bit of your background about what you do musically? So I'm a singer-songwriter. I play piano and write kind of like soul, jazz, indie kind of mix of music. Amazing. And what made you want to join this choir, which has got the mix of both new singers and experienced singers? I think, like Joe was saying, there's something about community and singing with other people and not having to do that for work or doing it as something that you're trying to pursue. There's something really enjoyable about being with other people and sharing a musical experience. And it's just joyous. It was honestly the best, we rehearsed Mondays, it's the best start to the week, which is being able to hold space with other people who just want to have fun and sing and do something that's no pressure. There's no mistakes because there's a space to explore musically. That's something we don't often get to do outside of gigging, and it has to sound a certain way or be a certain way, or classical music which is scored and very specific. There's something nice about musical exploration and that can be anything. Is there something about as a more experienced musician working with less experienced musicians and giving them a helping hand or sharing your experience a bit? I think there's actually, because we don't learn anything, we learn very little from scores, so everything is kind of taught by ear. I think it puts most people on an equal playing field of being able to just learn through call and response. So there isn't a pressure of, I've got the musical skills of being able to read scores and being able to sight sing. Whereas, yeah, I think the fact that we're all kind of able to go, cool, someone will sing this thing, you sing it back, everyone's on the same page. I guess when it comes to doing the score reading stuff, we're all pretty good at helping each other out and recording bits and singing together. Yeah, it's like a little family, which is quite nice. Amazing. We'll give it up once again for the Filament Choir. Now, we did have Oz and that's previous... the previous choir called the Roundhouse Choir on the last Hackney Colliery Band record, and in fact we did this next tune with them at the Barbican a few years ago, and we're going to do it again for you now in this miniature Hackney Colliery Band form. I like to say that now that we have this platform, this space to share information and music, it's nice to support up and coming artists. So we're going to do a tune now by a band who are my hot pick for 2024. They're a band called Nirvana, so do watch out for them. They're going to be absolutely massive. I hope you heard it here first. See So there we have it, little excerpt from the show on Saturday. It was really amazing to have all those people on stage. That was the Filament Choir, of course, led by Osnat Schmall. They are taking new members. If anyone is wanting to join a choir, I
can highly, highly recommend it. They rehearse on Monday evenings in East London. Yes, they were also, of course, joined by me on trumpet and some of my Hackney Colliery Band colleagues, because some of the guests we had that evening included the Hackney Colliery Band rhythm section. So that is Ollie and Luke, so Ollie Blackman, Luke Christie on drums and Ed Ashby on the tuba. So we did a kind of mini Hackney Colliery Band set, very much stripped down to just the four of us, which was a really nice way to play some of our old material and to premiere some new stuff in collaboration with the choir and with Valeria the harpist. So we'll be playing some of that stuff out probably over the coming weeks and months, but yeah, thanks to those guys too for a fantastic job. It was a really insightful evening for me and I hope for the audience and there's gonna be lots more. Now, I think we're just gonna wrap things up there today, bit of a shorter episode, so thank you very, very much for listening. We've got all sorts of things coming up. I'm very excited about what is ahead over the next few weeks and months, stuff that I won't mention now, but wow, it's gonna kind of blow you away, I think. So please do keep subscribed and as always, please do share. If you like what you hear, please do tell people in person. That's always the best way, but of course, sharing electronically as well is really, really valuable. Once again, a reminder that I do have a Patreon. I'm gonna be working that a bit harder over the coming few weeks because I'm gonna be putting a lot of extra content there. You can get it for, I think it's $5 a month, and there's all sorts of bonus content, and mainly you just really help support the show. So if you wanna go to find that, if you go to originofthepieces.com, that will take you to a page where you can link through to it, or go to Patreon and type Origin of the Pieces. Yeah, that would really, really help support, but even just sharing, as I say, is a huge help. So thanks to my guests for this episode, the Filament Choir and the Hackney Colliery Band. Gonna be back in two weeks' time, so that's the eighth of February, and then I promise we will get down and dirty with Cowpunk. So we're gonna get back to the genre of Tombola and dig into Cowpunk and see what that's all about and try and make some music in that genre. Meanwhile, of course, if you're new to the show, do go back and listen to past episodes. We cover a lot of stuff. In the last few episodes, I think, off the top of my head, we've covered UK Hardcore, the London Symphony Orchestra. We've covered Deathgrind. We've covered M'Bungnanga from South Africa. We have looked at the harp, the baritone saxophone, the trombone. We've been out to space with Commander Chris Hadfield, talking about his time singing on the International Space Station and how you kind of change guitar strings in space. We've done all manner of things, so there's so much more to come. And thanks, as always, to Anjali Kidjo and the Hackney Colliery Band for the theme song of this show. Share it with a Musically Curious friend, and we'll see you on February the 8th. Bye!