Interview, Rakhi Singh on Purnima - Contemporary works for solo violin

Violinist and composer Rakhi Singh may be a name known to fans of the Manchester Collective, the trailblazing contemporary classical ensemble based in northern England that she co-founded in 2016.

Lately, though, she's also been getting back in touch with her solo violinist roots, returning to the idea of recitals and recordings showcasing her own artistry in parallel with the collaborative musicmaking of the Collective. Her new album Purnima is not actually the first-fruits of this - her EP Quarry came out in mid-2021 on the Bedroom Community label - but it is her first full-length album as a soloist.

It features compositions from Singh herself, Emily Hall, Alex Groves and Michael Gordon - as well as her own arrangement of Julia Wolfe's iconic and powerful LAD. I spoke to Rakhi to explore the origins of this album, and how it took shape.

You co-founded the Manchester Collective in 2016, and since then that group has been making music that’s really bold and innovative in so many ways. What led you to strike out on your own with this solo album?

It's interesting that it's come across as being a new direction! Originally, when I was younger, I won some solo competitions - I was always doing solo performances, from my teenage years on, and later I went more into chamber music. I think part of how it's taken me so long is that when I was younger I was always told what to play - I didn't have that autonomy, it was always my teachers picking my programmes, the music I was going to play. In that sense the Manchester Collective has been about taking ownership of it all again. And now I feel like I'm doing the same thing for my solo voice, which hasn't really happened before.

A few years ago I released an EP of music that I'd written - not about violin performance, just about me as a musician - and it feels like the more I do this, the closer I get to my own artistry. A lot of that, of course, is expressed through the Collective, but I'm not just the Collective; I'm myself as an artist, so it feels really nice to have done this.

What’s the significance of the album’s title Purnima, and that of your own work Sabkha featured on it? The latter seems to be quite a specific geographical term - was that kind of landscape an inspiration?

They're quite specific. Purnima is actually my middle name, and it means 'full moon', because I was born on a full moon night. I've never really used that name, because when I was in primary school I was teased about it. And you know it is - sometimes you just forget about it and never tell people about it. It's on my birth certificate but I don't think it's even on my passport!

But when I was thinking about what to call the album and what it felt like to me, that came to me. Especially after I'd written the piece Sabkha, and listening to some of the other pieces that are on the album like Alex Groves's Trace I - that's very spatial, and makes me feel like I'm in space. I was reading up about the name Purnima and what it means and the spirituality behind it, and I felt like that all resonated with me a lot. So it felt quite natural to call it that. When I was choosing the artwork it was inspired by that same idea - this sense of something quite elemental, but also universal.

Sabkha is more about liminal spaces. I'm from Wales and I love being by the sea, and I was thinking about rock pools and how those spaces are neither land nor sea, and their form changes somehow - and when I was looking up things like this I liked the sound of this word and what it represented.

Julia Wolfe’s LAD, which the press-release to Purnima aptly described as ‘formidable’, was originally for nine sets of bagpipes. ‘Formidable’ is if anything an understatement; it’s quite a sonic experience when heard for the first time! What was the inspiration behind adapting this to the very different sound of the violin? (And were you influenced by Sean Shibe’s version for electric guitar from a few years ago?)

Actually the inspiration was exactly that - hearing Sean's version. I'm a huge fan of him and his musicality anyway, so I was listening to his stuff, and I heard this and it's the kind of music where you put it on loudly and lie on the floor! Around that time I was putting together music for a solo programme of my own, and I was so drawn to this work and the visceral experience of it. I messaged my sound engineer, who I work with quite closely, and asked if he thought we could make this happen, and he thought we probably could - so we mostly worked with an octave pedal and multitracked the violins and made our version of it. It's very satisfying.

Of course I had to get permission from Julia, and then they sent me over the score and I managed to make it work. Sean really was the inspiration, so I hope he doesn't mind that I've adopted it for the violin!

It's interesting how well it works for different instruments - one might think that with the rawness and unique intonation of the bagpipes removed, it might lose something, but it doesn't!

The violin can be very raw in its own way. It depends how you play - it doesn't have to be lyrical and beautiful all the time, it can be really aggressive and quite nasal. And also I'm able to do some of the detuning - you can hear it's not exactly in tune on this track, and that's intentional because it creates a kind of vibration.

Though Sabkha and LAD were certainly the pieces that grabbed my attention, it wouldn’t be fair to skip over the other works on the album - from Alex Groves, Emily Hall and Michael Gordon. Could you give us some sense of how these works each fit into the album and what makes them ‘tick’?

When I'm putting something together, for me it's about a balance of flavours. They're all very different as works - LAD is the most visceral and gritty, and I felt like you need something to balance that. In compiling the works, it also felt nice to have a 50/50 female-to-male ratio. Though it's actually ended up more female now, because I included my own composition! And it's also British and American. So a lot of it was about balance. Alex's piece [Trace I] is very atmospheric, I find - ambient isn't quite the right word, but it's not about a melody so much as the atmosphere it creates. Especially if you're listening on headphones, the sound should feel like it's moving around you.

Emily Hall's Outshifts, like Trace I, was commissioned for me and performed in the first solo gig that I did a few years back, which was the beginning of my re-finding of my solo voice, so it felt nice to include those two. Emily's piece is more lyrical and folk-inspired, but also includes the unusual sound of the vocoder. I've never actually come across a work that uses the vocoder before, so it's slightly strange. It gives slightly AI-ish, alien vibes - but at the same time her writing itself is very folk-y. The middle movement of Outshifts is actually very pop-y, in its harmonies and its rhythm.

I'm a huge fan of Michael Gordon's work as well, and again his two [Tinge and Light is Calling] are things that I play in my solo shows, so it felt good to balance Julia's work with his two. One more energetic, and one much more ethereal, and leaves you floating in a sense.

You mention having had some of these commissioned for you - it sounds like for you, part of the process of coming back to solo performing has been to get new things to play that are somehow your own?

Yes, I guess so. When I was growing up I was always doing loads of solo gigs, but I never knew what I wanted to record. There's recordings of everything - whether it's the Mozart sonatas, the Beethoven, the Janáček... it's all out there already. And I've enjoyed playing those pieces but it feels nice to put things into the world which are really my own.

And that side of the creativity - bringing new works into being - is presumably just as big a part of your self-expression as the playing itself?

Yes, bigtime! And putting this album together has felt like it's the tip of the iceberg. It's given me more confidence and momentum to explore further, showing the different sides to my own artistry. Some people might wonder what I'm doing, playing a piece originally for nine bagpipes, but I don't care, because I love it! And it's part of me and of my expression. I'm not expecting everyone to like it - that's fine! But it feels more real to me.

Then from the sounds of it this is going to be a strand that carries on for you - but still with the Manchester Collective and that chamber side of things in parallel?

Oh yes. At the moment my life is a bit of a balancing-act between the two things, and maybe things will shift over time, but they're both incredibly nourishing and rewarding. Through the Collective I get to work with composers and collaborators and I have a whole support structure to do that, but I don't always get my deepest voice into it. Or perhaps I should say it's a different side of myself. Like the writer Fernando Pessoa said - there are many different sides to us, we're not just one thing. So it's me exploring these things.

Do you find that the Manchester Collective work, and those networks of people you've alluded to, inform your solo work when you come to create solo albums and programmes?

Definitely. All those experiences - both within the Collective and outside it. For example last year when I was working with the jazz pianist Hiromi - and being on stage with her night after night and having to improvise was a huge challenge. But equally, through the Collective I've worked with Abel Selaocoe, Sean Shibe and others. And you kind of absorb people's genius when you're around them, and it influences the way you think and the way you feel. So when I go back into my practice room, or my study to write, those things are still present and resonating.

And then in turn I think the things that I learn for myself there, I bring into the rehearsal room at Manchester. It's symbiotic.