I want to start today by completely dismantling
a stereotype that I think we all have, even if
you don't really want to admit it to yourself.
Oh, I know exactly where you're going with this.
Right. Because when I say the word conductor,
you immediately have a very specific visual in
your head. You're picturing a tuxedo. Yeah, a
tuxedo, the tail. Exactly. You're picturing a
raised podium. You're probably picturing this
older white haired figure scowling at a violinist
because they came in a millisecond late on some
Mozart concerto. It's the classic maestro myth.
You know, the absolute dictator of the concert
hall. Yes, the dictator. It feels rigid. It feels
dusty. It basically feels well, it feels finished
like a museum piece. But today we're doing a
deep dive into the career of someone who takes
that entire concept, throws it in a blender and
pours out something that just sounds like the
future. We are talking about Hugh T. Applebrunt.
Or as he's usually credited on the albums, Hugh
Brunt. Right. And if you are a fan of modern
culture and I mean, not just classical music,
but film, electronic music or art rock, you have
definitely heard his work. Even if you didn't
know his name was on the sheet music. He is effectively
the bridge between the 17th century and the 21st
century. Exactly. We're looking at a guy who
went from the most hallowed traditional British
institutions like Windsor Castle and Oxford to
collaborating with. Radiohead, Foles, and cutting
-edge electronic producers. So the mission for
this deep dive today is to figure out how that
transition actually happens. How do you go from
wearing a cassock in a cathedral to conducting
a string section for a techno album? It's such
a fascinating journey because it completely challenges
the idea that classical training is a cage. For
Brunt, it's clearly a toolkit. We have this great
stack of sources here today. biographies, concert
reviews, liner notes from some massive albums.
And they all paint a picture of a musician who
realized that if you know the rules perfectly,
you are basically the best person qualified to
break them. So let's get right into the foundation
of all this, because looking at his early biography,
it almost reads like a parody of British high
society. Yeah. I mean, we're talking about St.
George's Chapel at Windsor Castle. We are. So
born in 1986, Hugh Brunt started as a chorister
at St. George's. And for those listening who
might just think of Windsor as a tourist spot
or a nice royal residence, we really need to
clarify what that means musically. Yeah, this
isn't just your local Sunday school choir. Not
at all. This is essentially the Navy Seals of
choral singing. That's a great way to put it.
It's professional grade discipline from childhood.
Exactly. You are rehearsing every single day.
You are performing incredibly complex polyphonic
music. Think... Tudor music, Renaissance music,
where every single voice has a completely independent
line. Right. You're not just singing the melody
together. No, you have to hold your pitch against
three other parts that are actively trying to
pull your ear away from your note. It trains
your ear in a way that almost nothing else does.
And I assume that specific skill, that ability
to hear multiple independent lines weaving together
in real time, is something that pays off massively
later on. Hugely. Just think about it. If you
spend your entire childhood inside the complex
weaving structures of someone like William Byrd
or Thomas Tallis, your brain gets completely
wired for texture. Texture. Yes. So when he eventually
meets someone like Johnny Greenwood from Radiohead,
who writes these dense weaving string arrangements,
Brunt isn't intimidated in the slightest. He's
been doing that exact kind of mental gymnastics
since he was a literal child. OK, so he moves
from Windsor to Radley College and they're eventually.
to New College, Oxford, as a music scholar. It's
basically the triple crown of the British establishment.
But you're saying this didn't turn him into a
strict traditionalist. Well, it made him a traditionalist
in terms of technique, definitely, but not in
terms of taste. And this is the key context you
have to remember. He's a millennial. He was born
in 86. Right. So he's at Oxford in the mid 2000s.
Exactly. Sure, he's studying intense choral conducting
during the day, but what is he doing at night?
He's on the Internet. He's listening to rock.
He's listening to glitchy electronic music. The
walls between musical genres were crumbling right
at the exact moment he was mastering his classical
craft. That tension between the day job of high
classical music and the nightlife of modern Internet
consumption brings us to 2008. He's 22 years
old, and he does something that... frankly seems
borderline insane for a 22 -year -old. He co
-founds an entire orchestra. The London Contemporary
Orchestra or the LCO. Correct. He starts it with
Robert Ames, who is another incredible musician,
a violist and a conductor. And I love that you
called it insane because in the classical world,
you usually wait your turn. Right. There's a
ladder to climb. It's a very strict ladder. You
apprentice, you carry sheet music, you wait for
an old conductor to retire or honestly to die.
You don't just decide to build your own sandbox.
from scratch. But they did. And looking at the
sources we have, it seems like they didn't just
want another orchestra that played Beethoven's
Fifth every Thursday evening. They had a very
specific vibe in mind. The notes mention this
great tagline they used, Pop meets Prokofiev.
It's catchy, but it's highly accurate. They wanted
an ensemble that actually reflected their own
iPod playlists. They wanted to play 20th century
classical avant -garde music, you know, people
like Xenakis or Stockhausen, right next to brand
new arrangements of indie bands. But here is
the crucial difference, and I really want to
stress this for the listener because we've all
seen it done badly. This wasn't the London Symphony
plays Pink Floyd. Oh, right. The ultimate cringe
factor. Exactly. That cringe factor we usually
associate with... classical crossovers, where
it feels like a total novelty act or the orchestra
is just playing boring, sustained chords behind
a rock singer. The LCO's operating model was
completely different from that. They played in
alternative venues, warehouses, the Oval Space,
the Roundhouse in London, places where you'd
usually go to see a DJ set or a sweaty rock gig.
And the audience wasn't just older folks in suits,
right? No, it was young people, hipsters, music
nerds. They made the orchestra cool not by dumbing
the music down, but by ramping up the intensity
of the performance. Ramping up the intensity
actually feels like the perfect segue to his
film work. Because if the LCO was the vehicle,
the film scores were really the proving ground
for him. Absolutely. This is where Brunt really
refines his specific style. And again, look at
the choices he makes. He isn't out there chasing
the big, sweeping, melodic Disney or Marvel scores.
He goes straight for the grit. Let's talk about
The Master, 2012. You have Paul Thomas Anderson
directing, Johnny Greenwood composing, and Hugh
Brunt conducting. This is a huge pivotal moment.
The Master is a deeply psychological drama. It's
very unsettling. And Greenwood's score perfectly
reflects that. It uses period instruments, but
it sounds, well, it sounds broken. Broken in
what way? It's full of weird time signatures,
massive dissonance, players intentionally bending
notes out of tune. So why do you even need a
conductor for that? If it's supposed to sound
broken, why not just put the musicians in a room
and have them jam it out? Because broken still
has to be incredibly precise. That's the paradox
of this kind of music. To make a 50 -piece orchestra
sound like it's completely falling apart, but
to have it fall apart at the exact same millisecond
every single take, you need... absolute ironclad
control. Wow. Brunt's job was to wrangle that
chaos. He had to translate Greenwood's very specific,
sometimes highly abstract ideas into physical
instructions that a room full of classically
trained musicians could execute without it just
turning into a muddy mess. It's the difference
between random noise and curated noise. Precisely.
Curated noise. And that leads us directly to
his work on Macbeth in 2015. Right. This is the
Justin Curzel film with Michael Fassbender. I
remember seeing this in the theater. And it is
incredibly visceral. Just mud, blood, and fog
everywhere. And the score by Jed Kersel matches
that visual perfectly. It's arguably more sound
design than it is traditional music. It's heavy,
it's droning, it's atmospheric. Brent is conducting
this, and he's basically treating the orchestra
like a giant analog synthesizer. He's asking
for raw textures, grinding sounds, bow scratches,
prolonged, uncomfortable tension. Which brings
up a really interesting point about the idea
of the modern conductor. In the old days, the
conductor was the guardian of the melody. You
know, give me more vibrato. here make it sweeter
there, but Brunt seems to be the guardian of
the texture. That is a brilliant way to phrase
it. He is actively sculpting the physical sound
wave in the room, whether it's how hard the bow
is digging into the string or the specific acoustic
decay of a note in the hall. And that absolute
obsession with the texture is exactly why he
was the perfect fit for Radiohead. Okay, we definitely
have to go deep on this. A moon -shaped pool.
2016. This is a massive, massive cultural touchstone
for modern music fans. And Hugh Brunt is right
there in the liner notes conducting the string
and the choir arrangements. This was the graduation
moment. All that experimental work with the LCO,
all that intense film work, it all culminates
right here. Radiohead, and specifically Johnny
Greenwood again, are obsessed with texture. They
don't just say, hey, give us some nice strings
here. They want strings that sound like a swarm
of insects or strings that sound like freezing
rain or strings that invoke sheer panic. Burn
the Witch is the track that everyone always talks
about from that album. That incredibly percussive,
driving, anxious sound. Right. And if you listen
closely to Burn the Witch, there's almost no
traditional drumming for the first part of the
track. The entire rhythmic engine of the song
is coming from the violins. They are using a
specific classical technique called col legno.
Walk us through that, Colin Neal. It literally
translates to with the wood. Instead of using
the horsehair of the bow to make a nice, smooth,
sustained tone, the string players are instructed
to flip their bows over and actually smack the
strings with the wooden stick. It creates this
frantic, clattering, percussive, woody sound.
Which sounds incredibly cool on a record, but
I imagine most classical musicians absolutely
hate doing it. Oh, they dread it. It chips the
expensive varnish on their antique bows. But
more importantly, from a conducting standpoint,
it's incredibly hard to keep it tight rhythmically.
You have dozens of players literally hitting
strings with sticks. If they aren't perfectly
synchronized to the microsecond, it just sounds
like a bag of marbles falling down a set of wooden
stairs. It completely loses its driving power.
So Brunt's job there is to essentially be the
human metronome, locking that organic, chaotic...
percussion perfectly into the grid of the song.
Exactly. He is making sure that the organic element
hits with the exact same ruthless precision as
a digital drum machine, and that is exactly why
Radiohead trusts him. He fundamentally understands
that the orchestra isn't there to just sweeten
the track with some pretty chords. The orchestra
is the literal engine of the track. I do want
to push back on something here though, just playing
devil's advocate. We live in an era of infinite
digital production. You can go online right now
and buy incredible multi -gigabyte sample libraries
of the London Symphony Orchestra. Why do bands
like Radiohead or The Smile, which is another
project Brunt works with, why do they even bother
with the human element anymore? Why not just
program it on a laptop? That is the million -dollar
question in modern production. And the answer
is completely in the imperfections. When you
sample a violin digitally, you get a mathematically
perfect tap shot of a note. But when you have
40 actual humans sitting in a room and Hugh Brunt
asks them to play Sol Ponticello, which means
bowing right up near the bridge so the sound
gets thin and glassy and weird, every single
human player does it slightly differently. They
can't be identical. Exactly. The air in the room
physically moves in complex ways. Those microscopic
human variations create a width and a breathing
life that a digital computer just cannot replicate
yet. Brent's real skill is managing those tiny
human variables so they perfectly serve the song.
So he's basically managing the humanity inside
the machine. Which is highly ironic because one
of his most fascinating collaborations is with
a pure electronic artist named Actress. Yes,
Darren Cunningham, who records as Actress. This
is very deep, very experimental techno music.
The outline notes we have mention that this specific
project was heavily inspired by London's Brutalism.
I know what brutalist architecture looks like.
It's concrete, harsh lines, massive, imposing,
slightly depressing structures like the Barbican
Center. But what does brutalist music actually
sound like? And how on earth do you conduct it?
Brutalist music sounds exactly like the building
looks. It's highly repetitive. It's incredibly
stark. It's just massive, heavy blocks of sound
with absolutely zero ornamentation. There are
no pretty melodies to hide behind, just raw.
acoustic material. Literally concrete blocks
of sound. Yes. And when Brent collaborates on
a project like this, his main job is to get the
orchestra to strip away every single one of their
classical instincts because classical musicians
are trained from birth to phrase things, to add
emotion, to swell a note, to fade it out beautifully.
Brent has to stand up there and say, no, play
it completely flat, play it dead cold. You need
to be the concrete. That sounds incredibly difficult.
You're basically asking a human artist to turn
off their emotion. It is intensely difficult.
It requires immense personal discipline from
the players. And this actually brings us full
circle right back to his childhood. Remember
the choir at Windsor Castle? The intense discipline
we talked about. The discipline. The learnability
to completely submerge your own individual ego
into the collective group sound. Whether you
are sinning a delicate 16th century mass or playing
a harsh, brutalist techno loop, the core skill
is exactly the same. It's absolute precision,
absolute control. serving the architecture of
the piece rather than showing off your own personal
talent. That is such a cool connection. The distance
between singing in St. George's Chapel and playing
a warehouse techno gig is essentially zero when
you look at it that way. Technically speaking,
yes. The aesthetic shell is different, but the
internal rigor required is identical. We've talked
heavily about Radiohead, the LCO, and the electronic
stuff, but if you look at his resume, it is just
a laundry list of cool, full -back, Imogen Heap,
It really feels like he's become the ultimate
fixer for any artist who wants to seriously elevate
their sound. He is the ultimate translator. Imogen
Heap is actually a great example to bring up
because she is so incredibly tech forward. She
uses those amazing MIMU gloves to manipulate
digital sound with physical hand gestures on
stage. Right. It looks like magic. It does. But
for a conductor to work effectively with someone
like her, they cannot be a Luddite. They have
to understand complex signal flow, digital latency,
live software integration. Brunt speaks that
technical language natively while still holding
a wooden baton. It seems like he really represents
an entirely new category of musician. He's not
just a classical conductor, and he's definitely
not a standard session musician who just comes
in to read charts. He's more like a creative
director of orchestral sound. I really like that
title, and it's so important to note the LCO's
role in all of this. Because he literally built
this orchestra from the ground up, he has a bespoke
instrument that is uniquely ready for these wild
experiments. If he walked in front of the Vienna
Philharmonic tomorrow and asked them to play
flat, cold, and dead like actress, they might
actually revolt. But the LCO was specifically
built for this exact purpose. So bringing this
all together for everyone listening, we started
today by saying Hugh Brunt breaks the mold of
the Dusty busty tuxedo -wearing maestro. But
after diving deep into all these sources, it
feels much more accurate to say he's expanded
the mold rather than broken it. I think that's
exactly right. He proves definitively that the
orchestra isn't a dead format at all. It's just
a piece of technology. It's a 300 -year -old
piece of hardware made of wood, strings, and
brass that is still the most complex, nuanced
synthesizer ever invented by humans. You just
need someone who knows how to program it for
the modern world. And his strict classical training
the years at Oxford. The endless polyphony at
Windsor that was basically his coding camp. Exactly.
It gave him the fundamental source code. So here
is the thought I want to leave you, our listeners,
with today to sort of... mull over. We are seeing
more and more of this deep crossover happening
every year. Film scores are getting weirder and
more experimental. Pop and rock albums are getting
more heavily orchestral and textured. As these
traditional boundaries completely dissolve, what
does the orchestra of the year 2035 actually
look like? That's a really great question. If
Hugh Brunt is the prototype for the modern maestro,
are we going to see standard rock bands touring
with full -time conductors instead of rhythm
guitarists? Is the next big guitar hero actually
going to be a teenager holding a baton? Honestly,
I wouldn't bet against it. If you look at the
visceral crowd reaction to those Radiohead shows
or the standalone LCO Warehouse shows, people
are absolutely mesmerized by the physical act
of a group creating those massive sounds together.
The conductor is rapidly becoming a headline
performer in their own right, not just a human
timekeeper in the background. It is a genuinely
exciting time to have ears. Hugh Tieppo Brunt
is definitely a name to keep watching as he continues
to rewrite the score on what classical music
can do. Thanks for unpacking this all with me.
Always a pleasure.