Michael Quinn: People often ask composers where they're heading towards, but just as crucial is where they came from. What were the musical influences that prompted you to become a composer?

Vincent Kennedy: My earliest memory is of my mother coming in one morning to turn on the radio, which she did every morning to wake us up, and this piece of music was playing on the radio. It remained with me, and still remains; I was listening to it on the bus this morning. Something about it affected me very deeply. I was three at the time and it was about 12 or 13 years later that I was playing in an orchestra when I realised it was the Scherzo of Beethoven's Symphony No. 7. So that's where it started. There was no music in my family as such, none of my parents, grandparents, anybody, did music. What happened to me is I got lucky. I went to a school in the inner city of Dublin and a Christian brother came there and started doing [teaching] music; we started on recorders. He had taught previously in Kerry and one of the students was a guy named Robert Houlihan -- he's a conductor now; he was in the Army [No. 1] Band in Dublin. So he brought him down and two of his friends, one of whom is James Cavanagh, who is in the [Royal Irish] Academy of Music here, and John Meehan who was in the DIT Conservatory of Music. They started teaching a group of eight- and nine-year-olds trumpets, trombones, flutes, clarinets, percussion. That's where I started, so it was completely accidental. When I started hearing music in that context it affected me the same way as it had as a three-year-old.

MQ: So the need to compose is enough for you to start composing, or do you need other stimuli like deadlines, commissions?

VK: No, it's something that I just have to do. It's great when it coincides with a deadline or a commission and I wish that there were more of it, but it's something I have to do anyway and it's something I started doing by myself before I knew there was such things as commissions.

MQ: You've written for a range of forms but I suppose the music that one would associate you with most is that for wind band and concert band. What's the appeal of that area for you?

VK: There's a number of appeals. I'm a conductor in that area, so that means that I can conduct and perform it. It's part of the tradition I grew up with. I grew up in a symphonic band, a very, very good symphonic band. Then, associated with that, I was in the National Youth Orchestra [of Ireland]. So when you're a brass or wind player coming from that tradition, there's far more playing in it than there is in orchestral. So you kind of get hooked from that point of view. But then there's a tremendous standard of playing in wind music, in this city [Dublin] in particular. I'm lucky to be involved in one [Rathfarnham Concert Band] of the two best groups in the country.

MQ: Tell me a little bit about how you go about writing a piece of music, what the initial prompt for it is and then whether or not there's a set process that you follow.

VK: If it's a specific commission for a specific group then I like to connect the music in some way to the place or the people or something like that. So in the last couple of years I did a large-scale work for Wexford County Council based on the Hook Peninsula, so it was very much programme music. Last year I had music which was commissioned with funding from the Arts Council for the group I conduct, the Rathfarnham Concert Band, and that was more about people and place and emotions. I've just been awarded an Arts Council bursary that will enable me to take time from what I do during the day to actually start properly on this first symphony that I'm writing. That's something that occurs to me as I walk the streets, around the parks. I don't know how it happens, sometimes that music comes into my head. I don't have to sit down at the piano and go searching for it. It comes and I know. I kind of think that must be the way it is for everybody else. Maybe it's not. From that point of view, the inspiration is always there and if something comes in I write it down. Usually if I hear it in my head I don't forget it. I have a very good aural memory for things.

MQ: How much reworking, correcting, changing and abandoning of ideas...?

VK: Most of that happens in my head. So before I start putting it down, I've done it. Then there are changes that come after the first rehearsal -- you just know that some things don't work and some things work. Then there's always something else that pops in the minute you start rehearsal, some new idea or something you just have to fill in, some missing notes that you didn't know were missing. So after a performance -- and I do my best to get a second performance -- I'll mess around with stuff and add in what's needed or take out what didn't really work.

MQ: Do you revisit work or do you leave it and move on to the next piece once it's been performed?

VK: No, I revisit it because I'm usually trying to get a lot of performances. That's the key to what I do -- to try and have my music performed and have people listen to it. I don't see how music can exist in a vacuum of nobody listening to it. Then when you have the opportunity as a conductor it brings an extra dimension. It also brings an extra dimension to performance as well, to have the composer/conductor because you've got someone who can make instant changes or instant decisions on the spot.

MQ: You mentioned The Hook a moment ago, which seems to me to be a very ambitious piece in terms of scale, if nothing else, but a challenging piece as well for the performers. How did that piece come about, because that was for a very specific place and very specific set of performers?

VK: Wexford County Council commissioned me as part of the Per Cent of Art scheme for that specific area, an area that I actually knew very well from going on holidays there and it's a very historical place. I also wanted to engage with local musicians because I think that brings a sense of ownership locally to a piece of music and also helps raise standards in relation to that. I don't write easy music just because people are at a certain standard. I write the same music as if they were professionals, which makes it very challenging at times and won't always come off in an amateur performance, but still the music is there in my head. I got the buy-in of the local musicians very early on but I also had a commitment from Wexford county council that I could bring some musicians of my own into it so that would help support the local musicians. That whole piece uses a whole range of things: it uses brass band, it uses pipes (as in pipe bands), it uses electronics, it uses narration, it uses solo instruments, it uses recorded sound from the Hook lighthouse itself. It builds, in terms of its story, from the beginnings of life, I suppose, right up to the current day and what happens in the villages and places down around there. It's a nine-movement work and it's been performed, I think, seven times at this stage. It's been terrific.

MQ: The scale of the piece, was that something you enjoyed?

VK: It was. It's about 44 minutes long at this stage. I was commissioned to write a piece of 20-to-25 [minutes]. I was so involved in creating it that on the day I finished it I went "Ah it's over!" and then realised just how big it was. It's much harder to rehearse an amateur group than it is a professional group. They had to move a long way from the beginning to what they produced at the end. The other thing was that I wanted the music to live on in the repertoire and that's very much happened now in that case. There's a Suite from it that has been performed and set at the national band championships as a test piece. The pipers took some of the music to the Laurent festival in France, and now it's [performed] all over the world in different pipe bands.

MQ: Did you enjoy the discipline of that?

VK: Yes, I did. I just enjoy it, love writing music. But what tends to happen to me, especially when there's a deadline is that the best work comes out close to the deadline so it ends up being a mad rush at the end. Sometimes I say, "Yes I'd love to be much better prepared", but I think I'm actually preparing all the way and the finish line is the final emphasis. I did a piece recently for Donegal VEC, part of the peace process where they brought together young people from Derry and Donegal to play. The performance was on the Monday night at 8 pm and I finished the piece at 6:15 pm. When I say "Finish the piece" most of it was done, although there were still bits to be tied up at that stage.

MQ: That begs the question of the challenges and the pressure that a composer who must travel with what we euphemistically call the "day job" is under throughout the creative process. That's something you do?

VK: Yes. Time is a huge factor because I have a nine-to-five job, so to speak, and it's a very responsible job. Then I have other commitments, family and things like that. So you're talking about composition in break times and lunch times and 6 am and 4 am in the morning.

MQ: So these are stolen moments, it's not that you set aside time?

VK: No, they're whenever I can get the time to do it. That's why the Arts Council bursary is great because it's the first time I'll be able to take time out and function specifically as a composer.

MQ: Tell me about the symphony, and why a symphony?

VK: From my experience, from my upbringing, from my musical upbringing, from where I've come from the symphony to me is the greatest form, I think, of human artistic expression. I like the challenge but more importantly I like what I think will be the end product of the whole thing.

MQ: How much of it is mapped out at the moment? Do you know where you're going to arrive at the end of the piece?

VK: Yes, in my head I have the first movement and I have part of the second and the third movement. So at the end I'm not sure, the fourth is still to go. It will be four movements, I think, at this stage.

MQ: Will we be surprised by the symphony? Is this going to reveal a different aspect of you as a composer?

VK: I think it will build on the aspects of that fine craftsmanship that I think I have. I like melody and I catch the melodies in my head so there will be what I would consider fine melodies in it. There will be parts that will stretch the orchestra and the musicians, I believe, to new limits in relation to the playing and in relation to the technique that will be required to do it. But I'm well equipped to do that. I've had so long to listen.

MQ: Do you have a critical relationship with your own work? Do you look at work that you've written previously and see where it doesn't work now or what you might have done differently?

VK: Yes, and I do do it differently if I have an opportunity to go back. I said to you earlier that I do work on more than one performance of my work and I'm committed to that, so yes there is that element of saying "I'll do this again, it didn't work last time, what do I need to change?". And sometimes things change. For instance, if you listen to the piece of music that's on the Contemporary Music [from Ireland CD], Volume 6, that's almost per note taken from The Hook Suite, but you listen to the two, there's a huge contrast. One is an orchestral version and one is played by a different group, brass mainly. But actually all the brass notes are the same, with the exception that there's horns in the orchestral version. So what has changed there is the technique that a professional orchestra could bring to it.

MQ: Do you see yourself as part of the continuity, as part of the generation but beyond the accidental fact of your age, musically, aesthetically connected with other composers at the moment?

VK: Not really, no. I don't mean that I'm out on my own; I do what I do. I'm not critical of other people's works. I go to a lot of performances, I listen a lot and I like what some people are doing. Some of what other people are doing I can appreciate from the craftsmanship, what they're trying to achieve. It doesn't always do anything for me but that's the way life is but I certainly don't knock it. I think we need to build a much broader coalition in terms of music composition in the country anyway, in terms of musical education. I think we need to live and let live a little more.

MQ: You have a long relationship with the Rathfarnham Concert Band. Tell me about that and about what it gives you as a musician and composer.

VK: Can I start a little bit earlier than that because I think it's important? I said to you earlier about coming into music accidentally and that was in CBS Westland Row. It was an odd thing because we were situated on the back streets of Westland Row where the Royal Irish Academy of Music was. I was lucky to have the opportunity there but we were very lucky as a group of young people to have had the influences that we had. You're talking about -- our first conductor was Bobby [Robert] Houlihan who went on, as you know... James Cavanagh was our next, he's also a conductor. Then we had John Meehan, then John Finucane, Fergus O'Carroll; people who served, in some ways, their apprenticeships as conductors with a group of musicians from Westland Row. A core group of those people went to Rathfarnham and set up the Rathfarnham concert band. In fact, Westland Row and Rathfarnham were set up by the same man, a man called Jack Manning. Rathfarnham started with just ninety-four boys and six girls and it's now grown to be certainly the biggest independent wind band group in these islands.

MQ: We use band as a singular but of course there are three or four bands.

VK: And they operate at the highest levels. It's a system that I think is worth studying from an Irish point of view in terms of musical education because it's a system that self-funds itself. It hasn't waited around for funding to come from somewhere. What I'm concerned about sometimes in music education is that people would want to wait until everything is in place before they start, where the time is now, you know. We would have started with nobody learning instruments and then a whole group progressing on to instruments. It's now going 27 or 28 years. It needs a study in itself -- how local communities can actually bring forth this sort of music education for people.

MQ: The sense of ownership seems absolutely central to its success.

VK: It's huge. There are two key elements to it. One is good musical direction and organisation, and the second is commitment from family, parents, and they don't have to know anything about music. If you have something like Rathfarnham, one of the reasons it can survive is they can go out to the local community and look for sponsorship because you've got the name and it's a flagship for not just itself but for the community in which it dwells. It's surprising how involved parents have become with it.

MQ: There's a concert coming up at the National Concert Hall in February. Tell me about that and the repertoire that's included there.

VK: I can't wait around for people to come and give me the opportunities that are out there. I'm not going to sit around and not promote my own music. So I have a commitment to it and I have proved it already; I have the organisational ability to do it. So I've booked the main auditorium of the National Concert Hall to do a concert of my music. Something that helps me with that is that I can bring, the group that I work with at Rathfarnham, so already I have an ensemble that can perform many of the works that will be performed. But I'm also going to bring in others to perform some of the chamber and orchestral works. And I did a piece recently for a chamber choir and they're also performing, that's the Cantando chamber choir. And the Suite for oboe, cello and harp, which has been performed twice already, will be performed that night by Matthew Manning, former principal oboe player in the [RTÉ] National Symphony Orchestra, and Andreja Malir, harpist, and Annette Cleary, cellist. The Tommy Donnybrook piece is also down to be performed, but I'm going to rearrange the first movement, which is the jazzy movement, for a big band type of effect and then reduce down the other two movements. Then The Hook in a new setting, this time for wind symphony with some of the orchestral instruments added in. I will have one or two other pieces from the wind band repertoire included and one or two of the other performing groups may do something as well.

MQ: But illustrating the eclecticism you use?

VK: Yes, absolutely. I did this two years ago in September of 2005, over 800 people turned up so I have the confidence that at least I'll get a few. It's something that I just have to do because if I don't do it the opportunities never come otherwise. And it also gives me an opportunity of conducting the stuff, conducting a lot of it and having a bigger group of my works played together, and having people view them in whatever way they want.

MQ: And it's crucial that music is heard.

VK: Yes, precisely.

MQ: And not just performed but heard.

VK: Heard, absolutely. And let people have an opinion. Music moves me in different ways and so music has always been about life and it's always been about uplifting or distracting you from the bad things in life. So that's what I hope that my music does for people. They can go and listen to it and they can come out feeling better for it or they can come out feeling maybe a little distracted from some of their other issues that are in their lives.

MQ: So the title of the evening, Music of Life and Soul, it's not just a concert title.

VK: It's a belief.

MQ: An artistic creed.

VK: Absolutely. It's a lot of hard work because it's not just the actual performance on the night. There's going to be a lot of editing of parts and rehearsals so it tests aspects of my personality as well, organisational skills. And I'm not doing it all by myself. I've made up a group of committed friends who work in the background in terms of publicity and stuff like that and I have the backup of the likes of the Rathfarnham group who bring their own professionalism. Then the professional musicians you can just say, "This is what I want you to do, go off and do it." And I will engage with the audience as well. I think we need to do more of that. Not that I think music needs to be explained. But I think sometimes people are interested in the creative process, they're interested in how you compose. We had a great session up at Donegal where I was speaking to the young people I was working with. They started asking the questions, "How do you do these things?" When you think that everybody else does it in different ways it's very hard to explain how something can come into your head. Where does it come from? It's like, where does the universe start? I don't know, is the answer sometimes. But still, people want to hear what are your influences, that sort of thing. When I go to a concert I want to be entertained in whatever sense that means. I don't go to be critical. I don't go to listen out for things that are imperfect. And some of the best concerts I've been at have had, not terrible mistakes but mistakes, wrong notes, people cracking notes, but the soul and the spirit of them has been tremendous. So that's why I aim for: perfection but sometimes with a little crack in it.

MQ: In search of the great perhaps?

VK: Absolutely, yes.

Vincent Kennedy was interviewed on video by Michael Quinn in the Contemporary Music Centre, Dublin, on 15 November 2007.

The views expressed in this interview are those of the persons concerned and are not necessarily those of the Contemporary Music Centre.