Alexis Ffrench interview: Classical music needs to be more provocative to survive

Every composer has their trick for getting into the zone, and for Alexis Ffrench it’s a 5am “thank you run” through the Rutland hills near his Leicestershire home. He says he finds it uplifting — and it means no one can hear him when he greets the cows and sheep out loud. Usually, he listens to Snoop Dogg.

Rap music might seem surprising for someone who writes classical music, but breaking stereotypes is what Ffrench is all about. Last week the British contemporary pianist, an alumnus of the Royal Academy of Music, made headlines for saying classical needs to be more like hip hop if the genre is to survive — namely, by innovating, pushing boundaries and “doing daring things in the name of art”. He said the art form suffers from a “sense of entitlement” and needs to learn lessons from other more “provocative” genres.

His comments were made ahead of the Classic Brits at the Royal Albert Hall last Wednesday — Katherine Jenkins, Alfie Boe and Tokio Myers were among those on the red carpet — and when we meet the next day Ffrench is still “buzzing”. He performed with his daughter, Savannah, 17, a talented ballet dancer — she came second at the International Dance World Cup last year — and his wife, Lesley (whom he met at his Freshers’ Ball), choreographed the routine. Their performance received a standing ovation and Savannah was in tears afterwards. “Suddenly I saw the enormity of the occasion and what it meant to her,” Ffrench recalls with a smile.

Ffrench is working hard to reach fans outside the traditional classical audience. He’s signed to Little Mix and One Direction’s management company, Modest, is performing a “punchy” 40-minute set at pop-centred Latitude festival next month and deliberately promotes his music on pop-centred streaming services such as Spotify. He’s attracted over 75 million streams and has more than 100,000 active Spotify listeners every month — the majority are between the ages of 25 and 35. He also shares a personal account with his 15-year-old son, Jubim, a tennis scholar at Millfield School, who introduced him to rap stars such as Snoop Dogg and Childish Gambino.

Ffrench cites Gambino’s “beautiful, politicised” music videos as inspiration for how classical artists should be innovating: “They’re about race, they’re about power, about where young people fit in. Do we do that in classical music? Do I watch videos where I see things through a prism like that?” His answer is “probably not — not yet. But there is scope”. Indeed, he hopes to be the first: his upcoming music video, At Last, will be inspired by hip hop. He calls it “daring... It’s something that hasn’t been done before”.

Ffrench is keen to push boundaries. He was raised in a strict Catholic household in Bagshot, Surrey, and his father was in the military so “it was all about work and discipline”. He became musically conscious aged four, trying to emulate Stevie Wonder on the kitchen table before his parents bought him a piano. By seven, he was the organist at his local church, and at 11 he went on to study at the Royal Academy of Music.

As an artist in 2018, Ffrench believes social media is “absolutely key”. One of the first things he received when he joined Modest Management was a social media “masterclass”, and he quickly learned it needs to be “habitual”. Reaching a balance was a challenge at first: a lot of his music is about spirituality, so he struggled with the idea of marrying that “peace and tranquillity” with the “total engagement” that social media requires. This is why he extends his day — “so I can carve out that time in the morning to be with myself and my thoughts, and retain that sense of oneness.”

He starts on emails and social media at 5.50am, post-run, and gets “so many messages” from fans — mainly young people — asking how to get to that place with their music. “The ones that touch me are those when people send me long essays saying ‘I’m verging on doing something dreadful and then I listen to your music’. I always get back to them. That’s part of connecting — being in people’s lives.”

It’s a role Ffrench takes seriously and thinks is an important part of creating that three-dimensional “brand” as an artist, which hip hop does well. He takes Stormzy as an example: “When you think of Stormzy you think force of nature, you think Brits speech, you think the voice of the underdog.”

He doesn’t think classical music has that yet. “We have amazing artists and composers and heritage — all to be cherished — but I think our challenge is to look forward. It’s not just about the music, but about ideas, about philosophy, about being slightly subversive, sometimes politicised, sometimes angry.”

Crucially, this means “breaking down perceived barriers”, therefore the power of the three-and-a-half-minute message should not be underestimated. “You can write 40-minute symphonies, but it’s more important to me to connect with people at this stage.” All of his singles on Spotify are under four minutes long and his new album is “tuneful,” despite many classical artists seeing this a “dirty word”.

Ffrench is part of a movement: he cites violinist Ray Chen as a classical musician who is “prolific on the internet” and, of course, Sheku Kanneh-Mason, the cellist winner of BBC Young Musician in 2016, who stole the nation’s hearts when he performed at the royal wedding last month. Ffrench is family friends with Kanneh-Mason — he knows his father, Stuart, and taught Sheku’s sister, Isata, as a young pianist. “I’m proud of what he’s doing with classical music, that he’s representing — to coin a hip hop line — so magnificently. I think people will look to Sheku and think ‘I can do that’.”

He describes himself as “colour blind” when it comes to his audience and says his only aim is to “reach as many people as possible”.

What does he think his “brand” is as an artist? “I had a message the other day that said ‘When life is giving you lemons, listen to Alexis Ffrench’, so there’s a sense that my music has found a place where people need to be consoled — for some kind of spiritual pick-up”. When people ask him how to achieve the same success with their music, Ffrench says the same thing: “Just do your thing, write your music, and don’t worry about it. If you like it, it will come.”

Alexis Ffrench plays Latitude on July 15