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| Standard Issue |
PRXLUDES is an online contemporary music magazine that sees its work as serving as a public platform where emerging and early-career composers can showcase their work. Now they are going live with prx.live part live gig, part conversation, part social gathering. The launch is on 5 February 2026 at Folklore, Hoxton in partnership with the ensemble Standard Issue and production partners, Stomping Ground.
I chatted to Standard Issue’s artistic director Michelle Hromin (clarinets) and creative director Tilly Coulton (flutes) to find out more about the ensemble and their plans for prx.live. Standard Issue is a contemporary music collective with a Pierrot ensemble at its core. They want to bring the best of music to the community. They perform mainly living composers and are interested in creating places to explore contemporary music in different ways, making inclusive and accepting spaces for new music. Their repertoire is a mix from contemporary classical to ambient drone to avant-garde. Repertoire is decided in various ways, Michelle Tilly are involved along with members of the ensemble, but sometimes composers make suggestions, and they are intrigued by the ideas.
Rather than simply playing pieces, Standard Issue wants to create a social gathering around music, so that people can talk about music. Events are not just concerts, audience members can meet new people and connect with other musicians. They want the audience to feel part of a collaborative process by opening a dialogue with the audience, what the audience liked and disliked, explaining what Standard Issue’s process was like.
For the prx.live launch, Standard Issue will be performing Ipod Variations by Iranian-American composer Kian Ravei, Soundclash by London-based composer, producer and DJ Blasio Kavuma, Skew by Holly Gowland, a composer/sound artist from Manchester who is studying for her PhD at University of Birmingham, Heartstrings by composer and vocalist Rylan Gleave, The Wooden Web by Scottish composer, arranger and podcaster Aileen Sweeney and a new commission, supported by Vaughan Williams Foundation, Snow Sprites by Millicent B James. The evening will include an introduction from Zygmund de Somogyi, artistic director of PRXLUDES, as well as conversations with the composers about their process, then after the talking and the music there will be a social gathering.
Tilly and Michelle both studied at the Royal College of Music (RCM) where Michelle curated a concert featuring music by women composers as part of the RCM’s Music and Migration series. Chatting together after the event, they realised that they shared a love of new music, of working with composers and wanted to do more working with people that they knew. From there the suggestion of making it a group was the next step. The launch concert was in 2022, creating a space for them to come together performing contemporary and experimental music.
Further details and tickets for prx.live from Dice.
