“Psappha is now closed.” On November 6, Psappha, a contemporary music ensemble based in Manchester, posted a short notice that signaled the end of over 30 years of commissioning, performing, and championing music from the 20th and 21st centuries.
On the perennially shaky UK new music scene, organizations are routinely thinned, trimmed and pruned, but rarely are they felled completely. Though news of Psappha’s closure had been trailed in May, the confirmation still felt like an abrupt final barline at the end of a score full of ideas, about half of which had been fully developed. The reason for this immediate halt was equally clear-cut. “The loss of 100% of our regular public funding from Arts Council England, which constitutes around 40% of our income in an average year, has ultimately proven too great a challenge for an organization of our size and scale to overcome, especially in such a difficult funding climate for the arts,” the ensemble said in their statement.
With the announcement came a silver lining, that NMC Recordings was to acquire Psappha’s full catalog. (Psappha also diligently videoed a large number of their performances, available on their YouTube channel.) Sinking into their vast online archive feels like a solo submarine mission, descending through a thin layer of greatest hits on the surface—Gavin Bryars’s “Jesus’ Blood Never Failed Me Yet,” or Peter Maxwell Davies’s “Eight Songs for a Mad King”—and into a murky, fascinating pool below. Here are a few examples from their back catalog.
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