The composer Rebecca Saunders was not where I imagined her to be. Plans for a meeting in person were moved online, owing to her retreat to the countryside to complete a deadline. So it was a surprise when Saunders appeared, not in some remote rural studio, but in her Berlin flat.
“I think a lot of people are having a hard winter,” she said. Saunders hasn’t been well, a mixture of bronchitis and long Covid meaning reduced traveling, a few weeks staying well away from people, and the rare extension to a deadline. Yet she was in good spirits—or at least seemed it. Saunders has mastered that skill young radio presenters are encouraged to develop: By smiling into the microphone, even her most barbed comments sound aurally pleasant. When, in the closing moments of the interview, I asked how she used the €250,000 that accompanied the Ernst von Siemens Musikpreis she received in 2019, Saunders replied that she wouldn’t be answering questions around “turbo-capitalism.” “I bought a sports car!” she said with bright-eyed sarcasm, and departed the call soon after.
By that point, we had spoken for an hour, pausing only to jump across Zoom links and for Saunders to give her cooking a stir. We discussed spaces, embodied sound, her new release on NMC, and recent developments in the UK music scene.
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