Interview with Ellie Slorach

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Publicity photo of Ellie Slorach

By Sarah Walters, PR and Communications Manager

For the second year running, Ellie Slorach’s trailblazing ensemble Kantos Chamber Choir comes to the RNCM as part of our Inspirational Artists season, which celebrates captivating contemporary artists from all musical disciplines. This time, Kantos is focusing on a 400-year-old story of persecution and mob mentality: the Lancashire Witch Trials of 1612, which resulted in the senseless execution of 10 people.

It may have happened a long time ago but, says Ellie (the choir’s conductor and co-founder, and an alumna of the RNCM), this story can still teach us vital lessons about our modern world and the dangers of being quick to judgement. Helping to draw those parallels are the words of the judges that sent the convicted women and men to their deaths – accompanied by music by Allegri, Byrd, Strozzi, Palestrina, Camden Reeves and more, plus Gregorian plainchants and poetry from former Poet Laureate Carol Ann Duffy.

Sarah Walters caught up with Ellie ahead of the performance to find out more about The Witch Trials, and to discover Ellie’s story, too.

Q: You have said about yourself: ‘I am naturally a leader’ – can you tell me something, perhaps about you as a young person, that made you think of yourself in that way?

I never knew I was going to be a conductor, let’s say that, because I don’t think I really knew what a conductor was, and I definitely didn’t know that you could do it as a job! But I think I was that person who liked organising the games in the playground, and I didn’t like conflict – I still don’t like conflict – so I was always the person who would try to make everything OK and be understanding. I’d hate other people to be upset, and I guess that carried on through school and university and then into playing in lots of orchestras and singing in lots of choirs.

I was in secondary school before I started to understand what a conductor was and what they did, and I recall that I did start to think, ‘Oh, I’d quite like to have a go standing up where that conductor is’. So, at my secondary school I started leading a small percussion group for the primary school attached. I went to the Junior Birmingham Conservatoire during sixth-form and I started going to concerts a little bit more frequently because I had this opportunity to see the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra – but I didn’t know the names of famous conductors at that age. At university, I obviously did more and more, and then I caught the bug basically! But it’s weird: even when I was studying it as my final recital at the University of Manchester, I still didn’t really have a concept that would be my job.

I took a slightly different path, maybe, to others who have gone into conducting, or people who thought all along that’s what they wanted to do. I do feel a little bit like I landed on my feet – that somehow it has just happened! I’m very happy about that, of course.

Q: Was music a big deal for you when you were young, outside of traditional teaching and performance?

It was actually, for me and my friends. We were very much into the latest indie bands at school, and the big rebellion for us was to go to a gig at Rock City in Nottingham on a school night. We were really into bands like Pigeon Detectives and The Fratellis, and we just thought we were the coolest people ever going!

I was really very lucky at my school because it was a brilliant school for music, and I had a friendship group in the music block that was a really good community. At home, my family were musical – not by profession: my mum taught me the piano until I was an age where I wouldn’t listen to her anymore, and my dad was a singer and guitar player in a covers band playing everything from 1970s to 2000s music.

Q: Do you think having that broad experience of music, from traditional training to exposure to rock and pop, influenced the musician and artistic director you have become?

I’ve had both worlds: what you would class as traditional training but also experiences that weren’t very traditional at all. Nottingham and Leicester are strong hubs of amateur music making and semi-professional music making but they don’t have an orchestra like Manchester has, and I didn’t go through the Oxbridge route or study at a conservatoire as an undergraduate student. So moving to a city like Manchester was a very big step for me in opening my mind; it’s very cheesy to say it, but I do think I’ve found myself in Manchester. I found a city that’s very open-minded, people who are very down to earth, and a very experimental but very high-level music scene that is open and isn’t so enormous that you can’t feel like a part of it.

I also do put a lot of who I am as an artist down to Manchester itself, and to the outlook of the city and the institutions that I came through, which is both the University of Manchester and the RNCM. Both at the University and at the RNCM, we were encouraged to set things up ourselves, to have ideas and then work out how you put them into practice – but to start with the big idea! I’ve not really reflected too much on how that has influenced Kantos, but when I have time to think – which is quite rare these days – I do like to have complete freedom, just the openness first, and to worry about the practical details later.

Q: You are an RNCM Conducting postgraduate and a frequent visiting artist – including as part of our Inspirational Artists series in 2024/25. You’re joining us again for that series in 2025/26 with a production that also ties in with our Legends and Lore theme. What can you tell me about it?

It’s called The Witch Trials. We have toured it a couple of times before and the reason we keep coming back to it is because we really think we’ve got something here that’s quite a special programme. It’s a part of history that people are really interested in as well as an amazing story; you think it’s quite hard to believe initially, but then you realise it’s scarily easy to believe!

We conjured it up to take to the Pendle Heritage Centre, which is the part of the world where the Lancashire trials took place. We also performed it at Lancaster Castle; the room where the actual trials happened wasn’t big enough, so we were literally next door to the room in the castle where the trials were held and 10 people sentenced to death in 1612. We’ve even done it at the White Hotel in Manchester, which is this nightclub space, but the composer, Camden Reeves, said it was the most electrifying thing sitting in that audience because they were gripped in a way that he hadn’t felt before. We love to use unusual spaces, although I’m thinking more carefully now about where we go if it’s not a conventional concert hall because of the compromise on the acoustics.

One of the inspirations for the programme was a piece by Camden called Spells, Remedies, and Potions. In his tagline, he says: ‘Think Black Sabbath and Metallica, but for sopranos.’ It’s great, isn’t it? He freely adapted his own texts from The Malleus Maleficarum, a bizarre theological and legal treatise that outlines methods for the identification, trial, interrogation, and execution of witches published around 1487, and his three motets present an image of a witches’ coven. The piece is only for upper voices, for the sopranos and the altos of the choir – and only for sopranos really, but we do both. It’s an incredible piece and the words are really striking; the third movement starts with, ‘We cause hailstorms, we raise tempests’, and then it gets really dark! ‘For the devils we kill children, and for the children who are not baptised we shall devour them’ – it’s really an astonishing adaptation.

The words are hard, but the point really is that we hunted witches back then and there was a sense of herd mentality, and while we think we are looking at the past when we talk about hunting witches and herd mentality that’s exactly what happens today. It’s the same pattern of events that people are still subjected to; society is still persecuting minorities and jumping on issues as a herd.

In the performance, we also hear about two witches: we hear about the Demdike family and we hear the Chattox confession. We also hear the actual written verdict and the names of those that were put on trial – women and men. At the end of the whole concert, I guess we are sending them off in peace; it’s almost like an apology, an acknowledgement of the fact that they were obviously so mistreated.

Q: How have people reacted to it?

After some of the concerts, I’ve made a point of meeting the audience to see what they thought. People say they’re just very moved by the performance, and I think that’s because we draw it back to the present day.

At the end, there’s a plainchant followed by a poem by Carol Ann Duffy called The Lancaster Witches. Some things can just hit you quite hard, and I think there are moments like that in this concert – like when the back row, which is all of the men of the choir, shout the verdict as one. I know it’s coming and yet every time that gets me in the tummy, you know? There are things that are absurd and unbelievable, and I guess almost verge on humorous because you can’t quite fathom that people really did think like that. The stomach-turning moment is when you realise, ‘Oh, hang on, we’re all just the same’.

Q: Your performance puts you back in the College from which you graduated in 2018. How significant is it for students to experience performance from alumni and people who are progressing with their creative journeys?

When I was at the RNCM, it was obviously incredible to see people like Sir Mark Elder come into college and to have a masterclass with them, but sometimes what’s more tangible than that is when you see someone who went to your college coming back five or 10 years down the line in the profession. You can connect to that path, and Mark (Heron) and Clark (Rundell) are both fantastic at signalling why a certain guest coming in is someone you should talk to and hear from. So, I hope by coming in and doing this I can engage people who share my interests and approaches; I’m really into the programming side of things and I’ve obviously curated this programme, and I hope people will be able to see how I’ve built my own ensemble.

It’s our 10-year anniversary next season, so it’s a big year for us to come back to the RNCM as well. The choir was born out of the university and the RNCM; it started with my friends who sang in both places. To come back in as a fully functioning professional chamber choir – I hope people can see what’s possible. I also hope people see that it’s a lot of work! This is amazing and we’re so happy to be touring this programme, but we are 10 years down the line and we’re still grafting hard.

From the perspective of me as a conductor, I hope people can see that I’ve grown a lot in confidence since I’ve left the RNCM, and I also hope that singers and people who want to go into the choral world see the choir and see that they too can sing with a professional choir in this part of the country. That’s one of the big things that we’re trying to do at Kantos; we’re actually starting our Professional Experience Scheme with the RNCM from September, so it’s a perfect time to come in and perform in the building.

Q: Does your approach differ when conducting a choir to conducting an orchestra?

I like to think that my approach stays fairly standard across the ensembles – although not necessarily in terms of technique. My approach is generally calm, and I find that the nature of specific projects we do often have elements that are quite new to people. Often, I’ll be, say, conducting an ensemble, but also working with a TV screen, and a presenter, and a young child who’s never sung with an orchestra before. I want to do projects like that because I like to bring things together like that, and I know I am able to galvanize people in the room.

I’m very organised. I come with rigorous rehearsal plans, and I like to stick to them. I think that gives people a sense there’s a structure to what we’re doing and that I’m the sort of leader in front of you who you can trust to have a plan for you.

Q: What is life as a conductor like, and what are the biggest challenges you have faced?

I’ll start with the positives, shall I? I find that I’m constantly working on interesting new projects that are very fast paced. I’m someone who likes to think quite a lot; I don’t want to say I’m a workaholic, but I am someone who needs my brain occupied. I like being busy, I feel very privileged that I get to meet all these different people on a week-to-week basis, and that I also get to see parts of the world through my work and that I can present projects that I devised myself and really believe in. And Kantos really brings me a lot of rewards – that’s like my baby.

Sometimes the traveling is hard, and that could sound quite privileged, but it does have an impact on your life. And I guess I do still struggle with imposter syndrome. I struggled with that immensely when I was studying, and we don’t really talk about it very much. Sometimes, when I’m programming things for Kantos, I can end up wondering, “Why is my idea the one?”, and there’s a lot of questioning like that – “Why should I be standing up in front of this orchestra?” – but I feel like that’s probably my equivalent of nerves and while the nerves are there, you know that your sense of care is still there. I only get nervous for first rehearsals now and rarely for concerts, which is such a joy.

Q: Is there one next big thing you’d like to achieve?

We are a small but mighty team at Kantos and we have big dreams. Mine is to have a building in Manchester and a core group of singers on a salary who sing in Kantos as their job. We have this incredible choral scene and choral heritage in the UK, and everyone around the world knows us as this place of choral tradition, but then we have one choir on salary. It’s a big deal to try to achieve that but the last 10 years have demonstrated how much we can achieve.

I worked with the Estonian male voice choir recently in Tallinn: 40 men, and that’s just the male choir. Then they have the chamber choir, an opera chorus… all in this tiny city compared to Manchester. Ours is a big dream and obviously it’s all money dependent, but we’ve achieved this so far and we can carry on.