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Born in Japan but brought up in the UK, Ben Nobuto<\/a><\/strong> is an award-winning young composer with a thrillingly individual voice. His music defies categorisation, leaping across stylistic boundaries and creating exhilarating sonic juxtapositions. Nobuto\u2019s Hallelujah Sim<\/em> receives its world premiere at the First Night of the Proms on 19 July<\/a><\/strong>…<\/p> ‘I was always curious about music, but maybe slightly in denial. <\/strong>I remember my friends saw music as the doss subject at school and wouldn\u2019t take it seriously. But secretly I thought it was really enjoyable! At age 13 or 14 I was improvising a lot on the piano, but didn\u2019t know it was called composition.<\/p> ‘At university I wrote a lot of music for myself to play on piano with electronic parts.<\/strong> That felt like a really intuitive way of making music, as it was all based in my body and what I know. I studied classical music, composition and the basics of theory, so I\u2019ve had that grounding, but once you have that knowledge it\u2019s about being able to turn it into something that feels natural and authentic.<\/p> ‘I was listening to a lot of Coltrane, free jazz and electronic producers.<\/strong> I had quite a segregated view of those things, like they were separate things that I wasn\u2019t allowed to mix. But gradually I let myself do whatever I wanted, and it felt more natural. It\u2019s like I was allowing myself to lean in to all those sides of me that I felt I had to surpress. It was a nice process\u00a0to\u00a0go\u00a0through.<\/p> ‘After finishing university, Manchester Collective offered me a commission out of the blue. <\/strong>I wrote a piece called Serenity 2.0<\/em>, which is for string quartet, electronics and percussion. They took that on tour and it was quite a big thing for me; I felt like a composer then, but I still feel weird about calling myself a composer, because the word feels quite loaded.<\/p> ‘A lot of my writing method is based around my fingers and what feels good.<\/strong> Sometimes it\u2019s nice to start off by improvising and lock into a groove that feels right, and then that\u2019s the basis for something you refine later. I prefer to go from moment to moment and ask myself, \u2018Is this interesting to listen to?\u2019 So it\u2019s a moment-to-moment feeling, deciding whether it\u2019s enjoyable to listen to, as if I was an audience member, not knowing anything about it but experiencing it on a purely sensory level.<\/p>