Always on
This project successfully funded on 13th April 2026, you can still support them with a donation.
Help Mad Song launch their first album!
Barnet, Greater London, United Kingdom
Aim
We’ve been together for several years, and now we’re launching our first album!
Hi! We’re Mad Song, six musicians who love sharing new music with the world. We’ve been together for several years, and now we’re launching our first album! We’ve had contributions from Edinburgh University and the Marchus Trust, but to get the project over the line we need support from people like you.
How can I help?
Making recordings is really expensive! Even with the grants we’ve received, we still need help to ensure the album can be properly distributed. After all, there’s no point going to all this effort if nobody can hear it. Any amount you can contribute will be enormously welcome, but there are a few extra perks…
- £10 gets you one of our beloved Mad Song stickers
- £25 gets that plus a handwritten thank-you note from us and your name in the CD booklet
- £50 gets all of that inside one of our elegant new tote bags
- £100 adds a free CD to the tote bag and an invitation to an exclusive pre-launch reception
- £250 gets all of that and earns an invitation to an open rehearsal where you can chat with us, watch us work, and experience everything that goes into making Mad Song concerts come to life!
Who are we?
In 2019 our conductor, Josh, set up a group to play Eight Songs for a Mad King, a crazy piece for ensemble and singer. In 2022, we formed a proper ensemble with fixed members and regular rehearsals.
Since then we’ve given over 20 concerts around the UK and abroad. We’ve commissioned new works by composers like Anna Semple and Rob Hao, and given UK premieres by composers including Chris Mayo and Jean-Louis Agobet.
In 2024 we were chosen to go to Germany for the prestigious Ensemble Modern Academy and there we played Gérard Grisey’s Talea for the first time. It’s one of the major works for our ensemble and so tackling it was an enormous project. If you want a peek at what we got up to, below is a video of us performing Murail's Treize Couleurs which we learnt alongside Talea that summer...
What’s on the album?
Having put all that effort into learning Talea we were keen to play it again, and so we did it twice in February 2025. We also commissioned Thomas Metcalf to write Photogenia, which we premiered in those same concerts, which the Observer gave 4*.
The two works are both inspired by machines and technology, and as they go really well together they became the bookends of the album. Between these two, we’ve added Judith Weir’s Blue-Green Hill, gorgeously melodic and always an audience hit, and Jean-Louis Agobet’s Eclisses, a glittering workout for the ensemble.
These four works sum up our identity as an ensemble: new music, modern classics, and crucially, music that isn’t played as much as we think it should be. In fact, only Talea has commercial recordings available, and so our album will allow listeners around the world to hear three of these pieces for the first time!
How’s it going?
Pretty well! We’ve had support from Edinburgh University and the Marchus Trust which funded Tom’s piece and our October recording sessions. New College, Oxford, also helped massively by giving us the run of their spectacular New Space, a brand-new underground recital hall. We were joined by the recording guru Adaq Khan who calmly guided us through the process, and clarinettist Rowan Jones who stepped in for Méline and did an incredible job learning all this music.
Having recorded, we’re now in the process of editing it with Adaq. After that, the audio will go to our label and they then make the actual CDs (yes, there are CDs!) and get everything ready to go live on Spotify, Apple Music, or whatever streaming platform you use.
At that point, we’ll get together with our supporters for the launch party: we’ll play some music, chat to the composers, and celebrate the unveiling of this music to the world!
Thank you so much,
Hannah, Méline, Rowan, David, Hana, Laura, and Josh
Funding method
Keep what you raise – this project will receive all pledges made