An insight into publishing with Nikki Iles and EVC Music's Elena Cobb

Having founded piano music publishing company EVC Music in 2016, Elena Cobb is no stranger to forming and maintaining partnerships with her composers. With pieces now featured in the major exam boards, and an annual showcase, the Elena Cobb Star Prize Festival at the Royal Albert Hall, the company has grown exponentially. The EVC catalogue includes a variety of new music by composers including Cobb herself, Sam Wedgwood, Heather Hammond, Donald Thomson, Philip Martin and jazz pianist and composer Nikki Iles.

I met with Cobb and Iles to find out more about how the books published by EVC help young learners reach their potential as well as looking at how their partnership works on a creative and commercial level.​

Elena, what do you look for in a potential composer?

EC:

I'm a trained pianist and piano teacher which helped me develop a good understanding of what students of any age are expecting to be able to play. Sometimes composers have unreasonable expectations, so we need to bring it down to a comfortable level without losing the integrity, the character, the style and the harmonies.

With everybody I publish, I also ask: Does this person have a voice? What is the next book going to be and how will all the consequent pieces sit within it? It's a conversation I always have with myself before investing.

Another thing we need to talk about is fun. The piano is difficult to learn so I decided if it is such a hard work to learn to play the piano, the music I publish has to have that immediate appeal. Students have to want to play the pieces again and again and again. Some of our books have been around for more than five years and people are still playing them.

How would you describe your management style when dealing with the composers you publish?

EC:

Being myself a creative type, I understand creative types really, really well and I think the creative spirit can be quite dampened by very strict guidelines. It’s not about what I like as the publisher, it's about what the creative mind has to offer. If we give no limits to that, I think this is how the best results can be achieved. I wouldn't call my approach relaxed, I have high expectations, but at the same time I don't need to tell the composer what to do.

Composers need time to think, they need to come up with that good tune, you can’t just suddenly be inspired to write something fantastic.

NI:

I always take a book with me everywhere so even if it's just a little germ of an idea, I write it down. Elena’s interested in my work outside of publishing as well, so she lets me run with ideas and she’s more flexible with deadlines. I should have had a deadline quite recently on a little harmony book but I've just been appointed as composer in residence for NDR Bigband so she said, “don't worry, we'll do it a little bit later.” You want to work with somebody who's that flexible.

EC:

I also don’t mind composers working with other publishers, the world is very different to what it used to be. I think we need to think about having less restrictions and more goodwill. We've had such a dramatic shift and big publishing houses are no longer the gatekeepers, there are other opportunities for people to self-publish. Creativity has no bounds, and we need to respect that and be open. I always say if I can't publish something, I'm very happy for the composer to take it to another publisher.

Have you had any experiences throughout your career where the commercial and creative aspects of your work have been in conflict?

EC:

Yes, I very often have this dilemma. We don't have many publications, I don't go for lots of books. I want books which, sorry to be commercial, sell consistently well and increase because people discover them and want to have them again and again and again. From the first bar, it has to be simply amazing. We had a lot of submissions from pianists turned composers sending music which was no more than arpeggio exercises. These are a popular style, but not suitable.

Another struggle is the composers who write music for higher levels. They get practically no attention from piano teachers or players, because once the pupil or student reaches about grade four or five, they immediately want to play something more ambitious, either Fur Elise or Moonlight Sonata or they move on to Chopin C# minor and Nocturne.

Could you walk us through the process of creating and publishing a music book?

EC:

It starts with a submission or introduction; with Nikki we were introduced by mutual friends. Nikki sent me some scores and they were just perfect, so we went on to work on them together and published our first book, based on the stories of Alice in Wonderland. Soon after, we followed up with Piano Tales for Peter Pan, also based on a famous children’s story (adults also enjoy the books too!).

We talked through both book suggestions, but it was a lot of input from Nikki, which I listened to with enthusiasm because I think she's amazing composer. I said to Nikki, “you do what you think is best, and my job is to take everything you put on paper and translate it into a book.” With Nikki, we worked from the manuscripts and then put it in into Sibelius, then we went through the work checking articulations, checking the fingering. We bounce around ideas, but usually with Nikki there is very little to change. She always writes by hand and her manuscripts are immaculate.

NI:

I rewrite them about six times! My first drafts do start out neat, but it gets messy quite quickly.

The thing that is so amazing about my relationship with Elena is that there's a total trust there. I like keeping in touch because she's a musician and composer as well so we can chuck ideas around.

A lot of the books you create together are written on a theme; how do you decide these?

NI:

I find it easier, even with my professional big band writing, to work with stimulus outside of music like a feeling or a place or a story. I knew it would be easier for me and more inspiring to get into writing something with a narrative and to think of the set of pieces in each book hanging together.

EC:

Nikki wrote little snippets of what each piece is about, so if you forget how the story goes in the original book, you can remind yourself. When it comes to the book titles, I make suggestions to make the book suitable for search engines. We have to have the word ‘piano’ in the title. To us it's obviously a piano book, but it’s not to Google!

We worked together for a long time on the books’ covers to develop that very neutral, yet distinctive cover which would be immediately recognisable. We didn't want to lose the Englishness of those stories and that's why it includes the [original] illustrations.

Your books are aimed at piano learners - how do the pieces promote that goal?

NI:

Coming from a jazz background, even with the lower grades or lower levels, I always put something that's very much part of our language, something I would play. I would never dumb it down because, even at an early age there will always be a kid like me who loved those things. My piece in Piano Tales for Alice where Alice falls down the rabbit hole is more impressionistic and it's supposed to be a little bit weird but actually, I've had a couple of kids that love that because it sounds odd.

EC:

From a publishing perspective, this approach adds an immense educational value because I want every piece to have, not just a good melody because that’s an integral part, but also a pedagogical value – something to learn.

The most important question is: is the music going to be liked? Everything else - engraving, graphic design, marketing - comes after. You can invest a lot of time and money into creating something which will not have any appeal whatsoever because it's just not a nice tune. The melody is very important, it's a central part of the whole process. Playing a piece creates a lot of interconnected memories, emotions and feelings so how a piece makes you feel is another very important aspect of what I try to achieve with every publication.

Nikki, it's clear that you really understand the journey of a student. When you're teaching, are there things that you look out for to inform your future compositions?

NI:

I do, every time I sit with the students, I find out things that they find tricky, things that I can help with. I often try my pieces out with my students. They’ll be playing it for six months, so you don't want them to immediately get it right, but I can see the corners that could be slightly rethought.

I also check that the work suits the level of student you have in mind. The aspiring spaces in between grades are really important so it’s good to have the level of a piece be a little bit over the grade. There will be people that will have a good go at it, and it will take them to the next level.

EVC Music is now inviting female composers aged 14 and over to participate in the selection for the new anthology of 22 pieces inspired by Chopin's 22 Nocturnes. This collection will be presented in June 2023 with a series of recitals by prize-winning pianist and RNCM student, Rose McLachlan. You can find out more about this initiative here.

Nikki Iles will take up her new role as composer in residence with NDR Bigband next year.