Zygmund de Somogyi is a composer and music journalist. Zygmund describes their music as irreverent and eclectic. They’ve written for chamber ensembles, orchestra, stage, film and much more.

Much of Zygmund’s work is composed through collaboration, and is often derived from conversations with performers and others. Zygmund says they tend to focus on writing music for people, rather than just for instruments.

Asked whether there’s a common theme of frustration across several works, Zygmund describes trying to express feelings of liminality, the concept of being "betwixt and between" different life stages or states of being.

Zygmund’s music is performed around the world. They explain how audiences in various countries have given different responses to their work.

Melanie Spanswick is a pianist, author, teacher and composer. She’s a piano faculty member at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama and Eton College, and she’s a regular contributor to Pianist Magazine. She tells Remain Composed that composition is an activity she’s come to relatively recently.

Melanie explains the process that goes into compiling anthologies, such as her ‘Play it again’ series designed for people returning to the piano after a break. Melanie discusses the challenges of making music for beginners which is both playable and not boring.

Working as an adjudicator of music festivals, Melanie says she’s seen numbers of performers falling. She says it’s a real shame, and everybody should learn a musical instrument.

Melanie describes what goes into writing her piece and column for each edition of Pianist Magazine - and how she manages to come up with names for so many individual works. She also has words of advice for anyone entering the magazine’s composing competition.

Thomas James Owen is in the early days of his compositional career. Thomas has always been curious about how and why music can evoke emotions. Thomas says he’s learnt to not imitate other composers, but he does sometimes aim to generate the feelings he’s felt when listening to certain works.

Thomas writes music most days. Normally, while sitting at his keyboard, his fingers come up with the ideas before his head does. He describes how he uses different processes to develop those ideas.

While discussing creative stimuli, Thomas discusses experimenting with his daughters to see whether they can associate ‘positive’ thoughts with major chords.

Thomas says AI-created music is only rehashing stuff it’s heard before. He says the only way to get a quality product is to use human creatives, though he does concede that times seem to be changing rather quickly.