C Duncan is turning Mercury into gold with music prize
That morning, the shortlist for the Mercury Music Prize for year’s best UK or Irish album was released. To his enduring shock, the self-effacing Glaswegian had been nominated for his debut album, Architect.
“For the next ten years, whenever ‘C Duncan’ is mentioned, it will have Mercury Music Prize next to it in brackets,” he says in his soft Scottish accent. “It has altered how I am perceived – and how I perceive myself, to an extent.”
🚨 This year's Hyundai #MercuryPrize will be held on 14 September at @EventimApollo 👉 https://t.co/gq0a154vpr pic.twitter.com/R7PXor7Qcn
— Mercury Prize (@MercuryPrize) April 24, 2017
The Mercury that year ultimately went to troubadour Benjamin Clementine. But for Duncan a nomination was more than he could have hoped for. As time has gone on it has opened doors, both in “pop” – as he describes alternative rock – and classical music.
“I’m just back from supporting Elbow,” he says. “The first gig was in Dublin. It was pretty crazy – the venue was huge and we had to adjust to how big the space is.”
Guy Garvey’s anthemic rockers hand picked the Glasgow native for the tour, for reasons that were clear to anyone who made an effort to catch the opening act. Duncan’s music is epic, emotional and woozily entrancing. On stage Garvey would gush at length about his tour mate, suggesting he was poised for bigger things.
Audiences in Ireland can test his prediction when Duncan returns this week for his own headline dates. He will performs material from Architect and 2016 follow-up The Midnight Sun — each a winning mix of cinematic orchestration and indie rock fever-dream.
“I’ve always enjoyed combining the two disciplines,” he says. “My parents are classical musicians and I started piano when very young. While I was never pushed into music, it runs through my blood. I definitely benefitted from my background.”
He is also increasingly in demand in the classical world, in which he has a formal, as well as familial, grounding as a graduate of the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland.
“I studied classical composition and spent four years working on very strange choral music,” he says, with audible fondness. “I started to understand the structure of music and to work out what it was I liked and didn’t like. The classical training definitely leaked into my pop output, which is full of choral music. They all start to merge eventually.”
He could have had a career as a classical player and writer — indeed, that option is still there. For now, he’s happy to inhabit the world of alternative rock as one of the highest profile current signings to storied Brighton label FatCat (Sigur Ros, Animal Collective, The Twilight Sad).
“Once you have a name behind you, as it were, you are taken more seriously as a composer. I’ve done a couple of classical commissions I wouldn’t have got were it not for what I’ve achieved in pop.”
Can't wait to begin May tour in Ireland! @CyprusAveCork 4th,@mydolans 5th,@whelanslive 6th with support from the wonderful @participantste pic.twitter.com/GJCVZSbOGk
— C Duncan (@cspaceduncan) April 26, 2017
Duncan believes he is part of a wider trend, in which the contemporary and classical have started to intermingle.
“The lines are definitely blurring,” he says. “You have a lot of people doing this stuff – Max Richter, Nils Frahm, Julia Holter. Peoples’s ears are more open to classical music and experimental things.”
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