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Interview by Karen Bliss
Family-owned Wise Music Group made a big decision just over five years ago to rebrand from Music Sales Group, which was started in the early 1970s by patriarch Bob Wise to sell sheet music and acquire copyrights.
Over more than 50 years, the company grew into one of the world’s biggest independent full-service publishers, controlling over half a million copyrights, including the largest independent holding of historic and contemporary classical music, and a wide range of genres from pop to reggae.
“The rebrand was largely about moving on from the way that the company had become a print music publisher. It had a print-focused name, and we were moving into a different era, which was our focus on rights development and ownership and management,” CEO Marcus Wise told Music Week. “So, we wanted to make that change apparent in our name, but also in what we were doing.
“At the beginning of this year, we sold our digital education business, which was the last non-core business that we had,” he added. “We still have a book company; we want to keep that, but our focus now is on the copyright business.”
Recent acquisitions include London indie-pop band The Clientele; a unique deal with Icelandic experimentalists Sigur Rós and a first option classical deal with its main composer Kjarten Sveinsson; and David Longstreth of New York rock band Dirty Projectors.
In London, Ludovico Einaudi just played six nights at the Royal Albert Hall in support of his current album, The Summer Portraits; Anoushka Shankar will return to the BBC Proms at the esteemed venue on August 12, performing music from her three Chapters mini-albums; and Joby Talbot and Christopher Wheeldon are preparing Like Water For Chocolate for a new run with the Royal Ballet at Covent Garden this October.
But on the agenda right now is a passion project of Marcus Wise’s, an album by London reggae and dub pioneer Dennis Bovell appropriately titled Wise Music In Dub, out July 25, on their own label. The first single, My Heart Is Gone, feat. Winston Francis, came out July 11 and another single just dropped, with Bovell singing, called Train to dUBville.
Here, Marcus Wise meets Music Week for a catch-up on the state of classical music publishing, and more details on his new deals…
Do you feel that Wise is typically viewed as a classical music company, or are people aware of your signings in different genres?
“Both of those things are true in equal parts. We’re very proud, and indeed focused, on classical music as a company. It’s our heritage. We have companies that are 200 years old in the classical space, and we manage and own some of the most well-respected classical works in the world. And, we have a diverse roster with a lot of evergreen pop songs, but in the last year to two, I’ve been interested in expanding that to a range of genres.”
We learn about classical composers in school and are familiar with all the big names, but then it seems young people are more interested in pop, rock, hip-hop and that symphonies are struggling to attract next-gen concert-goers…
“We haven’t seen a decline in interest, in terms of fans of it embracing contemporary classical works. In fact, the live sector is quite buoyant and diverse. You will find the Mozart and the Beethoven performances, but you will equally find cutting-edge contemporary ballet by Joby Talbot. He’s selling out concert halls everywhere from Asia to Australia to Europe. And then, we have Ludovico Einaudi, who’s also a sensation. He sold out the Royal Albert Hall six times in a row [June 29-July 4] and the crowd is very diverse. There are lots of young people. I brought my kids and they loved it. And, of course, there’s the serious area of classical music and opera and new concert works that we’re also involved in. Kaija Saariaho, who won an Olivier Award last year [best new opera production] — unfortunately, she’s recently passed away — but she’s become an important figure in contemporary classical music.
“I hear what you’re saying in the sense that perhaps we should be doing better as a society educating young people about classical music, but they certainly are coming to the shows. I’m not that worried about that. Where, unfortunately, the industry has been impacted is less support from the performing rights societies around the world, cutting the distributions to classical music over periods of time. That’s the biggest effect on classical music. That’s a trend that’s happening globally in our sector but will continue. So there’s a mix of things at work, but classical music is alive and very healthy.”
Classical music is alive and very healthy
Marcus Wise
Have sync opportunities increased as a result of the huge growth in video streaming across multiple platforms?
“Over the last few years, there has been an increase globally in sync for licensing for film and TV. Over the last two years, the writer’s strike has impacted the US side of that business, but we’re seeing a healthy rebound since that has no longer been a factor. So, the sync market again is healthy. We’ll see how that pans out over time with AI becoming an impactor in that market, particularly in production music, we think first. Certainly, there will be usages of that coming very soon.”
How did the boom in catalogue acquisitions in recent years impact your business?
“What happened was the multiples were booming after there was a real interest in the marketplace for catalogue acquisitions. There’s probably a bit of a slowdown. We’re always looking for the right acquisition. We’ve just bought a company in Austria called Doblinger [Musikverlag], which is a classical music house. But we buy evergreen catalogues and all sorts of businesses. Most notably in the last few years, we bought the catalogue for The Zombies. So we aren’t slowing down and I don’t think competitors will be either. They’re probably being a bit choosier about the multiples because that’s driven by how much you can borrow and what price you can borrow.”
So, it didn’t impact you, because you weren’t going after the Bob Dylan or Neil Young catalogues?
“It does impact us because it’s additional competition. We tend to focus on things that are a strategic fit for us. But it impacts the whole market by having lots of investors coming into this. But we are not an investment house. That makes us different in the business. We buy and we hold and we develop the rights that we own over many years. And that fits into our model of a full-service publisher. We don’t have somebody else administer the rights for us like an investment company might do”
Let’s talk about your recent signings…
“One of my favourite bands, The Clientele, have signed with us. We have their back catalogue as well as futures with them. I’ve already heard some of the new stuff and it’s incredible. Great artistic integrity and a long-term act that I think will go down in history as an important songwriting and band. We’re well positioned to help them grow their income through our activities, film and TV sync, which we’re very focused on.
“David Longstreth from the Dirty Projectors, we’ve had him for a couple of months now. He’s an incredible force. We’ll be representing him going forward for his work, not only in Dirty Projectors, but his own songwriting. He collaborates with people like Solange, Björk, Rihanna, huge pop writers. And he writes orchestral pop music in the sense of the Beach Boys almost. It’s very intricate work, with orchestra and lots of voices. It’s absolutely beautiful.
“We also are working with the writers of Sigur Rós now. The deal we have with them is to interpret their catalogue for classical concert use.”
Is that unique?
“I think it is unique. I mean, we work with other composers that are pop composers as well as classical composers, but usually they separate their work. They don’t transpose that work for the classical market. In America, we have a company called Schirmer Theatrical and we do this with other works. We’ve just done a Dolly Parton show, for instance, where we’re putting the music with a symphony orchestra. Not quite the same idea here. This would be classical interpretations of Sigur Rós. We’re looking at all sorts of things from ballet to what kind of unique performers could supplement the vocal part to this type of performance. It won’t be with their band. We’ve already had quite a lot of interest from booking agents around the world looking for this type of material.
“And, of course, we’re leaders in this sector of crossover classical works. We’re also working with Kjartan Sveinsson, the instrumental composer behind Sigur Rös. He’s a classical composer in his own right. We already have one of his operas called Der Klang [der Offenbarung des Göttlichen/ The Explosive Sonics of Divinity], which has had several performances already.”
We got all the best session musicians in London to come in and play on the Dennis Bovell record
Marcus Wise
On now to something completely different, again – Dennis Bovell, a veteran reggae/dub pioneer, whose album, Wise Music In Dub, is coming out on July 25…
“First off, I’m a huge fan of reggae music. I’ve worked with several leaders in that genre. I’ve gone to Jamaica to work with Toots And The Maytals and I’ve worked with Max Romeo. We also have a big catalogue of rights in reggae, which spans Pass The Dutchie to all of John Holt’s work and all the Skatalites. So I said, ‘Who else can I work with but I don’t have to go to Jamaica or America to do it? I need to work with local artists because this is international music and there’s a vibrant culture here in the UK.’ So I went through my collection and I found Dennis immediately because he’s the leader in this territory of making important reggae records.
“I reached out to him to find out how we could work together and, at first, he didn’t think that I knew anything about what he did [laughs]. So I had to convince him that I knew all his Blackbeard recordings, I knew 4th Street Orchestra and I knew Janet Kay. So he finally agreed to do a mix for me on my Max Romeo record [Max Romeo Sings Classics EP] and we started becoming friends. I invited him into our studio in our offices – which I’m about to expand and make a more important part of our offering to our composers – and I said, ‘Come in and do some work with me.’ And so, he did that.
“I executive produced it in the sense that I oversaw the whole project and put it together, but I really wanted his artistic individual style. We got all the best session musicians in London to come in and play on this record. He knew them all. We’ve got Caroll Thompson, who does an amazing version of Les Fleurs. Brinsley Forde, who does a good version of Black And White. Winston Francis, who sings an incredible version of My Heart Is Gone, and Papa Dee who performs Don’t Stay Out Late. So we’ve got some great vocalists. Dennis himself is an amazing vocalist. He plays bass, piano, guitar, everything and sings very well. So it gives a well-rounded picture of what Dennis is capable of. While he didn’t write the songs, he arranged everything too.”
What is the thinking behind the album title, to spread the word that Wise is a player in this area?
“The whole album spun out from the idea of doing a covers record. But because Dennis is a dub legend and because I have a fascination with dub music as well, we had this idea why don’t we do it as a dub record? And as the process evolved, it was clear that it was going to have a lot of influences. It’s not a pure dub album, frankly. It’s a mix of many genres from rock and pop to reggae to calypso. There’s a lot of jazz influence in there, too.”
MAIN PHOTO: Marcus Wise (credit: Chris Lopez)
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