Speech After the Removal of the Larynx

When that nasty cold was going around in March, Ellis Ludwig-Leone had lost his voice, pulling down a mask to whisper directions, Gollum-like, into the microphone: “‘Can’t Unsee It’ straight into ‘No Devil.’”

The composer-songwriter was rehearsing with San Fermin in the Better Company Records studio for their full-band tour that would start later that month in Boise, Idaho. Before that, just the string section would play the Birds of Paradise festival in the Netherlands. Lead singer Allen Tate was drinking a beer as violinist Claire Wellin flipped through a score and tuned between songs. They seemed like tough, serious players. That is, until they poked fun at their bandleader, crooning “Yesss, my preciousss.”

“Can’t Unsee It,” getting some California flavor from Tyler McDiarmid’s celestial guitar playing, is from the band’s newest album, Arms (Better Company Records), whereas “No Devil,” featuring Tate’s baritone voice with kick drum punctuations, is from 2015. Bridging them, an outro with Stephen Chen’s fluttery sax, Griffin Brown’s cymbal swells, Ludwig-Leone’s pedal-y keyboard, and Wellin’s Pachelbel-esque violin.

Ludwig-Leone’s laryngitis had a hint of irony, as he is actually something of a musical polyglot. On one hand, he is the indie songwriter behind San Fermin; on another, he is a composer in the contemporary classical idiom. These roles, Ludwig-Leone says, “come in and out of relationship. When I’m composing, I’m thinking about form, structure, networks of pitches,” he says. “Songwriting comes from a more conversational place, a place of connection.”

If you were to place “Can’t Unsee It” or “No Devil” next to Ludwig-Leone’s chamber music—such as the aptly-named Speech After the Removal of the Larynx or “How to Resurrect a Loved One’s Voice” from his 2023 self-released album False We Hope—you might not tell they are by the same person.

A need for cross-genre fertilization was what motivated Ludwig-Leone, along with Tate, to start Better Company Records in 2020. The Brooklyn-based record company represents mostly indie musicians, with a few classical thrown in.

“There are different scales that you can tell stories on,” says Ludwig-Leone. “On this San Fermin record, each song is one day, one moment. Some albums have been more concept-y or narrative-driven, which feels similar to writing an opera. Some pieces bridge the gap, like The Night Falls, which is a dance-opera, and felt very much in between those worlds,” he says, referring to his collaboration with BalletCollective, which was reviewed in the Rail’s March 2023 issue.

Arms is “by far the most songwriter-y” of San Fermin’s albums, says Ludwig-Leone. Some might say it sounds less ambitious than the band’s lush early work, such as their eponymous 2014 album. But, Ludwig-Leone says, “I just didn’t feel like big arrangements were heading to this story.” He wanted the focus to be on the “dramatic, sad, funny, uncanny” lyrics, which are about “upheaval” following a breakup, and might verge on cliché if they weren’t so sincere.

Ludwig-Leone studied composition at Yale, where Nico Muhly was a mentor. His first-ever composition teacher was Ted Hearne, back when Hearne was just a grad student. He claims other influences like Charles Ives, Sufjan Stevens, Miles Davis, Paul Simon, Benjamin Britten, and Kate Bush, all artists, he argues, “trying to synthesize two things at once.”

His favorite ensemble to write for is string quartet, which “feels so conversational, both on a macro and micro level.” It has that “overstuffed feeling, a Baroque aesthetic,” which is also true of Ludwig-Leone’s early songwriting. An attempt to unify Ludwig-Leone’s different worlds was the Birds of Paradise concert, the first half of which was False We Hope—written for the Attacca Quartet and performed by the Adam Quartet—and the second being a string arrangement of Arms. (A live album is coming out later this year.)

Though the projects have “a fair amount of aesthetic distance between them,” to put it mildly, both are about “communicating with someone who’s gone,” says Ludwig-Leone. “False We Hope is basically a séance,” with Eliza Bagg’s haunted vocals floating above wispy, fog-like strings.

Perhaps the reason that so much of Ludwig-Leone’s work concerns communication, and its limitations, comes down to the fact that he “can’t sing”—not on a good day, and especially not with the cold. Because of that, he says, there’s a “loneliness,” as the composer-songwriter, to putting his words in someone else’s “mouth,” whether it be Tate’s, Wellin’s, or Bagg’s.

But as the bandleader and keyboardist, mostly out of the spotlight, Ludwig-Leone has the unusual privilege of being able to comment on the different audiences that attend his shows. There are those who “already like the band and know the words,” which can be “energizing and special.” Classical audiences, meanwhile, “may or may not know your work,” so you must “lay your syntax out for them,” and show them how the piece works. This tends to produce “more lean-in listening, instead of visceral listening.”

If he was completely unburdened by finances, popularity, expectations, or the potential for failure, what kind of music would Ludwig-Leone make? “False We Hope was that project for me,” he says. “I want there to be this feeling, when I was a kid, reading myths and fairytales, where wonder could turn to terror,” he adds, “this quicksilver quality that if you shifted the light a little bit, the feeling would be totally different.” In songwriting, that manifests as the “line between panic and euphoria. I want my music to feel that way.”