Introducing Michael 

Michael Cretu is a composer, double bass player and musical director. In addition to performing regularly as a soloist and with the Michael Cretu Jazz Trio, he leads the Manchester International Roots Orchestra. He left Romania shortly after the collapse of the Soviet Union and came to Manchester to study double bass at the Royal Northern College of Music. 

Roma and Romanian heritage 

Michael was born in Bucharest, where he grew up and went to music school. He can look back on several centuries of music-making in his family. 

”I come from a very well-known family, which is, as it happens, something which the Romanian nation is proud of, so to speak, especially of my uncle, because he is considered the father of Romanian jazz [as well as] a composer, a double bassist and a pianist as well. My dad was a pianist… my grandfather, double bassist, a teacher, played in the Philharmonic and he had a family band as well. And my great grandfather, a violinist, his great great grandfather, a violinist and quite a few violinists back to … I think 1700, 1750.” 

The family is of mixed heritage, and through its long historical musical practice has crossed the divide between formal, classical music-making and folk traditions. Although much of Michael’s work is in the sphere of contemporary classical music today, folk traditions of Romania are at the heart of his inspiration. 

”There's some Jewish blood, some Roma blood, some Romanian blood. It's a bit mixed. But I think the main, if I would think about the main cultural influence… is connected to the Roma heritage culture in the sense of music making. And it's very strong there… And the importance of the musicians in Romania, Roma musicians is, it's enormous, in my opinion, because on one hand, you have the European courts with … employing musicians and then the beginning of the development of the classical music, which we, we know a lot about…. But on the other hand, in East Europe, especially in Romania, the rich people and the court, they had entertainment as well. Now they try to pay travelling musicians from wherever was possible, from Western Europe. But that's after 1800, quite a bit after 1850. Before that it was always the local musicians. The rich people had parties and they had guests, and guess what? Who was playing at those parties? It was always the Roma, the local [musicians] living in poverty." 

"I consider that my, you know, folk music, is a source of inspiration with no ending. It’s so powerful because, again, it's thousands of years of development and transmission from generation to generation, which is extremely rich and extremely important.” 

Life in Manchester as a Romanian musician 

Michael had been planning to leave communist Romania for the United States, but his plan was scuppered when his passport was confiscated. After the revolution he was able to come to the UK, and after his studies at the Royal Northern College of Music he developed a musical career that embraces and develops numerous different genres and styles. His individual creative energy, and his deep roots, shape that strongly. 

”I like mixing. And then again, this is a family tradition. I’ve played in different bands, I’ve played all kinds of music, but I very much enjoy doing my own thing, I mean I compose music and I try to perform my music whenever it's possible. That's not very easy, we have to make a living, so I work as a freelance musician, I play from classical to jazz to world music and other styles. I’ve collaborated with rappers, spoken word, poets, opera and things like this. And I love a challenge when it comes to different genres of music. If I have to play a piece of music, which is Bach, then I'll go and try to play Bach… although I don't like to do this anymore, I think I've done that as much as I could. But if it's anything to do with creation, something new, always my musical input comes into it. If I must contribute or if I must write a piece of music, it'll have to have something which is inside me and that comes from folk music, Eastern European and then the Roma heritage.” 

Michael finds Manchester a lively city with a very specific potential for creative work. 

"Manchester, from a musical point of view… something happens here all the time. I travel quite a bit to London. With London, I always thought that London is very rich, great for collaborations and new things but … Manchester has something… It's not very far behind, and t it has something very special. The way different culture mixes here, it's a bit different from London because the pace of life is slower and the time for collaboration, one can give more attention. And I thought that attention is not just from the musicians itself, but it's from organisations, people interested to collaborate with people with different musical backgrounds. ” 

Michael is involved in the broader Romanian community of Manchester and also of the UK more broadly. 

"Romanians come and study at the Royal Northern. Some of them come and go, but some, some of them stay. There is the Roma community as well. There is Roma Studies at the university, I have done some work with them. I got to know the Roma community through them, but they don't have anything to do with music. So it's more a social thing, you know? There is a Romanian Cultural Institute in London which I collaborate with on a regular basis, and the Romanian consulate in Manchester.” 

A creative project in Manchester 

Michael is the leader of Manchester International Roots Orchestra, which was formed as a collaboration between the Royal Northern College of Music and Community Arts North West. It began as a project of bringing together classical music students at the RNCM with musicians from world traditions without such formal training. but now it brings together musicians from a wide range of traditions and diverging heritage. 

”I have musicians from Pakistan and from Kurdish background, from Iranian background, from English, Scottish, obviously Romanian, Bosnian, Serbian, Bosnian, Muslims and Christians. A lot of a lot of influences there! So depending on what style we want to go into, we have a way which we stay true to the song we want to do. We've were commissioned by the RNCM for the last year’s New Music Festival, to write a piece of music like a suite and conclude the festival. The idea was to use a string quartet, a small chamber orchestra, and use spoken word., actually poetry, narration and music from three backgrounds. We decided on Roma, Kurdish and Pakistani. ” 

Compositional commissions such as this are possible because of the richly diverse knowledge of the orchestral musicians, combined and developed in Michael’s arrangements and compositional practice. 

”I asked the Kurdish musician to give me a song and choose a song, and I had a discussion with him. What is the background of the song and so on. And then I discussed with the writer, the narrative writer, and then I got my ideas where I want to arrive musically and how I want to develop and how I want to work with the narration and the music. So it's like a journey actually. I have to make a plan. Where do I start? How I develop, where do I arrive? How do you solve this musical influence from the region and how I conclude or how I move on to the next musical idea? It is a collaboration with each musician in the sense of getting the inspiration from that. And then it's a question for a composer to find ways to include that in the idea of musical experiences, to develop it into my contemporary writing, which is European contemporary classical writing. It's a question of form how do to integrate small songs into a wider contemporary form of the suite.” 

The sound recording presented above is a sample of the work of the Manchester International Roots Orchestra.