Concert film »World Builder, Creature«

Fascinating soundscapes somewhere between vibrant gaming-inspired music and novel orchestral textures – always with the courage to be melodic. Alex Paxton (*1990) captivated the audience at the 2025 opening concert of the new music festival »Elbphilharmonie Visions«. His latest composition, »World Builder, Creature«, has caused an international sensation with its playful and by no means cerebral soundscapes. New music that revolves around fun. Written for the NDR Elbphilharmonie Orchestra as part of the Claussen Simon Composition Prize, the twenty-minute piece was described by the NDR as »music like a hidden object picture«. The »Hamburger Abendblatt« newspaper praised its dynamic energy, noting the work’s »casual anything-goes ambiguity, where something is always bubbling, shimmering, and bursting with colour«.

»I like the term worldbuilding,« says Alex Paxton, explaining his title »World Builder, Creature«. For him, music has the power to create entire worlds, much like video games: »It’s as if you’re suddenly transported into a completely different universe. I think this is the best universe I’ve ever written for a classical orchestra.«

Now, in a unique concert film, his music intertwines with hand-painted animations and the night-time ambience of the Elbphilharmonie’s foyer

Experience a festival of contemporary music as top radio orchestras from Germany and Austria bring the sound of today to the Grand Hall.

Alex Paxton personally discovered the work of Amsterdam-based artist Weronika Marianna, renowned for her hand-painted, animated loops. Her abstract and dreamlike visuals, much like Paxton’s music, transport audiences into entirely new worlds of their own.

Drawing inspiration from the sonic landscape of »World Builder, Creature«, she has created a series of vibrant, looping animations. Projected onto the iconic architecture of the Elbphilharmonie, these visuals merge with concert footage from the festival’s opening night, forming a captivating multimedia experience.

NDR Elbphilharmonie Orchestra

conductor Alan Gilbert

Alex Paxton (*1990)
World Builder, Creature (world premiere, awarded with the Claussen Simon Composition Prize)

»New music is important because it carves out new spaces for new emotions – and we need that, as changing times bring changing feelings. Especially in our current world, which is constantly evolving and growing, we urgently need to develop a new art for our feelings to be able to get on with life at all,« says Alex Paxton. A celebrated jazz trombonist and composer, Paxton makes no rigid distinctions between improvised jam sessions, his years of teaching music in London primary schools, singing in the shower, or composing for full orchestras.

»Making Magic Sound Stuff« is the succinct artistic manifesto on his colourful website. An apt description of his music, which seamlessly weaves together everything that inspires him at a given moment. »I try to make music that closely mirrors my experience of being alive,« he explains, drawing from nature, the chaos of central London, films, exhibitions, conversations, and even consumerism and waste culture. The British-born artist, who always wears brightly coloured T-shirts, moves through the world like a sponge, soaking up everything and feeding it into his magnificent creative machine, which comes up with completely unexpected new worlds. Here, everyday sounds combine to create something never heard before, comic sound effects merge with folk, noise art or voices with virtuoso chamber music and jazz improvisations with dense orchestral textures.

Born in Manchester in 1990, Alex Paxton studied Jazz and Composition at the Royal Academy of Music and the Royal College of Music in London.  Anyone who has experienced him as an improvising trombonist or is familiar with his wild jazz projects might well wonder how this translates to composing for a large classical orchestra. For him, it’s quite simple: »Improvising is just fast composing, and composing is slow improvising. It’s important to capture some of the spontaneous energy of improvisation when composing,« says Paxton. This philosophy fuels his innovative fusion projects with orchestras like Ensemble Modern, where he seamlessly blends the two.

»Melody is always at the heart of my music. I’m very old-fashioned: first I compose all the melodies, then I build harmonies around them and then I orchestrate the whole thing,« he says. Yet, despite this traditional approach, his music is anything but conventional. It operates on multiple levels – instantly captivating with its raw energy while also revealing intricate details upon deeper listening, unlocking entirely new realms of association.

As a composer, Alex Paxton has firmly established himself in the European music scene, with his works featured in the repertoires of major orchestras such as the London Symphony Orchestra and the WDR Symphony Orchestra. His impact as a composer continues to grow, and 2023 proved to be a landmark year, earning him multiple prestigious honours, including the Hindemith Prize from the SHMF, the Composition Prize from the Ernst von Siemens Music Foundation, and the Claussen Simon Prize. As part of the latter, he composed »World Builder, Creature« for the NDR Elbphilharmonie Orchestra. During a reading session with works by various candidates in late 2023, jury member Alan Gilbert was immediately struck by Paxton’s music: »Without even knowing the composer’s name or background, the notes practically leapt off the page. It was clear that this was a unique compositional voice.«