The Drummer of Tedworth: A Concerto for Speaking Drummer by Sean Noonan

Sean Noonan The Drummer of Tedworth (world premiere)

Part I:  Pnoom

Part II:  Hy Lies Ahead

St Paul's Sinfonia

Sean Noonan  speaking drummer

Medb Brereton-Hurley  conductor

The Drummer of Tedworth is the first full-length orchestral work ever written for a speaking drummer at the drum kit — a performer who sings, narrates, and improvises from behind the kit while fronting a symphony orchestra. An acting tour-de-force.

This boundary-breaking double album, recorded with the London Symphony Orchestra and conducted by Jack Sheen, marks Sean Noonan’s orchestral debut, and stands as possibly the most extensive collaboration between an American artist and the LSO since Frank Zappa’s legendary recordings in the 1980s.

Fusing the scale of rock opera, the intensity of punk-jazz, and the surreal logic of the Theatre of the Absurd. The Drummer of Tedworth reimagines the concerto form as a metaphysical monodrama for voice, drums, and orchestra — a genre-defying journey into existential chaos.

At the center is Olis, a disembodied soul on a metaphysical journey in search of pnoom — a nonsense word for enlightenment beyond flesh. Inspired by the 17th-century haunting chronicled in Joseph Glanvill’s Seducismus Triumphatus, Olis’s quest takes him through cosmic mist, Martian pregnancies, trickster spirits, and sacred underpants — culminating in a mind-hijacking prank on Benjamin Franklin during one of his “air baths.”

The music unfolds in two acts:

• Part I: Pnoom introduces Olis and the rupture in reality that sends him into the Féth Fiada, a liminal mist between worlds.
   
• Part II: Hy Lies Ahead follows Olis’s descent through memory, absurdity, and cosmic mischief, culminating when the Martian Refugee gives birth to a body he can inhabit.

This concerto explores a novel fusion of voice and percussion, forging a symbiotic “fifth limb” between Noonan and the orchestra. Drawing on compositional ideas developed directly at the drum kit, the work treats the ensemble not as accompaniment, but as a spatial, rhythmic extension of the drummer’s limbs.

Across fifteen episodes, the music resists traditional forms, blending improvised drumming, experimental orchestral writing, and rhythmic storytelling into a continuous, theatrical arc — a through-composed narrative where speech and rhythm are inseparable.

Sean Noonan is a composer, drummer, and self-described rhythmic storyteller whose work defies genre. Drawing equally from experimental classical music, free jazz, folklore, and theatre, Noonan has developed a unique compositional voice rooted in polyrhythm and narrative.

His past collaborators include Marc Ribot, Marni Nixon, Malcolm Mooney (CAN), Jamaaladeen Tacuma, Susan McKeown, Abdoulaye Diabaté, the Ligeti Quartet.

“Independence might be the ruling concept of this drummer-leader’s career. It defines a common relationship not only among his hands, feet, and voice, but between his art and almost everything else in drumming.”
 — Modern Drummer Magazine

Learn more about the artist at seannoonanmusic.com