We sat down with Tom Richardson, one of the composers of a new soundtrack created to be played alongside Battleship Potemkin. Written in 2017 for Plymouth’s eclectic The Pit Orchestra, the company will revive this landmark work this December with a special film-with-live-orchestra performance in celebration of the centenary of what is considered one of the greatest films ever created, Battleship Potemkin.
For one night only on 13th December, University of Plymouth’s The House performing arts centre will journey audiences to a Russian Imperial Navy battleship on the Black Sea when a mutinous uprising by the ship’s crew against their ruthless officers, sparked by spoiled meat, becomes a violent clash and one of the most famous closing scenes in cinema history.
Get tickets here.
Coming from punk rock into orchestral composition, how has your DIY, anti-establishment background shaped the way you approached writing a full score for Battleship Potemkin?
We wrote the score collectively back in 2017 (me, Chris Bailey, Chris Muirhead and Jay Newton). Our punk/rock backgrounds meant that we wrote it through jamming and experimentation (inspired by the post-revolution Russian futurists), and thought of each section like it was a song. We also wanted to highlight the injustices felt by the sailors, and give a nod to the fact that, whilst their mutiny was successful in the short-term, the new establishment was about to crush them in a different but no less horrific way. And, unsurprisingly, we wanted some very heavy guitars in there at some point!
Reimagining a collective 2017 score into a fully notated version for 12 players, what discoveries did you make about the original work—and about yourself as a composer?
The first thing that jumped out was how well we’d managed to sync our music to the film with no conductor and no click track to follow. I remember the performance feeling like flying by the seat of our pants at times, which is both scary and exhilarating! The original score is so full of twists and turns that I really wanted to try and make our life easier by making concrete some of the things that were more nebulous. This may or may not have been a mistake! As a composer, I was able to take many of the techniques I’ve learned since 2017 and use them to improve our harmonies and the interplay of instruments, and to finalise some of the sections that we just didn’t have time to perfect in 2017.
Battleship Potemkin is both a landmark in cinema and a political statement; how did the current geopolitical climate, particularly the war in Ukraine, influence your re-composition?
The war in Ukraine is obviously a massive influence, and performing to a ‘Russian’ film in 2025 has ethical considerations for us. But this film is not from or about the Putin-led Russia we have today. It is about the oppressed in a society fighting back, and we think that’s a very contemporary concern. We invited the Ukrainian Singers of Plymouth to be in our choir, but due to their situation, we collectively agreed a support slot at the live performance would be more fitting so that the audience can experience them and their songs as well as the film. The most obvious change was lyrically in our Song For Odessa, from the quasi-Soviet style we had in 2017 to a folk song about people coming together for the greater good. The current situation also manifested in the music in more subtle ways. This isn’t a re-composition that aims to make obvious statements about the war, but rather it sat in our minds as a trigger for being bold in our choices and telling the personal story of the people in the film.
The Pit Orchestra embraces trained and untrained musicians, mixing genres and instruments—what does that diversity bring to the sound and spirit of this project?
It’s such an exciting mix! We started in 2013 with four guitarists, two bass players, two drummers, and a vocalist. Now we have violins, cello, trumpet, accordion, a choir – and we still have the rock band amongst it all! The mix of musical training also creates a rare environment. There are people sight reading the music and others learning it like they’re songs. We have people who have never played live before and people who are playing Haydn and Shostakovich in concerts at the weekends. It creates a real sense of community in the room where the absence of hierarchy fosters a group that works together to solve problems, pushes each other to be creative in our interpretation of the notes on the stave, and creates music that feels like it is alive!
With Potemkin’s centenary, how do you balance honouring the film’s historical legacy while ensuring the score feels urgent and alive for today’s audiences?
We have been quite rigorous students of the film’s message and the various musical interpretations over the years. We wanted to bring a new reading to Potemkin, one that recognises the revolutionary (yet also propagandistic) nature of it and the constructivist/futurist movements happening in post-revolution Russian culture, but also recognises it as a spirited ride full of drama, tension, passion and hope. For the centenary crown, we’re up against The Pet Shop Boys’ score from 2005 which accompanies the BFI centenary release, which is a very modern and exciting score but far different from ours in style. We haven’t come across a score that approaches the film in the way we are, or contains the mixture of styles and players that people will experience at our performance in December.
You’ve moved from punk bands to film scores to orchestral works—what connects all these musical worlds for you, and where do you see your creative journey heading next?
I just love making sounds! I get really inspired by music that I find interesting and I can’t help but try and have a go at it. As my tastes have changed, and I’ve met more people that compose or make music for films, so I’ve realised that those worlds aren’t unavailable to me (which is also very much part of the guiding ethos of The Pit Orchestra). This probably means that my next venture will be into something really heavy, because my current obsession is the French metal band Igorrr, and so I’m deep-diving into all things metal and reviving that part of my younger self that was a shy metalhead in the times of BritPop! I also want to write more for string quartet because I love the simplicity of the instrumentation but with the infinite permutations of the four instruments combined. It feels like a very pure way of making music. And writing more for choir due to having had the opportunity to really embrace that in Battleship. Perhaps I’ll do all three at once; who knows! And more films!
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