'I mean, what is classical nowadays?'

Tony Banks reflects on his role as a 21st-century classical composer.

- Daryl Easlea

Best known for his elaborate arrangements and ambitious solos, Genesis keyboard player Tony Banks has gathered his solo orchestral works for a new box set, 18 Pieces For Orchestra: 7-6-5. Prog catches up with the musician and composer to discuss the intense sound pictures he created over a 14-year period, going head-to-head in the charts with celebrity gardener Alan Titchmarsh and offering his old mate Peter Gabriel another gig.

After 1997’s Calling All Stations, Tony Banks realised for the first time in 30 years that he may have to consider a world fully outside Genesis. His five solo/ collaborative albums to date had been support features to Genesis’s main film, but now the cinema show looked like it was coming to an end. Banks remembered how much he’d enjoyed the experience of scoring Michael Winner’s ill-fated remake of The Wicked Lady in 1983 and admired how Christopher Palmer had extrapolated Banks’ work into various discrete themes. It gave him an idea. As a result, over the next 20 years, Banks released three classical works, now compiled in a new box set, 18 Pieces For Orchestra: 7-6-5 .

Classical music always held an appeal to Banks – from hearing Rachmaninoff as a child to some of the arrangements on Genesis records – but crossing the line into ‘serious music’ is not the easiest path to take.

“In the classical world, they don’t really like rock musicians or upstarts,” Tony Banks tells Prog in late summer from his Surrey home, performing the distinctly un-rock’n’roll chore of waiting for the electricity board to arrive, and deeply saddened by the recent passing of one of his oldest friends, Richard Macphail. “The other problem is that people who like rock don’t have much time for strings and oboes. So, you’re caught in the middle. I have always taken the stance when writing music, I’ll do something that appeals to me and see where it goes.”