When did you become interested in Moondog and what attracted you to him?

I hadn't even heard of Moondog till I saw him play at Elvis Costello's Meltdown in the early nineties. I went alone - nobody had told me about him - so it seems like one of those twists of fate. I loved his persona - sitting in the middle of a large group of saxophonists, banging a drum. I thought it was extraordinarily primal and direct, like his music. Of course, when I got to know his music and his life story, it was obvious why I was attracted to him - his courage and originality, living as a blind man on the street, collaborating, making music that was extremely accessible and 'found' as well as literate and rooted in a pure, historic ideal. His toughness, humour and idealism put him in the same camp as Ives, John Cage and Lou Harrison, all composers dear to me.

Is there a connection that appeals to you between his use of counterpoint and Beethoven and Bach who you also lean towards?

Well, his ruggedness and bloody-mindedness are very similar to Beethoven, but in terms of strict counterpoint he's related to Bach. Actually he's stricter and purer than Bach - his kind of thinking goes back to the Renaissance.

Was using Andy Sheppard / a saxophonist important in terms of Moondog's connection with Charlie Parker, his Sax Pax compositions and general interest in the instrument?

Yes - both in terms of my long friendship and musical partnership with Andy, but Moondog's sound is a sax and percussion sound. It's a very outdoors, rough sound, music of the street, not a concert hall sound. (Despite using such a large line-up, the street sound was very important to me - I'd constantly ask the orchestral players to play in a very uninhibited, loose way.) Obviously it references jazz of a certain vintage - 40s and 50s - when the sound of Charlie Parker and John Coltrane were paramount, and his funeral march for Parker is both formal and impassioned. But I wanted to use Andy's sax sound (soprano and tenor) as a solo voice - both sweet and tender, and harsh and belligerent, rather than a choir of saxes. I was trying to create a new, much bigger soundworld for Moondog, which is why I involved an orchestra.

How much of the music on the album had been written down (and if so to what extent) by him / Ilona Goebel?

Well this is complicated. I first contacted Ilona in 2003, and she was very helpful and encouraging; very open with what I wanted to do. I haven't used any of the original scores at all on the recording; much of Moondog's output in the 90's was scored for large groups of saxophones. I wanted to get back to the original idea of street bands, a less smooth sound, so I used any scores I could get my hands on as initial guides; a much greater part of the recording started with transcriptions of very early fragments. (Apart from percussion and sax, brass and the piccolo were very important for me, to create a sort of bedraggled army sound.) I've deliberately chosen some very famous tunes: Dogtrot, Bumbo, All is Loneliness, Bird's Lament. Originally all these pieces (except Good for Goodie, which was written originally for a small orchestra) were for much smaller groups: a quartet of saxes, two organs, recorders, voice, recorded very spontaneously.

I got hold of scores for maybe a third of these pieces. These were radically re-orchestrated: Heath on the Heather I wanted to sound like a crazy, Ivesian march, something that would be played/danced to at the St Patrick's Day Parade in New York. (It's much faster and wilder than the original recording Invocation is not only re-orchestrated but has a new, improvised solo on the Indian flute. Basically I was trying to be truthful to the concept of the piece, but reinterpret it: so Single Foot becomes an energetic piece of horseback riding, with a lot more rhythmic scoring and soloing: part-klezmer, part processional dance band arriving (the original is tiny, and much more sedate). Rabbit Hop was a very short fragment captured on a 50s sidewalk, and becomes, in my arrangement, a dustbin-lids march, the canons were developed further, with an evocation of the traffic noise and sirens of New York to give it a really noisy finish. Dog Trot strays into Mingus territory, with a fat open section in the middle; Bumbo has a club feel, with Bhangra drums. Voices of Spring, originally a round for voices only, become a homage to the hippie 60s, with the harpsichord sound, clapping, pizzicato, alto flute etc. I could go on forever: Moondog's influences are American vernacular, Bach, Native American. and of course he created early minimalism, even though he denies it.

In what format did the music you've arranged exist when you started work in it?

Half a dozen scores (for very different instrumentation), then just fragments/short excerpts captured on tape or vinyl, and transcribed by me before deciding what to do with it. For many of these pieces, scores didn't exist at all.

Were any of the pieces essentially new ones created by you out of fragments of his work and in essence didn't exist as whole, titled pieces as such?

The most obvious ones I've created are All is Loneliness, which references this tune rather than plays it. Double Bass Duo and Theme and Variations (which I tried to turn into a more serene, Brucknerian piece) are created from shorter works, as are Single Foot, Sextet (where instead of having Moondog's famous homemade percussion instruments, we were banging things in the studio - that features me drumming the inside of the piano a lot!) and Rabbit Hop. I've retained the titles though: I love Moondog's titles. They're sharp.

What made you choose Seb Rochford and Shri Sriram?

Seb because he's a brilliantly creative drummer - he can play very big (as on Dog Trot), wild (Rabbit Hop) or delicately and wittily. Shri I wanted to do a big solo on Invocation; Kuljit's fantastically important, because although Moondog, as far as I know, never worked with a tabla player, the sound of tablas and Bhangra drums seem intrinsically right for his sound world. Kuljit's patterns also add a layer of complexity. It was important to me to give Seb and Kuljit a lot of creative space and to really get them to play off each other. The most contentious thing I did, though, was set up the opportunity for soloing and a great deal of improvisation - every single track contains this. It's contentious because Moondog's forms are purist and extremely closed, hence the brevity of many of his works. I wanted to open up his writing, and add an edginess that reflects the urban quality of his music. (He famously didn't approve of improvisation, being a very controlled kind of composer!) I used not only the soloists as improvisers, but the whole orchestra too: entire string sections improvise, the wind and brass sections either together or singly - there's a lovely trombone solo at the end of Bumbo, and some nice sax and trumpet duetting at the end of the first track. It was a matter of deciding what to keep in the editing process.

Also - very much in the style of Ives, Cage et al - these orchestral musicians play alien instruments to them: string players play shakers, flute and bassoon are the whistle-blowers in Rabbit Hop, viola and brass players sing on Voices of Spring. They really were very patient with me!

What effect has touring the project extensively prior to recording, had on it?

Immeasurable - we first toured ten of these pieces three years ago. I then re-wrote, threw away, added, and tried out these final fourteen tracks on tour last April. I was still re-writing in the studio. But most of all, the players were relaxed and were inside the music enough to experiment.

Any other thoughts you'd like to add?

I don't think the Viking look would suit me.