Blog
Monthly Archive: December 2006
Building a Cajon
Posted on Sunday, December 31, 2006
The Cajon is a wonderful percussion instrument, found in flamenco music and Peru. I've been enjoying browsing Cajon clips on Youtube recently, and wondered how difficult it would be to build one from scratch. Thanks to the joys of the internet I found this article [PDF 461kb] which describes the process in great detail - now all I need is time.
Meanwhile, great progress on the largerphone front, of which more soon..
Push! 'premier of the year' says Classical Music mag
Posted on Saturday, December 30, 2006
In Classical Music Magazine's round up of the year's operatic premieres, Ashutosh Khandekar says :
"My own favourite of new opera of the year though, was PUSH! the latest offering by the ever enterprising and imaginative Tete a Tete Opera. Composer David Bruce and writer Anna Reynolds gave us a night to remember, full of zany wit and wisdom, as the cast played out the roller-coaster ride of giving birth with all its pain and joy."
Update
Rupert Christiansen in the Telegraph also awarded Tete a Tete his 'Best of 2006' award "for producing, in Push! and Odysseus Unwound, two new operas of musical charm and theatrical originality"
New Opera in development for ROH2
Posted on Monday, December 4, 2006
I've just signed the contract to develop a new opera with the Royal Opera House's ROH2. It's not a full commission yet, I've basically been funded to do the first stage of development work and will give a private workshop performance in about a years time, before everyone decides where we go next. It's so exciting to be back in the opera world again, and thrilling to have such a prestigious backer for the first stage of the project.
I should mention that this part of the ROH2's work is backed by the same people who supported Push! - now calling themselves OperaGenesis. The Genesis Foundation appears to have done a great job at taking all the best features from the old Genesis Opera Project and developed a new 'rolling' scheme where each project is allowed to develop in its own way and on its own terms, rather than the old-style competition approach.
