Blog
Monthly Archive: 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.
More on Carnegie
Posted on Sunday, November 12, 2006
I'm just back from BART in New York State where we workshopped the first few songs from my Carnegie commission. There were quite amazing musicians involved, not least of which being my two singers Melissa Wegner and Yang Yang (pictured)
Osvaldo Golijov (with me below) and Dawn Upshaw led the process and provided lots of helpful advice.
I also met crazy accordion man Michael Ward-Bergeman - here doing a bit of composing:
Michael had some great Romanian music he introduced me to (he's played with Taraf de Haïdouks), including the extraordinary voice of Dona Dumitru Siminica. Read more about Michael's zobstick on my Instrument Blog
Lagerphones, zobsticks, bushwackers
Posted on Sunday, November 12, 2006
Composer and Accordionist extraordinaire Michael Ward-Bergeman introduced me the multi-named instrument that has a remarkable propensity for cropping up in cultures across the globe, from Australia to Austria. It's built from beer bottle tops nailed or screwed in to a pole. Here's Michael playing one he built himself - I'm currently collecting tops for my own attempt - stay tuned!
I bought a duduk
Posted on Friday, November 3, 2006
The joys of ebay - my newly ordered duduk has arrived. It's beautiful-looking and has a very distinctive smell (it's made from apricot wood).
The reed seems enourmous in comparison to a clarinet reed - very long and very fat. It came with two of them - the first one seemed to go a bit wide after I ran the tap over it (as instructed in the helpful e-manual that came with it).
First impressions are that it's a bit of a bugger to play, much harder than a clarinet, more like an oboe. But I love the untempered tuning - I'll try to put an excerpt up here once I've practiced a bit!
The duduk (pronounced [duˈduk]) is a traditional woodwind instrument popular in the Caucasus region. It is of Armenian origins. More from the wikipedia article on duduks
Carnegie Hall Commission
Posted on Thursday, October 5, 2006
A new commission has come through to write a piece for voice and ensemble which will be premiered at Carnegie Hall next April. Part of the process involves some workshops with composer Osvaldo Golijov and soprano Dawn Upshaw, and I'm very much looking forward to flying out to New York in November to meet them.
Opera speed dating
Posted on Thursday, September 28, 2006
Last week I attended an 'opera speed dating' event, organised by Tete a Tete, who are setting up a new Opera Festival. People from all walks of opera life were there, and it was a lot of fun. I was also given about 4 minutes - yes FOUR - to compose 30 seconds of an opera scene, and that included working with a librettist to make the words! At the end of the evening 5 or 6 such scenes were run together, with a connecting piano motive, and the result was a remarkably consistent and decent-sounding new opera!
One of the things the event brought home to me was how, with the closure of ENO Studios and BAC Opera moving on, there were really quite limited possibilities when it came to putting on new opera. Full marks to Tete-a-Tete for doing their best to turn things around.
Update: I just found out the event was covered by The Spectator magazine, you can read it here
Opera magazine reviews push!
Posted on Monday, September 4, 2006
There's a very nice review of Push! in this month's Opera magazine:
"The accompaniament mixed echoes of Britten, Looney Tunes and Janacek with an individual elan, and was consistently vivid and colourful. Bruce's writing for voice was also good...but - and this is what marks him out as a real operatic talent to watch - his management and musical texturing of stage ensemsble was exemplary, and he knew exactly when to let the music carry the emotional burden.'
An article on Stravinsky's The Fairy's Kiss
Posted on Friday, July 14, 2006
Over the years I have written quite a few articles, which rather than see languish in my attic, I thought would make a nice addition to this site. I will try to add them over the coming weeks. The first is an article in support of the much-maligned Fairy's Kiss by Stravinsky which I wrote for The Musical Times a few years ago.
