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Monthly Archive: 2007
You wait ages for one and then...
Posted on Sunday, November 25, 2007
2008 is already shaping up to be a busy year. Along with A Bird in your Ear which receives its premiere at BARD college in March, I was thrilled to get an email from Jeremy Geffen at Carnegie Hall, offering me a new commission to write for the clarinettist Todd Palmer and the St Lawrence String Quartet, who will give the premiere in Carnegie's Zankel Hall next October. I know these performers principally from their wonderful recording of Golijov's grammy-nominated Yiddishbbuk CD - it's hard to believe I'll be writing something for the same players.
A few days later I got a call from Andrew Lucas at the Lake District Summer Music Festival whom I met earlier in the year at the 4x4 Composer Residency. They've also kindly offered me a commission for next year's festival.
Finally, I understand that New York's up-and-coming Metropolis Ensemble are planning to do my Satie arrangements in a concert in the city next April.
Berimbau premiere
Posted on Monday, November 19, 2007
Matthew Schellhorn
A huge thank you to Matthew Schellhorn and the wonderful people of Hertford who gave my piano piece Berimbau a great performance and reception at the premiere yesterday afternoon. Matthew also gave a scintillating performance of Messiaen's Petites esquisses d'oiseaux, along with Daquin's Le Coucou - food for thought for my 'Bird Opera'.
Not quite so much thanks go to the Hertford council whose multi-story car park closed down at 5pm leaving my car inside overnight!
Free Piosenki Download Available Online
Posted on Tuesday, November 13, 2007
The Carnegie Hall website now has the complete recording of the world premiere performance of Piosenki available for free download.
It was a great performance, and the recording quality is stunning, so check it out!
Bird Talk
Posted on Wednesday, October 17, 2007
The Richard B.Fisher Center
More on my BARD commission
On an insanely tight deadline, I've agreed to a new commission from BARD College, NY. The commission is for half an evening's opera (with soloists, choir and small orchestra), although the resulting (60 min) piece is going to be somewhere between an opera, a secular oratoria and a dramatic cantata. The performance is to be in March 08, the deadline the end of December, requiring an amount of music per day that I don't even want to think about. What's particularly exciting is that the first two performances are in BARD's spectacular Frank Gehry-designed Fisher Center, the kind of place which makes any concert a big event before you've heard a note.
When Dawn Upshaw - who is on the vocal faculty at BARD, and with whom I worked on Piosenki - proposed the idea, my thoughts turned immediately to Alasdair Middleton, who did a great job at producing very set-able librettos in a matter of hours when we worked together on the Opera Group Selfridges project.
I gave Alasdair an old Russian folk tale called The Language of the Birds and true to form within about 10 days he had produced a fantastic libretto.
It's a tale of listening to nature, forgiveness, and much more, and it promises to be an extremely exciting project. Now, back to those notes...
Update
We have a new title for this project, which I think captures its mood nicely: A Bird in your Ear
How to play the lagerphone
Posted on Tuesday, October 16, 2007
Here's a great video of Michael from the Groanboxboys stomping his lagerphone:
(follow this link for my own lagerphone page)
_
Piosenki in New York
Posted on Friday, September 28, 2007
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More info on the two NY performances of Piosenki coming up at the start of October: Tickets for the Carnegie performance. For the performance at Filene Recital Hall,Skidmore College on the 5th Oct please call the college's Department of Music at 518-580-5326.
More info about the Academy program here.
Update
Nice reviews of the concerts:
NY Times
Times Union
Feast of Music Blog
Update 2 - Pictures of the concert
with thanks to Feast of Music Blog
Me giving my Pre-performance talk
Baritone Kyle Ferrill in full flow on the lagerphone
Pokrowsky Ensemble
Posted on Friday, September 28, 2007
A couple of months ago I attended a concert in London as part of the Ades festival, which included a mind-bending performance of Stravinsky's Les Noces by a stellar line up of pianists that included the Labeque Sisters, and the Russian 'folk-choir' the Pokrovsky ensemble. The gutsy voices of the choir added a fascinating extra dimension to the piece, which drew it closer to its ethnic roots while at the same time maintaining its absolute originality and bizarreness. It was one of the most inspiring performances I've seen in a long time. I went out and bought the CD - the disc contains many of the original folk songs that were incorporated into Les Noces in some form or other, and many of them are trully wonderful. It's let down by a hideous recording of Les Noces with awful sounding electric pianos and a bucket-full of reverb (I hasten to add these were not the same performers as in the concert - the CD doesn't even list the pianists and percussionists who may well have been prerecorded by one player I suspect). The disc is worth it for the folk songs alone though.
Opera Group at Selfridges
Posted on Saturday, September 8, 2007
We had a fascinating day today at Selfridges, Oxford Street for the premiere and seven subsequent performances of my mini-opera Out of the Ordinary. It was a busy Saturday for shopping, and I learnt a lot about writing for such an environment - make it loud, make it obvious! The best performance of the ones I saw took place in the sweet department - the clientele there was a bit more relaxed and up for it than they were upstairs next to the £200 shirts and £30000 diamond-encrusted mobile phones...
Alexander Grove and Frances Bourne in Selfridges, Oxford Street at the premiere of Out of the Ordinary
Ed Hessian and Andrew Sparling
All going on
Posted on Thursday, September 6, 2007
It's all happening at the moment.
- I've finished an arrangement of Satie's Sports and Divertissements which I think should make a very enjoyable addition to any chamber ensemble's repertoire. (details of the premiere to follow)
- The Opera Group are rehearsing my new mini-opera Out of the Ordinary which will receive no less than
108 performances in its first day alone - it's being presented in collaboration with Selfridges this Saturday 8th Sept, then again on Thursday 13th, both at Selfridges Oxford Street, and in Selfridges Manchester the following Saturday. The plan is for it to happen 'guerrilla-style' in the midst of a busy shopping store - should be interesting.
- I was delighted to get a call from Dawn Upshaw, who I worked with on Piosenki. She tutors some wonderful singers at BARD College, NY, and Dawn very kindly helped open the door to a new commission from BARD for soloists, choir and chamber orchestra (call it a dramatic cantata if you like) - I'll be working again with Alasdair Middleton who did a fabulous job on the Opera Group piece. The current plan is a 45 minute piece based on an old Russian folk tale about someone who learns to understand the language of birds.
Update
The current plan for the Selfrifges Oxford Street performances on Saturday 8th are as follows (may be subject to change but I'll try to post if so):
0 comments | Post comment So You Want To Make A Steel Drum huh?
Posted on Saturday, August 25, 2007
I now understand that attempting to make your own steel drum is something of a challenge. According to the toucans.net website panmakers in the Trinidad temper their drums by building a fire on the beach then plunging the red hot steel drum into the ocean - and that's just the beginning. Anyway, the site has a nice tutorial on an easier cousin called a Dudup which is made by hammering a slightly off-center line along a coffee can or an olive oil can. All I could find was a can of baby milk powder. I gave it a good hammering, but the results were little better than disappointing:
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