Blog
Monthly Archive: 2010
Forgotten Boots
Posted on Thursday, October 14, 2010
I wrote my clarinet quintet Gumboots for Todd Palmer and the St Lawrence String Quartet in 2008, and it's gone on to become one of my most popular pieces. However after the premiere I made several changes to the piece, including, most controversially, dropping one of the dances in the second part of the piece. I say controversially because both Todd and Geoff Nuttall, violinist of the St Lawrence Quartet seemed particularly attached to this particular dance. But I insisted as I felt that without it the sequence of ever-livelier dances had a better overall shape.
Recently Todd asked me if I would consider resurecting the "movement oubliée" as he put it - as a clarinet and piano piece. I looked it over and found that it would work extremely well in that format, so I jumped at the chance and within 24 hours or so the new version was made. It's only 2 minutes long, but it's cute, memorable, and I think would make a great encore to any clarinet recital!
Todd's hoping to premiere the new piece which I've called Forgotten Boots next year, but meanwhile here's a computerized recording:
NB This is a computerized recording!
Performance Today
Posted on Wednesday, October 6, 2010
I understand that this Friday (8th Oct), Gumboots will be broadcast and syndicated across the US on Performance Today, "the most listened-to daily classical music radio program in the United States" as the blurb says. The performance is the (fantabulous) one Todd Palmer and the St Lawrence Quartet gave at the Spoleto festival earlier this year. It should also be available online and I'll update this with the link once it goes live.
The score and parts for Gumboots are available from Bill Holab Music.
Silk Road
Posted on Friday, October 1, 2010
Wow. I'm gobsmacked to have had a call from Yo-Yo Ma's Silk Road Project to write a piece for their next round of new commissions, culminating in performances in 2012. More details will follow once my head has stopped spinning.
New directions
Posted on Tuesday, September 21, 2010
I'm pleased to announce an exciting new departure today - I've signed up with Bill Holab Music as publishing agent. Bill will handle all my score rentals and sales, and act as a representative for me in handling contracts and commissions. I'm thrilled to be a part of Bill's fairly exclusive roster of composers which includes composers like Mason Bates, Michael Torke, Richard Danielpour, Pierre Jalbert, Gabriel Kahane and until recently (when he was poached by Boosey's) Osvaldo Golijov. We'll gradually be preparing scores for publication and sale/rental on Bill's site over the coming months, but you can already contact him about any works you're interested in, including perusal copies.
Update
The first newly edited edition of Gumboots Score and parts is now available through the website.
Flute glissandi
Posted on Wednesday, September 8, 2010
After my researches into glissandi on flute with Alex Housego (which still needs a proper write-up) I came away feeling that there really needed to be some innovation in flute technology to allow all the quality we associate with a modern orchestral flute but with a far better ability to glissando somehow. Low and behold it may have already happened. I stumbled across Robert Dick and his amazing glissando headjoint (sounds like a bizarre comedy Western). The great thing is it's just a headjoint and fits on to a standard flute. From what I gather it's in the process of being produced in 2010 (see http://www.robertdick.net for more) - how great it would be if this became as standard piece of kit professional players carried around, like a trumpet mute or something. I'm certain it could be used to great effect in the first movement of my The Eye of Night piece.
Here's a video of Robert playing a virtuoso jazz solo on the flute. It's pretty wacky and perhaps not the best clip to demonstrated the serious beauty of the device. Better is the video on this page where Robert talks about the headjoint and gives some simpler examples of use.
Apart from the headjoint, what's also quite interesting in this video is the 'humming whilst playing' technique which you find a lot in jazz sax to give a heightened 'crazy' effect. Klezmer clarinettists also use it, but I've never seen it done by a flute player before. There's also some great overtone stuff going on at 1:05 which I don't even know what he's doing there.
ACJW Engimas
Posted on Tuesday, August 31, 2010
The above photo is a clue to the title of the piece I'm writing for Ensemble ACJW. Very unusually for me, I have had a title and idea for the piece almost as soon as I heard the line-up, which is the same as Beethoven Septet (cl,hrn,bsn and one of each string) - with a couple of optional extras if I want them. Just in case I don't go with it I won't give away the title just yet, and of course this is just the sort of PR stunt which is bound to get the gossip columns going wild with anticipation and rumour.
Anyway, it was such a thrill to get this commission - my third from Carnegie Hall - particularly when I heard that it came by way of a vote from all the past Academy alumni as a kind of gift to the new batch that are entering the program this season. My work with ACJW has been some of the most rewarding of my career, and I can't wait for it to continue.
Now, it's nothing to do with James Bond, or Abraham Lincoln, what could it be....
Share the love
Posted on Tuesday, August 3, 2010
I'm just back from performances of Gumboots at the tongue-twisterly named Mecklenberg-Vorpommern festival in and around Heiligendamm, northern Germany. It's the first time I've spoken before a piece to an audience that didn't speak my language (though of course lots of them probably did). It kind of doubles the mystery of what that 'collective mind' is thinking. ACJW oboist James Austin Smith was on hand to translate:
It's so exciting to hear a piece in so many different settings and environments as Gumboots has been played. It's not just the different acoustics and the effect that has on the piece, it also helps to form an image in my mind of the wider 'setting' for writing a piece of classical music. The world a piece could, if it's lucky, finally inhabit (something you don't really get when the piece is only performed once!).
For me it feeds back in a very useful way into my musical imagination. Part of my actual process of composing is trying to sense the interaction the music will have, the connection it will make. The default position you usually hear composers say is that "it's impossible to write to please an audience - how can you, who are they?" and I don't think I'm writing to please anyone (except myself), but I do think it's possible - actually, essential - to try to find a connection of some kind, that on the whole speaks to people.
[update - Kyle Gann has a very nice post about this very subject and in the comments section he describes the artists role as an attempt to 'make deep contact' with other human beings, which I like a lot]
I go through a myriad of ways of trying to accurately guage this when I'm writing - singing it out in my head, bashing it through on the piano, playing individual lines if I have the instrument, and listening 'through' the computerized squeaks and squawks from Sibelius - how would such an effect 'speak' in performance. It requires an intense kind of focus and concentration. And after that, of course, there is the judging and reevaluating how successful it's all been during the actual performance. At the end of the day I don't think it's about pandering to anyone, it's about making something that speaks as directly and clearly as possible. But it is also acknowledging the fact that a piece of music requires an audience. Forgive me if I again quote the British sculptor Anthony Gormley:
"I felt the romantic view of the artist as someone standing apart from and remaking the world, was no longer tenable. It was a betrayal of what art could do. Art is nothing without being experienced and shared. And I wanted to start again on that basis"
How lucky I am that I've been able to experience and share this piece now with so many different audiences!
Two new pieces
Posted on Wednesday, July 14, 2010
I finished two new pieces in recent months, both of which will have to wait till next year for their premieres. The first is Laughter Through Tears, a concerto commissioned by and written for Giora Feidman (actually a double concerto with violin solo along with the string orchestra). After a bit of too-ing and fro-ing Giora tells me he's scheduled the premiere of this piece for next March at the lovely looking Prinzregententheater in Munich (see above). The performance will feature the Russian Chamber Philharmonic conducted by Juri Gilbo.
Also completed earlier this week is my flute/harp/viola trio for San Diego's Art of Elan series. I'm particularly pleased with this rather delicate series of four 'nocturnes' which I've called The Eye of Night. No date has been decided yet for the premiere, but hopefully it will be next season at some point. With a bit of luck and good timing, a first trip to California beckons!
Tango in Iford
Posted on Wednesday, June 30, 2010
At the premiere of Saudades with Chroma in the atmospheric grounds of Iford Manor near Bath.
Saudades in Bath and Berkamsted
Posted on Thursday, June 10, 2010
My tango-inspired piece Saudades made its first transition from abstract page to vibrating air yesterday at the hands of the always splendid Chroma. There are two performances coming up, in Ilford Manor in Bath on 25th June (now sold out I understand) and also at the Quaker Meeting House in Berkhamsted on July 11th, details of which can be found on the flier below.
Read about Saudades and the Borges poems and ideas that inspired it here
