Blog
Monthly Archive: 2013
Numero uno
Posted on Tuesday, November 5, 2013
Cut the Rug features on the Silk Road Ensemble's 'Playlist without borders' and I'm pleased to report that this week the album made number 1 on the US Classical billboard charts. Strange feeling!
British Composer Awards
Posted on Thursday, October 24, 2013
I'm delighted that The Firework Maker's Daughter has been shortlisted for this year's British Composer Awards
My old prof. George Benjamin is also on the shortlist for his Written on Skin, which I wrote about here after attending a dress rehearsal for George's masterpiece during rehearsals for my own show.
Passion and laughter
Posted on Saturday, October 19, 2013
Rehearsing with San Diego Symphony
October has been a trully amazing month for me, (and it's not over yet!) It started in San Diego with performances of Night Parade by the San Diego Symphony. I arrived at the first rehearsal with some trepidation, as orchestras can be a bit surly when it comes to composers, but there was a great atmosphere from the beginning and a real sense of enthusiasm towards getting their teeth into a new work. One of the players even thanked me for not being 200 years old!
Attempting and failing to surf in La Jolla
It was also a big deal for me, as this has been something I've been gearing up for for some time now - a main season orchestral commission; only this wasn't just main season, it was the first piece of the season, and the first ever notes the orchestra will play at Carnegie Hall (later this month), as well as in Beijing as part of their first ever tour.
(Strictly speaking it may not be the first notes they play at Carnegie, as during the San Diego performances, the evening began with the Star Spangled Banner in a powerful new arrangement. I enjoyed the anthem, but it certainly doesn't lead to the ideal atmosphere in the room to plunge into a new piece, especially one with a mysterious and atmospheric opening like Night Parade. It made me think it would be fun to try to write a piece in a series of movements, each of which destroyed the atmophere for the next. The whys and wherefores of how and why music does this are more of an art than a science, and a large part of what makes a good concert programmer. For example, on the other side of the coin, one of the best pieces of programming I have seen in recent years was the Britten Sinfonia's concert under Thomas Ades, featuring his Violin Concerto amongst other things earlier this year. The concerto is a wonderful, but fairly intense and disonant work, but we were led up to it, like a series of circles spiralling inwards, via Couperin's Les baricades misterieuses, followed by Ades's delightful arrangement of the same work; onwards to Ravel's lush Le Tombeau de Couperin (with heavenly solos by Nick Daniel); round to the more quirky and pointilist world of two lesser known Stravinsky pieces before finally arriving at the Concerto. I have never felt more successfully primed and in the right mood to hear a piece.)
But digressions over, the orchestra knocked Night Parade out of the park, and I can't wait to go back and hear them in the great Stern Auditorium at the end of the month.
On stage with San Diego Symphony
***
The '5', full of mid-Californain emptiness
Next I took the long drive up to Berkeley (a drive of supreme contrasts, miles and miles of clutter and mess in LA, followed by miles and miles of absolutely nothing in the plains of mid-California) where Kelley O'Connor and Robert Spano gave the premiere of That Time with You. I thought of Kelley's rich, dark and luscious voice when writing the songs, and together with Glyn's extraordinarily poignant and beautiful lyrics, we seemed to find ourselves well matched and in a good place. It was also great to meet and work with Robert/Bob, although none of us enjoyed the evening before the premiere, when momentarily leaving his bag on the street outside the home of composer Gabriela Frank, Bob returned to find it had been stolen, complete with all his music and fingerings for the concert. Some heroic Kinkos work from the two leading ladies (Jessica Rivera was also performing in the concert) was all that separated us from disaster.
Rehearsals with Kelley O'Connor, Jessica Rivera, Bob Spano and Gabriela Frank
As I mentioned last time, this piece also comes to Carnegie, to Zankel Hall on exactly the same day as Night Parade. Post-Berkeley and for purely artistic reasons, the order of the recital has now changed meaning it should be comfortable for me to listen to the Symphony performance, before joining the recital downstairs for the second half. Fingers crossed! Details of Kelley's concert here
A blurry shot of the Berkeley concert
***
Next I headed to the East Coast to hook up with the Silk Road Ensemble and Yo-Yo Ma, as they geared up for their 15th anniversary celebration concert at Carnegie, where it was my privilege and honour to close out the show. The 'preview' took place upstate in Wheaton College and was one of the most intense and exciting concerts I've been to in a long time. The Silk Road Ensemble is pretty epic and full of energy in any event, but put them up close in an intimate little new England church, and pack that church with an extremely enthusiastic and excited crowd....well, it really did feel like the roof might come off. This was followed the next day by my debut at Carnegie's main stage which was everything I could have hoped for.
The Silk Road Ensemble at Carnegie Hall
The heart of the Silk Road Project is of course Yo-Yo himself, and I got to spend a little time with him in a way that perfectly summarises why he is such an inspiration to so many people. Our first chat, during a rehearsal in Wheaton led us almost instantly to discuss the very heart of the issue of what the purpose of my/our music is - is it 'personal' - to which at first I said no, I don't write a sad piece when I'm feeling sad; but then after some discussion realised yes, to the extent that it is an expression of my 'world view' with all the thoughts on connecting to nature and physicality that I go on about in these pages. Speaking of which, how nice to get some recognition of this in the NY Times review which said
"the physical and spiritual worlds..collided, to vibrant effect, in David Bruce's "Cut the Rug"
The idea of the physical and spiritual worlds colliding is pretty much exactly what Yo-Yo and I were discussing, and are a lovely way of expressing what I try to achieve - so for once, the review was bang on!
But when he's not being movingly thoughtful, provocative and engaging, Yo-Yo really knows how to goof around. He must be one of the world's leading experts in putting people at their ease. He is overall, a great reminder that passion and laughter are two sides to the same coin.
With Yo-Yo Ma and clarinettist Kinan Azmeh
***
The townships of my mind
Posted on Monday, September 16, 2013
I remember Nico Muhly's post about how individual pieces might or might not represent your 'larger Project' struck a chord with me, and its something I still reflect on quite often.
...it is interesting and important to think about the scale of the work that you’re doing and how it relates, in a sense, to the greater Projects that you have going on. I know that one of my major problems as a composer is that I used to feel, instinctively, that each piece had to fully represent (even in fleeting miniatures) all the aspects of my Whole Thing.
Part of this is lack of self-control that I know will come with maturity but another part of this is, I think, insecurity about mounting that tiny puppet show when there's a big city to explore "wouldn't everybody rather just get a really fast car and have a whole tour of the whole city and I'll just talk really fast and tell you everything I know about every building we pass!?!?!?!" Obviously, not so much; this sort of mania is pleasurable for about five minutes, and then it gets boring. My big goal for the last year and for the upcoming year is to really get this under control: the ability to let go of feeling the need to play audio tourguide in my own music, and allowing each piece to live in its own autonomous township within the whole country, as it were.
In my early 40s now, I'm still trying to get a grasp myself on the full extent of my compositional 'city' - maybe that will always be the case, and in my old age I'll start building an entirely new suburb. For now, I think of my city stretching across from something that sounds almost completely like folk-music, right across to the more modernist G.Benjamin/H.Birtwistle districts of my training. I definitely moved to the opposite side of town to those guys for a while, and my catalogue of pieces-I'm-happy-to-have-performed-again is dominated by the strongly folk-influenced side of town. My new piece for the Silk Road Ensemble which premieres at Carnegie Hall on 16th Oct falls squarely into this category. Each movement has a directness, a simplicity and a certain folky rawness which I've come to make my own.
Whereas Night Parade, my new piece for San Diego Symphony (also at Carnegie on 29th Oct after premieres in San Diego) is the first time in a few years that I've moved a little closer to the other end of town, with definite echos of George Benjamin and Thomas Ades, whose recent piece Totentanz was something of a marvel at this year's proms.
If anything, I am cursed by an inner-modernist who nags me when I write my more folky pieces that I should be skulking in the darkest parts of Modernistown. But I think this partly comes from an overly earnest atmosphere in the composition world, and the sense that anything fun can't be any good. This is, needless to say, an attitude I reject absolutely.
Having said that, I can't help feeling probably the most proud I've ever felt about a piece when it comes to Night Parade. If the pieces from Piosenki through to The Firework Maker's Daughter represent my most folk-influenced phase, I've established that side of my city pretty well now, and I'm excited now to be setting up stall in this related but new district.
***
I should also mention, as if those two performances weren't enough Carnegie Hall for one month, that October also brings the premiere of my Carnegie-commissioned song cycle for Kelley O'Connor, That Time With You. This piece premieres in Berkeley October 13th and then comes to Carnegie's Zankel Hall - somewhat infuriatingly - on the same night as Night Parade! With a New York premiere in both Stern and Zankel on the same night, Oct 29th is definitely my Carnegie-take-over night! The songs set some hauntingly beautiful lyrics by my Firework collaborator Glyn Maxwell, although these represent a much darker side to our collaboration. The eminent Robert Spano accompanies. I may spend the evening running up and down stairs, but one way or another, I hope to see you there!
A Playlist without Borders
Posted on Saturday, July 27, 2013
Check out this charming introduction to The Silk Road Ensemble with Yo-Yo Ma and their new album A Playlist without Borders which is released in September in time for their 15th anniversary concert at Carnegie Hall. My piece Cut the Rug features on the album and the video entirely captures the sense of fun and family that I felt from the group when I workshopped the piece with them in Harvard last year. I look forward to catching up with them again at Carnegie - Details here. Incidentally, the music underscoring the opening of the video is the opening movement from Cut the Rug.
Good times in San Diego
Posted on Friday, May 24, 2013
While the Firework Maker's Daughter continues joyfully on it's UK tour (the final week of dates takes in Buxton, Oxford and Newcastle next week), I've been busy over in San Diego premiering the first of my three pieces for the San Diego Symphony as part of my Associate Composer position with them over the next two years. The new piece Cymbeline was premiered triumphantly by my dear friend Avi Avital and players from the orchestra, and you can hear the results by following this link.
The other good news to emerge is that I can now officially come clean and announce that the wonderful Gil Shaham will be the soloist in the violin concerto I'm writing as the third piece for the Symphony next year, which is frankly about as exciting news as a composer could hope to share! Meanwhile work continues full steam on the new orchestral piece Night Parade which will premiere with the orchestra in San Diego on 4th, 5th and 6th October, before joining the orchestra on their first ever performance at Carnegie Hall on 29th Oct, and in Beijing on the final concert of their first ever tour.
with Avi Avital and players from the San Diego Symphony
Giving birth
Posted on Thursday, March 14, 2013
(Chroma and the cast in the sitzprobe for The Firework-Maker's Daughter)
It's the third week of opera rehearsals, and things are building to a head. The premiere is less than 10 days away and next week the whole crew moves up to Hull for the final week and the premiere in Hull Truck. Tonight is the 'sitzprobe' - the first time I'll get to hear orchestra and singers together. It does feel a little like I'm in the delivery ward and experiencing all the worries, stresses and exhaustion of an expectant father.
The first time the singers+piano ran through the whole show last week, I was left with one of those feelings familiar from instrumental rehearsals. Things are still at an early stage and so inevitably many things aren't right yet. 99% of the things that aren't right everyone involved is totally aware of, that's what these things are for. Next time they will remember to take a breath here, or move that prop over there and next time it will go infinitely more smoothly (as indeed it did only a couple of days ago). But it's inescapably quite upsetting to see your baby mangled in this way. Many young composers who arrive in their first instrumental workshops you will see in some kind of state of bewildered panic/anxiety at this point. I've learned through bitter experience it's just something you have to sit through and trust all will come right. It's funny though that you still have the feeling even if you learn to handle it a bit better.
Somehow this was all compounded for me last week by the arrival of George Benjamin's Written on Skin at the Opera House. It's a piece of mesmerising beauty, and one of those very rare entities - a new opera that actually works. It feels like the fulfillment of everything George's music has promised for so long. As my mum could tell you, I tend to be highly critical of new operas and the fact is statistically inescapable that almost all of them will be failures in one way or another. And although there were a few aspects to Written on Skin I could criticise, it felt like something so deeply thought-through and successfully navigated, so beautifully finished, I could only shout for joy 'so this is possible'! From where I stand today, I take that only as a positive, but caught up as I have been in my operatic labour ward, it made me feel very inadequate for a day or two. A good job my arrogant ego always fights its way back in the end!
Speaking of egos, nice to fulfill one minor life ambition and get myself on a poster on the underground:
Concentration time
Posted on Thursday, February 21, 2013
Director John Fulljames introduces The Firework Maker's Daughter
Rehearsals got under way this week. It's both a relief and a terror to have matters out of my hands now. I trust John's process completely and also trust my complete lack of certainty about what will and won't work at this stage, in terms of how the piece is staged. You formulate thoughts as you write the opera, a certain way you expect things will go, and its sometimes a bit startling when you see the director taking a different path. But I've learned over the years to watch and learn and inevitably it turns out to be the right way to do it.
I think I learned that lesson on day one of my very first opera rehearsal. The 10 minute opera I wrote for Tete a Tete back in 1999 featured a spider, a caterpillar and a dung beetle, and I'd pictured in my mind a naturalistic approach. Then designer Tim Meacock came along and showed me his sketches - the caterpillar in a sleeping bag, and the beetle in a black wheelie bin with a cut-out hole for his legs. I was quite shocked, it wasn't what I expected at all. But you stick with it because you don't have any choice, and because you know this isn't your domain of specialisation. In the end the wheelie-bin etc gave the show an added edge, a sort of Beckett-esque feeling, which definitely added a lot to the overall effect.
This production of FWMD (as we know it) is, as John says in the video above, drawing on traditions of shadow theatre from the far East, and the one impression I'm left with so far is how incredibly intricate it is going to be to get it all right. You shine a light in the wrong place and suddenly an ungainly giant hand appears in the middle of the screen. And some of the smaller effects involve a singer tracking a small light source as it moves through the air - while singing of course! Given that the performers, including the shadow puppetteers will be onstage through the entire show, I think for all of them it will be no mean feat of concentration.
Light the match and spark the flame!
Posted on Tuesday, February 5, 2013
At the weekend I was treated to a sneak preview of some of the Dick Bird's costume designs for The Firework Maker's Daughter. Here's the one for Lila which I think is absolutely delightful. I'm not sure if her jacket is made of paper, but something like it, with little burn marks all over. It looks to me like she's had quite a strict upbringing, but is also ready almost literally to catch fire, she's so full of determination to become a firework maker. It's perfect!
Rehearsals for the opera start next week. Full details of the tour over here
In the works
Posted on Wednesday, January 23, 2013
It's the new year, so time for a few New Year Announcements.
San Diego Symphony Associate Composer
I'm thrilled to have been appointed Associate Composer to the San Diego Symphony for the 2013/14 season. I'll be writing three pieces for them, including a new work for the orchetra's Carneige Hall debut in October '13, and a new violin concerto for autumn 2014 (with an amazing soloist, details of which are strictly shtum at this time unfortunately).
To kick off the association I'm delighted to be writing a chamber piece for my old partner-in-crime, mandonlist Avi Avital and we'll be premiering the new work in May this year (details here). You can read an interview Avi gave to San Diego Jewish Journal talking about our collaboration here [PDF]
New Carnegie Hall commission
Fresh from her title role in John Adam's The Gospel According to the Other Mary, the wonderful mezzo-soprano Kelley O'Connor will premiere a new work I'm writing for her as part of a US tour with soprano Jessica Rivera in October '13. The new work, provisionally titled 'That Time with You', is a further collaboration with Glyn Maxwell, though here in rather darker and more sombre mode, with poignant lyrics reflecting on death and loss. I'm deeply honoured and thankful to Carnegie Hall for co-commissioning this work with Kelley herself, and for their continued generosity and support of my career.
