UK pianist Matthew Schellhorn will give the premiere of my piano piece Berimbau this November in Hertford, UK. Matthew has been making quite a name for himself in recent years, being selected as a “Talent to Watch” for 2007 by BBC Music Magazine, and described as “one of Britain's most exciting young pianists” by Classic FM.
I'm delighted that The Academy, a program of Carnegie Hall, The Juilliard School, and The Weill Music Institute have decided to put on two performances of Piosenki this autumn, including a repeat performance at the Weill Hall at Carnegie on October 10th.
The Academy features some of the leading younger generation players from Julliard and has been set up to help ease the sometimes difficult first steps into the profession. I've been invited to help the players get to know the piece at Skidmore College in Saratoga Springs, NY which is where the other performance will be held on October 5th.
There's also another NY ensemble interested in Piosenki, of which hopefully more soon.
Although I'm working on a much longer-term opera project with ROH2 I've accepted a smaller scale 'mini-commission' from the Opera Group to write a self-contained 5-minute piece that will be played out in shopping centres around the country on their next tour this autumn (apparently Selfridges in London and Manchester are already signed up).
I spent an enjoyable couple of days last month with conductor Patrick Bailey, director John FullJames, librettist Alasdair Middleton and a group of singers developing ideas. I think we broke the world-record for the fastest turn around from blank page (Thursday morning) via libretto creation (Thursday teatime) and score creation (Thursday evening) to fully acted and sung workshop performance (Friday afternoon). It was thrilling and liberating, even if the resulting hastily-composed music produced a marvellously over-the-top Puccini-meets-Bernstein slush-fest.
But I do get the feeling if we're going to stop people dead in their tracks while they're browsing for new chair covers, we'll need something that slaps them around the face a bit. Should be interesting...
Yesterday Rambert performed Anatomica #3 by Andre Gingras to a score by my old friend and colleague Joseph Hyde. After chatting with Rambert's principal percussionist Rob Millett, Jo discovered Rob was an avid collector of scrap metal instruments. Jo's score featured four percussionists playing scrap metal percussion of various kinds and the music was influenced by Gamelan and minimalism, but it sounded quite unique, I was very impressed. Jo and I are dreaming of setting up rival scrap metal orchestras, and after hearing what he managed to acheive with this piece, I'm definitely inspired!
Update
Jo's kindly allowed me to post an excerpt of the piece here:
later on, with a wonderfully distorted electronic sound:
I asked Jo for a list of what the four percussionists play:
Performer 1
• 6 alloy scaffolding pipes
• 5 square-section iron pipes
• 1 long iron pipe
• small shaker
• 2 metal drums
• tam-tam (as large as poss)
Performer 2
• shaker
• lensdrum
• 7 cowbells
• large Chinese cymbal, 20” heavy Turkish cymbal
• ‘circle’ of drums comprising:
large orchestral bass drum, 18” floor tom, 16” tom, 14” tom, 12” tom, low timbale, high timbale, low bongo, high bongo
large field snare, snares off
Performer 3
• shaker
• kalimba
• 3 cowbells
• 9 kitchen bowls
• 3 temple bowls
• 18” light Turkish cymbal with ‘sizzles’, 14” light Turkish cymbal,7” light Turkish cymbal
• Small set of standing drums: small, damped bass drum, small snare (snare on), 14” tom, 12” tom, low bongo, high bongo
Performer 4
• 49-key Keyboard, playing a variety of pre-recorded samples
My friends Michael and Cory, aka the Groanbox Boys have just been featured in The Independent - their footstomping mix of accordion, banjo is really something special. They're planning a new US tour this summer and a UK and Ireland tour in the autumn, I recommend checking them out at groanboxboys.com
After a whirlwind week, the premiere of my Carnegie Hall commission Piosenki is all done and dusted. It was a stunning performance by some stunning players and singers, and the NY Times seems to agree:
The program concluded with David Bruce’s lively, intense “Piosenki,” set to the verses of the Polish poet Julian Tuwim. The instrumental music sometimes sounded like an Eastern European wedding band, over which the earthy soprano of Melissa Wegner and the baritone of Yang Yang (singing in Polish) conveyed, with flair, the whimsy and humor of Tuwim’s texts.
With Baritone Yang Yang after the premiere of Piosenki
On stage with Yang Yang (holding the largerphone), Kyle Ferrill (who deputized part of the Baritone role), conductor Alan Pierson and just out of shot, Melissa Wegner
I'll shortly be off to NY again for the premiere of my new piece Piosenki, commissioned by the Carnegie Hall Corporation. I'm able to get a few comps so if anyone in the area would be interested in coming along please get in touch The concert is on the 15th April at 3.30pm in the Weill Recital Hall.
Yesterday I attended a drinks party to welcome the Manning Camerata here to St Albans. Peter Manning is a musician of the absolute highest calibre and it's very exciting that he has teamed up with my friends at St Albans Arts to create this new relationship with the city, which till now has not had a resident professional orchestra.
There are two concerts booked for this year, including an all Elgar concert in June and in April a concert that includes the BBC Young Musician of the year, clarinetist Mark Simpson. I really enjoyed Mark's playing in the competition so I'm looking forward to hearing him.
During my attempts to secure the copyright approval on Polish poet Julian Tuwim's texts for my song-cycle Piosenki, I had several email discussions (sometimes via my wife, sometimes in the best Polish I could muster myself) with Tuwim's daughter, who runs his foundation today. I sent her some extracts of my piece that we workshopped in New York last Novemeber, and how lovely it was to receive this note from her:
"Ciesze sie ze wiersze mojego ojca beda wykonywane z piekna muzyka w Nowym Yorku, gdzie mieszkal w czasie wojny i gdzie jego tworczosc znana byl tylko polskim emigrantom."
Or for the non-Polish speakers amongst you :
"I am happy that my fathers poems will be performed with beautiful music in New York, where he lived during the war, and where his work was known only amongst Polish emigrates."
