My piece for nine strings, Excavations, drawing inspiration from 350 year-old Henry Purcell’s fantazias that was workshopped by the Manchester Camerata in October of last year and has since been heavily revised, was given a brilliant first performance at Vaganza New Music Day Deserts and Canyons: John McCabe at 70 under the baton of Robert Guy. […]
Excavations was written in response to the Manchester Camerata Young Composers’ Project, calling for works inspired by Henry Purcell’s Fantazias to mark the 350-year anniversary of his birth. I arrived at the music after close study of these works, in particular the 4-part Fantazia in A minor (Z. 740). Some of the 17th-Century harmonic and […]
Helmut Lachenmann in Stuttgart, 13.02.2009 I was visiting Stuttgart, hometown of composer Helmut Lachenmann, to hear a concert of his music presented in the Stadtkirche of the suburb Bad-Canstatt. It seemed like a good omen when, at the head of the menu in the traditional Schwäbische Stube (I suppose this the local equivalent of an […]
Tuesday, 30 December 2008
Partly an experiment in textural and notational possibilities, Intensifications, for 2 violas and cello, is in three short movements. Over the course of the work we move through a spectrum of pitched to unpitched sounds and back again, pushing the instruments’ sonic possibilities to the edges of audibility and conventional technique. Each movement is governed […]
Posted in Withdrawn, Works
|
Tagged 2008, cello, viola
|
Trio Atem (flute, voice and cello) gave a fantastic premiere of Detached Thought #100 — a setting of a brief journal entry by Lord Byron — as part of the University of Manchester’s Interdisciplinary Byron Conference, 4 – 5 December 2008. The lunchtime concert included various settings of Byron’s writings by students at the University, bringing to an end two days […]