Category Archives: Odds & Ends

Happy New Year!

Last year I put to­gether a lengthy look at good stuff I’d seen, heard and read. To close this year, here are some much briefer notes on some of the best things I en­countered in the last 12 months. Richard Craig, Inward — Without a doubt the best disc of new music I’ve heard this year, […]

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Richard Rijnvos Matthijs Vermeulen Award Acceptance Speech

Translation of Richard Rijnvos’s ac­cept­ance speech of the Matthijs Vermeulen Award 2011.

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Happy New Year!

Here’s an an­ec­dote to herald in 2011: ‘At one time Karlheinz [Stockhausen] and I would talk and ex­change ideas. You know the story about the talk about singing? Well, he was writing a song for Cathy Berberian, who I later also wrote for, and he said, “if you were writing for a singer, would you write […]

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2010: A Miscellany

As the end of the year ap­proaches, here are some of the best things that I have read, seen and heard in the past twelve months. Two major, large-scale per­form­ances this au­tumn made an im­pact on me. The London Sinfonietta’s con­cert of Lachenmann at the Southbank Centre in October was one. I already knew the […]

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The Inward Beauty of Helmut Lachenmann

In cel­eb­ra­tion of Helmut Lachenmann’s 75th birthday, University of Manchester new music en­semble Vaganza are presenting two con­certs of his music this Friday. A free lunch­time con­cert will see Ad Solem Chamber Choir per­form Lachenmann’s Consolation II along­side works by stu­dents, in­cluding Tom Coult and Joy Chou. The evening sees a more thor­ough ex­am­in­a­tion of […]

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  • Microbiography

    Chris Swithinbank is a British-Dutch com­poser who works with both acoustic in­stru­ments and elec­tronic sounds. He is cur­rently a stu­dent at Harvard University with Chaya Czernowin.
    Full Biography »

  • Hear