The Incredulity of St Thomas at Harvard

Caravaggio — The Incredulity of St Thomas
Tonight, Rane Moore (bass cla­rinet), Chris Gross (cello) and Alex Lipowski (per­cus­sion) of Talea Ensemble with con­ductor Eduardo Leandro will give the first per­form­ance of my new trio The Incredulity of St Thomas at Harvard University’s John Knowles Paine Concert Hall. Also on the pro­gramme are new works by fellow com­posers at the Harvard Summer Composition Institute Clara IannottaRay Evanoff, Thatchatham Silsupan, Carolyn Chen and Sanzhar Baiterekov. A second con­cert fol­lows on Sunday, fea­turing music by Ran Duan, Brian Griffeath-Loeb, Justin Hoke, Mauricio Pauly, Robert Phillips and Katherine Young. Both con­certs are free and are com­ple­mented in the af­ter­noon by dis­cus­sions of various topics from 12:30pm in the Music Department.

The past two weeks have been an in­tensely valu­able ex­per­i­ence — from the dis­cus­sion in the ana­chron­istic sur­round­ings of Concord’s Colonial Inn last week to the sem­inars at Harvard Music Department this week. The hard work of Chaya Czernowin, Hans Tutschku, Steven Takasugi and Michelle Lou in making us wel­come and or­gan­ising the finest of de­tails to create a warm and trusting en­vir­on­ment of ex­change is quite frankly inspirational.

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Out and about

Sunset on the Hudson River

I am vis­iting the USA to at­tend the Harvard Summer Composition Institute and ar­rived in New York on Friday night. During the Composition Institute I will be par­ti­cip­ating in classes with Chaya Czernowin, Hans Tutschku and Steven Takasugi, meeting fellow com­posers and working with the Talea Ensemble on my new trio for bass cla­ri­net­tist, cel­list and per­cus­sionist, The Incredulity of St Thomas, which will be per­formed on Sunday, 26 August.

Above, you see the sun set­ting on the Hudson River from Manhattan, while the pic­ture below shows a screen that is cur­rently showing One11 and 103, a video and sound work by John Cage, which I stumbled upon in the Highline — the raised railway track in the Meatpacking District, which has been con­verted into a won­derful park.

John Cage’s One11 and 103 screening in the Highline

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Sky Studies in Paris

This Thursday, co­in­ciding with the Fête de la Musique and the summer sol­stice, Trami Nguyen is giving a piano re­cital at Paris’s Cité des Arts (Métro Pont Marie), which will in­clude the second and third of my Sky Studies from 2009 along­side music by Adam Maor, Vittorio Montalti and Alex Mincek. There will also be a new short film by Nicolas Réveillard. Come along?

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Trami Nguyen - Domino #4 - flyer

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Statement from Sound and Music

Sound and Music & Arts Council England logosIn re­sponse to the open letter that was sent to Sound and Music and Arts Council England last month and which gathered 135 sig­nat­ories, we have re­ceived the fol­lowing short state­ment from the Sound and Music Board of Trustees dated 18 May 2012 (which can also be viewed as a PDF):

Sound and Music would like to ac­know­ledge the letter from over 72 in­di­viduals, headed by Martin Butler, Rolf Hind, Andrew Hugill, Ian Pace, Mariam Rezaei, and Chris Swithinbank.

As stated in our pub­lished re­sponse to the ini­tial open letter, we have com­mitted the or­gan­isa­tion to carry out a mean­ingful con­sulta­tion with the whole sector in order to max­imize the im­pact of a re­newed Sound and Music. We be­lieve that this con­sulta­tion should take place once a new lead­er­ship team is in place.

The ap­point­ment of the new CEO (Susanna Eastburn) has very re­cently been an­nounced and the re­cruit­ment of a new team is still in pro­gress. This has to re­main the pri­ority of the Board but we will be con­tacting you again, as soon as the new CEO is in place.

Signed:
The Trustee Board of Sound and Music: Michelle Wright, Interim Chair, David Aspinall, Simon Emmerson, Cliff Fluet, Christopher Fox, and Debra King

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Video: Haruka Inoue plays something golden in the night

A five-minute ex­cerpt of the premiere of some­thing golden in the night for sop­rano sax­o­phone given by Haruka Inoue at IRCAM at the end of March.

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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 »

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