Having been travelling to Milan over the last few months as part of the Niccolò Castiglioni Prize, I have now been selected for the final of the competition, and will write a chamber work for members of Trio Magritte and clarinettist Paolo Beltramini. The piece will be for clarinet, cello and piano, and will be premiered at a concert on the 23rd May at the Centro Culturale San Fedele in Milan, and also workshopped in a masterclass led by Johannes Schölhorn in March. Manuel Contreras, Yair Klartag, Naomi Pinnock, Samy Moussa and Maurizio Azzan are the other finallists selected. You can read all about the participants here, but only if you can decipher the Italian…

Seven Face Pictures won a Philip Bates Prize at Birmingham Conservatoire a few weeks ago. The prize was awarded by the Philip Bates Trust after a great performance by Georgina Stalbow, Alice Purton and Agatha Yim (members of Opera Viscera) at the Conservatoire’s Recital Hall. You can now hear audio of that performance (cycle through the movements with the arrow icons):

Seven Face Pictures has been selected for the final of the Philip Bates Prize for vocal composition, and will be performed by members of Opera Viscera (Georgina Stalbow, Alice Purton and Agatha Yim) at Birmingham Conservatoire‘s Recital Hall on the 4th November. Last year’s prize saw three composers competing, including fellow University of Manchester graduate Michael Betteridge, whose competition piece can be seen here. Click here for info and tickets.

In other news, my ‘Étude in Glissandi‘ will receive two performances in Romania next week, courtesy of the Vox Novus Composers Voice concert series. It was performed in that series in New York by Conway Kuo in May, and will now be performed by Daniel Mihai at the National College of Art ‘Regina Maria’, Constanta on the 1st November and the George Enescu University of Music, Bucharest on the 3rd.

On Sunday 23rd October I will conduct Opera Viscera in the sixth performance of Narcissus & Echo. We have been selected for the ‘Rough For Opera‘ platform run by opera group Second Movement. The evening, held at London’s Cockpit Theatre, sees three new works being presented, and each company will receive feedback on their work as well as a film of the performance. The other shows being presented on Sunday are ‘Midnight Closes’, Charlotte Bray‘s setting of Thomas Hardy Poems, and Kate Whitley’s ‘Unknown Position’ on a text by Emma Hogan. You can see more details here, and reserve tickets (which are £6 each) over at the Cockpit Theatre website.

Two upcoming events to tell you about. On Saturday pianist Andrew Wilson-Dickson will workshop a short new piece of mine at Cardiff’s Canton Uniting Church, as part of the Primavera Crossing Borders day. ‘Graham’s Orrery‘ is the name of my piece, and you can read about its planetary inspiration here. Andrew will be workshopping 13 new pieces and performing a handful in the evening concert. Here’s the poster.

The following Friday, October 7, sees a collaboration between two ensembles that have played my work before, Trio Atem and Raise Your Voice Collective, in an evening that also features music by the 265 Quartet. Trio Atem will be giving their second performance of my Seven Face Pictures alongside music by Morton Feldman, Ian Vine, Martin Iddon, Georges Aperghis and Mi­chael Mayhew. We’ll also hear Raise Your Voice performing some Reich, Feldman, Pesson and a recent piece by co-founder Chris Swith­in­bank. It will be held at Manchester’s In­ter­na­tional An­thony Bur­gess Found­a­tion, and you can find details and tickets here.

I have been selected as a candidate for the inaugural Niccolò Castiglioni Prize, run by the Centro Culturale San Fedele in association with the Edizioni Suvini Zerboni. I will be attending a series of weekends in Milan to receive tuition from composers including Helmut Lachenmann, Stefano Gervasoni, Johannes Schöllhorn and Alessandro Solbiati. Between 4 and 6 finalists will then be asked to write a work for clarinet, violin, cello and piano for performance by the Trio Magritte with clarinettist Paolo Beltramini in a concert in June 2012.

I am the youngest of the seventeen candidates, who hail from all around the globe. You can see a list of their names here. Berlin-based Naomi Pinnock is the other British composer participating.

I have been appointed as ‘Young Composer-in-Residence’ for the Lancashire Sinfonietta‘s 2011/12 season, having won their Christopher Brooks Memorial Prize 2011. The residency will involve me working on education projects in the region, writing some chamber music, and culminating in the premiere of a commission for the full orchestra.

The concert featuring my piece will be held at the Lancaster Institute for the Contemporary Arts on the 22nd March 2012, directed by Andrew Watkinson (leader of the marvellous Endellion Quartet). The concert will also see guitarist Xuefei Yang trailing her new disc on EMI with performances of Bach and Rodrigo’s Concierto de Aranjuez, and a performance of Mozart’s 40th Symphony. Tickets can be booked here.

I take over from fellow University of Manchester graduate Duncan Ward, whose piece for the ensemble, Greenhurst Way, can be seen as a video on Vimeo.

Narcissus & Echo is being performed as part of the Arcola Theatre‘s ‘Grimeborn’ season on Tuesday. Having performed the piece at OPEN Ealing and the Secret Garden Party Festival last month, Opera Viscera will be adapting the show to fit the theatre space. Tickets will be £10 on the door, or can be pre-booked on the Arcola website.

‘A modern opera – so some sharp edges and notes but totally listenable to and watchable. The sustained applause at the end said it all…the verdict was one of universal approval for a thoroughly well written and professional production’ – West Ealing Neighbours blog

See some of my previous posts for details of the show and some beautiful photos of the Ealing premiere.