On Wednesday, members of Trio Magritte and clarinettist Paolo Beltramini will premiere ‘Ariadne’s Thread‘, inspired by the cyclical structure of myth narratives, in the final of the Niccolò Castiglioni Prize at Milan’s Centro Culturale San Fedele. My piece will be performed alongside pieces by the other finallists, Manuel Contreras, Yair Klartag, Naomi Pinnock, Samy Moussa and Maurizio Azzan, as well as music by Berg, Webern, Schubert and Niccolò Castiglioni himself. Details here.

My piece is entitled ‘Solvitrambulando‘, and its name comes from Solvitur Ambulando, a Latin phrase meaning ‘Solved by Walking’. It also features some devilishly high violin playing, a rather funky passacaglia and some Henry Purcell turned upside-down. If any of that whets your appetite, read more about it here or buy tickets here.

The competition featured three categories – a Regional competition for composers from Oregon, Washington and Idaho (won by Justin Ralls), a National competition for American composers (won by Matthew Peterson), and the International competition. The April concerts will feature all the winning pieces (my Piano Trio, Ralls’ Anthrophony and Peterson’s Näcken) plus the runners up in each category (pieces by A Mao Wang, Steven Snethkamp and Greg Steinke). The ensemble will offer the three winning compositions for download at their website.

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.

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 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.

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.