News

Posted on 10 Apr 2018

An update on the opera that playwright Alice Birch and I have been working on with the help of a Jerwood Opera Writing Fellowship from Snape Maltings: We're spending some time in Snape in April rehearsing around 25 minutes of music from the (as yet untitled opera), with a fantastic team of singers (soprano Anna Dennis, baritone Alexander Robin Baker, mezzo soprano Lucy Goddard and tenor...

Posted on 06 Feb 2018

The Radio Filharmonisch Orkest will give the Dutch premiere of Sonnet Machine in a concert at Amsterdam's Concertgebouw in June as part of the Holland Festival. The concert will be conducted by Martyn Brabbins, and will focus on the music of George Benjamin (his own Sometime Voices, Dance Figures and his arrangement of Bach's Canon & Fugue from the Art of Fugue), and will also...

Posted on 25 Jan 2018

BBC Radio 3's 'Hear and Now' broadcast a recording of Psappha performing Two Games and a Nocturne at Manchester's New Music North West Festival from November. Also in the broadcast are orchestral pieces by Laura Bowler, Larry Goves, Daniel Kidane, Mario Duarte and Grace-Evangeline Mason, and Psappha performing David Horne's Resonating Instruments. You can listen to the recording worldwide on iPlayer for 30 days:[vc_row][vc_column width='3/12'][/vc_column][vc_column width='6/12'] [image_with_text_over width='one_half' image='https://ichef.bbci.co.uk/images/ic/640x360/p05nqvn1.jpg' title='Hear and...

Posted on 06 Jan 2018

The London Sinfonietta are 50 years old in 2018, having given their first concert on January 24 1968. They're celebrating this anniversary with a concert at the Royal Festival Hall featuring Harrison Birtwistle's The Message, Stravinsky's Octet, Ligeti's Chamber Concerto, a new work by Samantha Fernando and Hans Abrahamsen's Left, alone.  The concert will end with a set of 14 concertante variations on a Purcell Hornpipe, by 14 different...

Posted on 08 Sep 2017

I'm delighted to have been appointed Visiting Fellow Commoner in the Creative Arts at Trinity College Cambridge. The two-year post allows an artist to pursue their creative work and play a part in the life of the college. Previous composers who have held the post include Judith Weir, Philip Grange, Thomas Adès and Richard Causton. I'm also giving a talk about my...

Posted on 08 Aug 2017

Over this coming year, I'll be the composition mentor for the talented young composers on the Britten Sinfonia Academy's 'Composer Lab', and will also be writing a piece for the (equally talented!) academy players to perform – a set of orchestrations of keyboard works by Schumann from his 6 Études In Kanonischer Form Op. 56 and his 7 Klavierstücke In Fughettenform Op....

Posted on 03 Aug 2017

Psappha are playing Two Games and a Nocturne in a concert together with the BBC Philharmonic Orchestra at Manchester's BBC MediaCity on 14 November, as part of the New Music North West Festival. Also in the concert are orchestral pieces by Laura Jayne Bowler, Larry Goves, Mario Duarte and Grace-Evangeline Mason, and Psappha play David Horne's Resonating Instruments. The concert will be recorded for...

Posted on 07 Jul 2017

Edward Gardner and the BBC Symphony Orchestra premiered my St. John's Dance at the First Night of the BBC Proms at the Royal Albert Hall London on Friday, alongside Beethoven's Piano Concerto No. 3 featuring Igor Levit and a performance of John Adams' Harmonium with the BBC Symphony Chorus and BBC Proms Youth Choir. The performance was televised on BBC Four and on BBC Radio 3 (as well as various...

Posted on 06 Jun 2017

I've been nominated for a South Bank Sky Arts Award for Spirit of the Staircase, premiered by Martyn Brabbins and the London Sinfonietta last year. The other nominees for the classical music category are the Philharmonia and Esa-Pekka Salonen's Stravinsky series 'Myths and Rituals', and the Dunedin Consort's performance of the Monteverdi Vespers at the Lammermuir Festival – what a treat to...