A new collaborative opera is busy being developed, with music by me and three other composers, and will be premiered at the end of this month. Opera Viscera, the company co-founded by myself and director Lia Alba, are putting on a brand new opera entitled Narcissus & Echo – to be first performed at OPEN Ealing art gallery in London...
Canadian contemporary music ensemble Ansae will premiere my piece 'Broken Études for Consort in Kitchener-Waterloo, Ontario on Tuesday. Ansae asked composers to write new pieces for their unusual ensemble of flute, oboe, saxophone, melodica and piano, and my contribution is a liberal expansion of my earlier Two Études for Solo Violin. Closer to home, Jack Adler-McKean will give the premiere...
It's the York Spring Festival of New Music in a couple of weeks, and as part of the York New Music Exchange weekend the Hebrides Ensemble will be workshopping some pieces including my Piano Quartet 'Frusta'. The Hebrides Ensemble is Scotland's finest purveyor of contemporary chamber music, recording and touring regularly and getting shortlisted for a PRS Prize in the process....
On the 17th June tuba player Jack Adler-McKean will perform a new piece of mine, La Belle Captive at his Gold Medal Recital at the RNCM. The Gold Medal recitals see 12 of the RNCM's top performers compete for the Gold Medal award. The piece: Taking its name from a painting by René Magritte, 'La Belle Captive' sees the tuba and...
Violinist Conway Kuo (pictured) is to play my Étude in Glissandi at a concert in New York on the 15 May, part of the Vox Novus Fifteen Minutes of Fame concert series. Conway, the Associate Principal Second Violin of the New York City Ballet Orchestra and a First Violinist with the New York City Opera Orchestra, will perform 15 solo...
I have been selected to participate in The Opera Group's 'Emerging Composers and Writers Mentoring Project'. The two-day session will see 15 composers and 15 writers develop ideas and skills relating to the writing of opera, at Guildhall School of Music and Drama on the 9th and 10th of April. Glyndebourne Opera composer-in-residence Julian Philips (pictured) will lead the Masterclass for...
This Tuesday sees the premiere of a new piece of mine, Ludovico's Harp. The piece is written for performance at Manchester's International Anthony Burgess Foundation, in response to the author's novel A Clockwork Orange, in the 50th anniversary of its completion. The piece is rather unusually scored for 6 male voices with 12 tremolo harmonicas (they're equipped with two each)....
Two performances this week to tell you about this week...
The brilliant Quatuor Danel are workshopping three pieces by University of Manchester Masters composers on Thursday. My piece is called 'Atavice', and is a short piece for string quartet conceived as a study for a larger work. Its six sections are related by a four-note chord and an isorhythm that is explored in various ways, before ending in a continuous...