I'm delighted to have been awarded a Paul Hamlyn Award for Composers for 2021, alongside 19 other composers and 20 visual artists. The 40 of us share a funding pot of £1 million, to support our work. It almost goes without saying how wonderful it is to feel supported like this after such a difficult period. Paul Hamlyn Foundation is making...
I couldn't be more thrilled to be taking up the role of Composer-in-Association with the BBC Philharmonic Orchestra for the next few years. I'll write three major pieces, the first of which, Pleasure Garden for violin and orchestra with Daniel Pioro as soloist, was due to be premiered last summer and should be rescheduled later this year. Aside from the three commissions, there may...
I'm in the studio with the BBC Philharmonic Orchestra and violinist Daniel Pioro in a couple of weeks to record a programme we've devised, for a live Radio 3 broadcast on 19 May. We've arranged various pieces of pre-orchestral music for a slightly reduced BBC Phil, and I've thrown in an orchestration of the Gymnopédies I wrote during lockdown: Hildegard...
I've been made the 'Albi Rosenthal Visiting Fellow in Music' at Oxford University's Bodleian Libraries. I'll be writing a work for voice & piano for soprano Anna Dennis, inspired by materials in the library, for the Oxford Lieder Festival in October 2021. I'm particularly interested in the library's collection of 'ephemera' – old adverts, leaflets, notices, children's games etc. I'll be...
Trio Mazzolini, Chamber Music Fellows at the Royal Academy of Music, gave a great performance of my my Piano Trio "The Chronophage" at the Academy's David Josefowitz Recital Hall this week, alongside new pieces by Augusta Read Thomas and Ryan Wigglesworth, and Arensky's Trio No. 1. No audience, but the concert was streamed live on YouTube – you can watch...
Some news, including actual performances, sometimes with an audience…: The BBC Philharmonic Orchestra (or a distanced 15-player subset of them) are recording my Rainbow-Shooting Cloud Contraption at BBC MediaCity on September 26, under the baton of John Storgårds. There's no audience, but it'll be broadcast on Radio 3 before long. During lockdown, pianist Rolf Hind asked composers for short piano...
London Sinfonietta principal violinist Jonathan Morton played my Études Nos. 3 & 4 brilliantly on an online broadcast today, and we both spoke with Zoe Martlew about the pieces and various other matters… You can watch the broadcast on YouTube – Jon also plays Caroline Shaw's beautiful In Manus Tuas. It's part of the Sinfonietta's Lockdown Live series – other videos featuring other...
Obviously like any artist I've had a lot of events cancelled. I'll keep an updated list of cancellations here – clearly anything not currently listed as cancelled is under consideration…some may be rearranged, some won't be unfortunately. Violet, my new chamber opera, was due to have its premiere at the Aldeburgh Festival in June, which is now cancelled, as is...
My set of orchestrations of Robert Schumann's Studies in Canonic Form Op. 56 will be performed a couple of times this month – a selection of movements played by Britten Sinfonia Academy at Cambridge's Fitzwilliam Museum on the 15th, and the full set by the Oxford Sinfonia on the 28th, at the University Church of St Mary the Virgin, conducted by...