Category Archives: Composition

The Loop Project

This weekend I’m directing a weekend of performances and workshops exploring musical loops at Turner Sims in Southampton. First up is a a great (free) concert on Friday lunchtime featuring Liz Kenny and Ivo Neame and a workshop on Saturday morning.

The main event is on Sunday 5 February at 7pm features leading jazz musicians Ivo Neame, Jasper Høiby and Jon Scott performing alongside University of Southampton students in  the HARTLEY Loop Orchestra. We will perform a major revision/adaption of my Loop Concerto, which was premiered by Ivo and Kent County Youth Orchestra in 2013. I’ve rescored  the work for jazz trio and large ensemble and am super excited to see what the trio bring to the piece. Rehearsals have been going well and they arrive on Friday. Katie Harding from Turner Sims interviewed me about the piece for the Turner Sims blog here.

Also on the programme is the world premiere of Andrew Fisher’s Piano Concertino, Mozart’s Piano Concerto in D (after J C Bach) in which Mozart loops a J C Bach Sonata, and Gavin Bryars’ 1972 seminal work Jesus’ Blood Never Failed Me Yet.

Tickets are available from the Turner Sims Box Office:

https://www.turnersims.co.uk/events/the-loop-project-with-ivo-neame/

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Ensemble Paramirabo UK tour

Canadian new music group, Ensemble Paramirabo performed my The Circus Animals’ Desertion in Turner Sims as part of the University of Southampton Music Department’s Lunchtime Concert Series on Monday. It was great to have the ensemble here and they did an awesome job on my piece. They are also playing the piece tonight at a concert at Birmingham Conservatoire.

Catchup on Juice performance on BBC Radio 3

Last Friday Juice Vocal Ensemble performed two of my Songs for Stanley live on BBC Radio 3. Composed in 2014 and dedicated to my then newly born son, Songs for Stanley is the second work I have written to celebrate the arrival of my children into the world, the first of these pieces being Lullaby for Joni for the BBC Symphony Orchestra. Songs for Stanley was commissioned by Riot Ensemble and Juice in 2014, and it is great that Juice have gone on to the perform the pieces on a number of occasions since.

You can hear the BBC broadcast on the IPlayer for a while (my piece around 34 minutes): http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b080xz8w

PLAYLIST: God’s House Tower

I am pleased to be one of five professional musicians involved in setting up a brand new music for Southampton called PLAYLIST. The launch night of this new venture is at God’s House Tower in central Southampton on Tuesday 11th October.

The headline performer, Elizabeth Kenny, is one of Europe’s leading lute players. Liz’s programme will include my ‘Extending from the inside’, which I wrote for her in 2014. She is a brilliant and spell binding musician, not to be missed.

Also on the bill are the brilliant alternative folk trio Tenderlore and the fabulous Nicola Heinrich will perform music for solo ‘cello.

Tickets and further info about this event and the next event in November are available here: soplaylist.eventbrite.com

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Ensemble Paramirabo: ‘Blurred Boundaries’

Ensemble Paramirabo will premiere my new twenty-minute piece, The Circus Animals’ Desertion, as they launch their 6th concert season on 23rd September with ‘Blurred Boundaries, a concert dedicated to exploring music on the edges of genres.

Other works on the programme are pop-inspired works by New York Indie Classical stars Nico Muhly (Doublespeak) and Missy Mazzoli (Still Life with Avalanche), the Montreal premiere of Transported for amplified sextet and electronics by Toronto composer Rose Bolton and premieres by Montreal jazzers Philippe Côté and Karine Bétournay.

The concert will take place at the Salle multimédia du Conservatoire in Montreal.

I’m super excited to be going out for this and to working with the ensemble in a few weeks time!