Liz Kenny will perform 'Extending from the inside' (2014) as part of a solo gig in Istanbul.

I'm really looking forward to spending two days with Riot Ensemble and poet Luke Wright working on ideas for a new commission.

Final performance of work created on the Cohan Collective Residency for choreographers and composers.

Elizabeth Kenny will play my 'Extending from the inside' as part of her recital Wigmore Hall. Here's the blurb:

Late sixteenth-century musicians and poets spent much time attempting to re-make contemporary culture in the image of the Ancients: the intellectual-sounding chitarrone was one of the more unlikely fruits of this movement. But with its long second neck and eccentric tuning it soon acquired a reputation for comedy, and was nicknamed tiorba, (an old man’s hurdy gurdy), and in England, ”theorbo”. Player-composers explored experimental harmonies and, flowing tunes underpinned by its deep bass strings. Today’s composers are taking the instrument into new imaginative terrain, exploring its twin identities.

Superstar theorbo player Elizabeth Kenny will perform my 'Extending from the inside' (2014) as part of her performance at Oxford Festival of the Arts 2019.

Elizabeth Kenny will play my 'Extending from the inside' as part of her recital at Aldeburgh Festival 2019.

Her programme will feature music from the early 17th century by Piccinini, Kapsberger and de Visée and
the early 21st century by James MacMillan, Nico Muhly (world premiere) and me.

The development of the lute into the long-necked theorbo created an instrument with a split personality, having a delicacy and expressive depth to the sound but an unwieldy appearance that was mocked. Elizabeth Kenny celebrates these split identities, with beautiful melodies supported by long, resonant bass strings, but just a hint of the comic as well.

Mellifluous French music sits alongside eccentric Italian improvisation, and old works alongside new – a haunting 21st-century motet, a funk/ground bass-influenced fantasy, and a world premiere which exploits the unconventional tuning system and expressive possibilities of the instrument to powerful effect.

Elizabeth Kenny plays 'Extending from the inside'...

Programme:

Mendelssohn - Symphony No. 5
Faure - Masques et bergamasques
Bizet- Petite Suite (conducted by Serena Evans)