Green Deva string trio to be performed in Hackney Proms
I’m delighted to be included in a Hackney Proms concert, celebrating 3 local women composers for International Women’s Day. Kate Conway, Chris McClain and Alison Holford will perform my string trio Green Deva, which was commissioned for St Magnus International Festival, performed by Hebrides Ensemble in 2021. It’s lovely when pieces get further performances! There will also be pieces by Lisa Logan and Tamara Douglas-Morris.
The concert is 5th March, Sunday, 4pm and lasts an hour. Hackney Proms are family friendly and there is a range of income-related priced tickets.
JAM Commission world premiere
My new piece The Song I Came to Sing, for choir, brass quintet and organ, commissioned by JAM will be premiered by Selwyn Chapel Choir, Cambridge, Onyx Brass and Simon Hogan, conducted by Michael Bawtree.
I have set three poems by Rabindranath Tagore, from his Gitanjali collection. The piece is a commission from JAM, following my participation in their Masterclass Series with Voces8, during which I wrote Gold from the Stone.
Tickets are available here for this concert at the beautiful St Brides Church, Fleet Street on 21 March, 7.30pm
Gold from the Stone wins JAM President’s Commission
I was delighted that my piece for the JAM Voces8 Masterclass, ‘Gold from the Stone’, received its premiere as part of the culmination concert at St Bride’s, Fleet Street in October. It was a wonderful concert, performed by the brilliant Voces8 Scholars, whose voices were just sublime in those acoustics. St Brides is a beautiful venue, and I loved hearing 6 premieres (by Christopher Churcher, Henrik Dahlgren, George Parris, Jack Ledger-Dowse and Chris Williamson), alongside earlier works by Tallis, Gibbons, Byrd.
It was a fantastic surprise at the end of the concert to be awarded, jointly with Christopher Churcher, the President’s Commission, which means I will be composing a new work for the Chapel Choir of Selwyn College for JAM’s ‘Music of our Time’ concert in March 2023.
Thank you so much to Voces8 Scholars, Voces8, JAM and Paul Mealor, and to Lemn Sissay for allowing me to set his poem Gold from the Stone.
Voces8 concert, St Brides Church
Tickets are now available for the Voces8 Foundation concert, in association with John Armitage Trust, featuring 6 premieres, including my ‘Gold from the Stone‘.
This concert is the culmination of the Jam on the Marsh Masterclass, with Voces8 and Paul Mealor, in which drafts of pieces we sent were workshopped and then developed. I’m very much looking forward to hearing Voces8 Scholars perform the pieces, alongside Byrd and Tallis, on October 12. For my composition I have used words from Lemn Sissay’s poem Gold from the Stone.
More information on the Jam website: jamconcert.org
Britten Sinfonia Opus 1 Scheme
In the summer I was delighted to be selected to Britten Sinfonia’s brilliant Opus 1 scheme, for emerging composers. There are eight composers and two trio combinations — mine is the very unusual grouping of French horn, violin and percussion. It’s been wonderful to work with such wonderful musicians, trying out ideas in two workshops, with help from mentors Dani Howard and Raymond Yui. There finished pieces will be recorded in early October in Stapleford Granary.
Here is a picture of the second workshop, in the beautiful Craxton Studios, with the other trio of harp, viola and flute (Sarah O’Flynn, Bridget Carey and Tomos Xerri. 
St Magnus Festival returns for three weeks
There’s another chance to watch the beautiful films made for St Magnus International Festival. I thought they were the best examples of online concerts I’d seen during the pandemic period, as you really get a feel of the venue and of Orkney!
The tickets per concert are now only £2.50 and you can watch my string trio Green Deva, which is included in the Hebrides Ensemble’s performance at St Magnus Cathedral, Kirkwall, Orkney.
Online taster of Black Leaf
My new piece, Black Leaf, commissioned by Kamilla Arku and Dhyani Heath, was due to be premiered by the duo in Cambridge in May, with further concerts in London and Paris. Instead they performed a wonderful online concert, Kamilla from Berlin joining Dhyani from Productions Chez Nous in Paris. In a varied programme Kamilla and Dhyani performed a sampler of the piece, beautifully playing movements II and IV. Black Leaf will be presented in its entirety when it’s possible to have live concerts again —
Black Leaf is inspired by the photograph above, taken by my Australian friend Antonia Baldo, who found these leaves on her doorstep one morning — a sign of the approaching Bush fires.
Prepared Piano Suite played on Radio 3 Night Tracks
It was great to have a piece played on Hannah Peel’s fabulous BBC Radio 3 show Night Tracks — my first Radio 3 outing! I’ve been listening to Night Tracks since it began a couple of months ago, and made some great discoveries. Hannah played a tiny taster of my Suite for Prepared Piano — part nine —performed by Kamilla Arku.
Part 9 is like a little sweet at the end of a meal, or as Hannah put it, ‘a bite-size cookie’. Listen to the show, we’re about 20 minutes in, and the whole suite here.
Charles Owen performs ‘Approach’ in Leicester concert
New Walk Museum, LeicesterLast Thursday pianist Charles Owen — ‘one of the finest British pianists of his generation’ according to Gramphone magazine — premiered my new set of miniatures, ‘Approach‘, as part of a wonderful programme of Liszt (St Francis of Assisi Preaching to the Birds) , Ravel (Miroirs) and Wagner/Liszt (Isolde’s Liebestod, S447) in a lunchtime concert in Leicester.
Part of the International Festival of New Music Concert Lunchtime Series, the performance was held in the beautiful New Walk Museum, on a fantastic Steinway, surrounded by paintings.
My miniatures — Approach, Between the Reeds, Flicker, Spark, Element, Flight and Green Deva I and II — were composed earlier this summer, most of them especially for this concert, and Charles played them as beautifully as I had envisaged. There was a full house for the concert, with the audience and festival staff all incredibly welcoming both to their much-loved Charles and to me. A very happy day!
An online review gave a very positive report of both Charles’ concert as a whole and Approach, saying of Charles’ performance of Liszt and Ravel that “there seems such a complete confidence in the playing that it simply demands that the audience listens to music of this period afresh. The result for me was that this was one of most bracing concerts it has been my pleasure to experience in recent years.” While initially concerned about how my piece might follow the Ravel, the reviewer concluded: “However, gradually I found myself attracted by what I can only describe as the modest effectiveness of each piece. Unlike some contemporary composition, the music needed no decoding and, what was more, became more memorable as it progressed, culminating in a piece entitled Green Deva 1 and 2, the twin inspiration for which was Indian music and a painting by the composer’s father. In the end the music fully justified its place in the concert. Even a culminating fine performance of Liszt’s transcription of Wagner’s Tristan Leibestod failed to expunge it from the memory.”
