Sapiens

The London Sinfonietta explores the links between music and literature at a concert on Friday 7 December 2018 at the Purcell Room. Conducted by Jessica Cottis the orchestra is presenting a pair of world premieres, Mark Boden's new saxophone concerto Sapiens and Colin Matthews' As Time Returns.

Mark Boden first worked with London Sinfonietta saxophone player Simon Haran on a Sinfonietta Short solo work, and this collaboration has developed into a full concerto Sapiens which Boden has based on Yuval Noah Harari’s bestselling history of humankind Sapiens.

 Colin Matthews' As Time Returns is a setting of poems by the Czech poet Ivan Blatný (1919 – 1990), who defected to England in 1948 and spent most of the remainder of his life in mental institutions and care homes, and it was only when one of his carers preserved his work that it became known and published. Matthews' new work is the powerful story of one man's personal journey, performed by baritone George Humphreys.

Further ahead, on 17 January 2019 as part of SoundState, Southbank Centre's new festival celebrating new music,the orchestra will be presenting the London premiere of James Dillon’s Tanz/haus: triptych 2017, plus music by two of the Sinfonietta's Writing the Future composers, Oliver Leith and Josephine Stephenson.

Full details from the London Sinfonietta website.