The Hour Glass: Choral music on the theme of time

Conductor Andrew Griffiths and his choir Londinium are presenting a concert on the theme of time. The Hour Glass at St James's Church, Sussex Gardens, Paddington, W2 3UD on Saturday 2 February 2019 includes American composer Irving Fine's virtuosic choral suite The Hour Glass and the premiere of Barnaby Martin's I saw eternity alongside an eclectic mix of composers including Byrd, Chilcott, Ligeti, Pärt and Stanford.

Irving Fine (1914-1962) was an American composer who was a member of a close-knit group of composers associated with Boston, sometimes called the Boston Six, Arthur Berger, Leonard Bernstein, Aaron Copland, Lukas Foss, and Harold Shapero. Fine was a pupil of Walter Piston and studied conducting with Serge Koussevitzky as well as studying composition with Nadia Boulanger. The Hour Glass was written in 1949 and sets a text by Ben Jonson.

The young British composer Barnaby Martin had his orchestral work Quanta selected as the winner of the 2018 Toru Takemitsu Composition award, the first time a British composer has won the competition. He is currently writing a work for chamber orchestra as part of the London Philharmonic Orchestra's Young Composers Programme 2018-19. The work will be first performed in the Debut Sounds concert by members of the LPO alongside players from the orchestra's Foyle Future Firsts scheme in July 2019 conducted by Sir James MacMillan. ​


Full details from the Londinium website.