Nneka Cummins wins the Liverpool Philharmonic's 2021 Rushworth Composition Prize

Nneka Cummins

The Liverpool Philharmonic has announced that Nneka Cummins is the winner of the 2021 Rushworth Composition Prize. The prize, issued in association with the Rushworth Foundation,  was established in 2015 is open to a North West based composer aged 18 and over who currently lives, works or were born in the North West of England (Merseyside, Cheshire, Greater Manchester, Lancashire, Cumbria), or a registered student at a Northwest-based Higher Education institution.

Nneka Cummins, who is from Liverpool, is a composer and music producer who is currently studying composition at Masters level at Trinity Laban Conservatoire of Music and Dance. Prior to Trinity Laban, they were a solicitor and hold a first-class undergraduate degree in Law from Durham University. 

The prize provides them with a cash prize of £1,000, made possible through the support of the Rushworth Foundation, a year’s complimentary membership of the Ivors Academy, plus the ability to part in a programme of workshops, masterclasses and mentoring sessions from composers, performers, conductors and other industry professionals associated with Liverpool Philharmonic. The year will culminate in  them writing a new work for performance by Ensemble 10/10, the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra’s new music group, which will be premiered in Autumn 2022.

Nneka Cummins’s piece Blend was performed by an ensemble from Chineke! in the Cheltenham Music Festival 2021 and they will have new a work performed by Trinity Laban Symphonic Winds on 15 October 2021 at Blackheath Halls. Further details of the event from Trinity Laban's website.

Venus Blazing: celebrating women composers at Trinity Laban

Under the title of Venus Blazing, Trinity Laban Conservatoire of Music and Dance's Autumn 2018 season celebrates the music of women composers. During Trinity Laban's Autumn season, 25 of the 37 works are by women.

There will be a new production of Thea Musgrave’s 1979 opera A Christmas Carol based on Dickens, presented by Trinity Laban Opera at Blackheath Halls. The symphonies of Louise Ferrenc and Grace Williams will be revived at Side by Side events, where students from Trinity Laban perform alongside mentors from the UK's leading orchestral musicians. Timothy Reynish will conduct the Trinity Laban Symphonic Winds in works by Thea Musgrave, Elizabeth Maconchy, Judith Bingham and Emily Howard, a concert which also celebrates Reynish's own 80th birthday.

There are also works by Errollyn Wallen, Grazyna Bacewicz, Kaija Saariaho, Sofia Gubaidulina, Imogen Holst, Elizabeth Maconchy, Lili Boulanger, Eleanor Daley, Meredith Monk and Judith Weir, plus extracts from the Mater Requiem by Rebecca Dale.



Full details from the Trinity Laban website.

Gold Medal Showcase

Trinity Laban Gold Medal Showcase
Iyad Alsughair, Georgina Bowden, Emily Gray, Ana Rodriguez Moran, Jordi Morrell, Ben Vize (Photo Juno Snowden)

Trinity Laban Conservatoire of Music and Dance's annual Gold Medal Showcase is at Kings Place on Monday 29 January 2018. The event brings together outstanding graduates from 2016/17 to compete for the most prestigious award offered by the conservatoire.

Recent winners of the Gold Medal have gone on to further notable successes, two appeared at Glyndebourne in 2017: Nardus Williams was in Belongings with Glyndebourne Youth Opera, while last year’s winner James Newby joined Glyndebourne Festival Chorus and received the John Christie Award, and we recently heard him in recital in Schumann at the London English Song Festival [see my review], whilst pianist Elliot Galvin won Album of the Year at the 2017 Parliamentary Jazz Awards as a member of jazz quartet Dinosaur and was nominated for the prestigious Mercury Music Prize.

This years competitors are Iyad Alsughair – Piano, Georgina Bowden – Composer, Emily Gray – Mezzo-soprano, Ana Rodriguez Moran – Flute, Jordi Morrell – Viola, Ben Vize – Jazz Saxophone. Each will present a 15 minute set, providing a varied mix from Monteverdi's L'Incoronazione di Poppea to Britten's Lachyrmae, plus Berio, Sibelius, Colin Matthews, Liszt, Frank Martin and Khachaturian.

Full details from the Kings Place website.

Summer opera: Monteverdi in Blackheath

Trinity Laban's Summer opera this year is a contribution to the celebrations for the 450th anniversary of Claudio Monteverdi's birth. Monteverdi's L'incoronazione di Poppea is being staged by Trinity Laban at Blackheath Halls from 5 July to 8 July 2017. The opera will be directed by Harry Fehr, directing his first Monteverdi opera, and conducted by Nicholas Kramer, Trinity Laban Associate Conductor who conducted Trinity Laban's staging of Handel's Belshazzar in 2014.

The cast will be made up of current Trinity Laban students, and alumni of previous productions have included Nardus Williams (who made her Opera Holland Park debut this Summer, see my review) and Ferrier Award winner James Newby.

Full details from the Trinity Laban website.

Trinity Laban Gold Medal Showcase

There is a chance to catch some of the bright stars of Trinity College of Music and Drama as six of their most outstanding graduates from 2016 compete for the college Gold Medal. At Kings Place on Monday 23 January 2017, there will be a chance to hear Rob Griffin jazz saxophone, Jon Frank French horn, Urška Horvat cello, James Newby baritone, Benjamin Pearson composer, and Ettore Strangio piano in the Gold Medal showcase, with percussionist Colin Currie being among the judges.

Baritone James Newby has already won the 2016 Kathleen Ferrier Award (being the youngest winner ever) and performed at the Last Night of the Proms as one of the 16 soloists in RVW's Serenade to Music. Composer Benjamin Pearson has scored a number of short films, as well as working on dance pieces with Transitions Dance Company, and with Esme Callaghan and the Central School of Ballet.

Full details from the Kings Place website.

Vivid ensemble - Stephen McNeff & Olivia Fuchs' Banished at Trinity Laban

Banished, Trinity Laban Conservatoire of Music and Dance 2016 (Copyright) Lidia Crisafulli

Stephen McNeff, Olivia Fuchs Banished; Trinity Laban Conservatoire of Music and Dance, director Elaine Kidd, conductor Jessica Cottis; Blackheath Halls
Reviewed by Robert Hugill on Jun 29 2016
Star rating: 4.5
The story of the first female convicts transported to Australia showcases a fine young ensemble in this stunning new opera

Banished,
Trinity Laban Conservatoire of Music & Dance
2016 (Copyright) Lidia Crisafulli

Banished is a new opera by Stephen McNeff, with a libretto by Olivia Fuchs based on the play Female Transport by Steve Gooch. The opera was written specifically for the students at Trinity Laban Conservatoire of Music and Dance and was premiered by them at Blackheath Halls on Wednesday 30 June 2016. The production was directed by Elaine Kidd, designed by Louie Whitemore, lighting by Ben Ormerod and Jessica Cottis conducted the orchestra of students from Trinity Laban Conservatoire. The cast included Rebekah Smith as Sarah, Lucy Bray as Pitty, Katy Huntley as Winnie, Susanna Buckle as Nance, Rebecca Leggett as Charlotte, Emily Gray as Madge, Laurence Panter as the Captain, Caspar Lloyd James as the Surgeon, Tom McKenna as Sarge and Lars Fischer as Tommy. 

Stephen McNeff has had it in his mind to write an opera based on Steve Gooch's play for some time; he first bought a copy of the play 30 years ago. But it was only when doing a project with students from Trinity Laban in 2013 that the idea really germinated. The project involved the students working on the records about the first women transported to Australia in the 18th century, records which are held at the National Maritime Museum just over the road from the college. The sense of identification between the young students and the young women transported, the feeling that in another era 'this could have been me' helped to project the opera into reality. It has a large number of roles for women (some six female soloists, and a chorus of twelve women with four male soloists), one of the reasons why McNeff was interested in the piece. He points out that, unlike the majority of major roles written for women, the work has a positive end.

Perhaps the closest parallel for McNeff and Fuchs' new opera is Poulenc's Dialogues of the Carmelites, both concentrate on a group of women in harrowing circumstances, and we watch as they draw together with strength. Both operas are written in a sequence of small scenes, with an emphasis on group dynamic. But unlike Poulenc's opera, the women do not die at the end and McNeff and Fuchs have deliberately made the climax, the arrival in Sydney, uplifting and transformative.