During the Spring residency, musicians from the National Youth Orchestra of Great Britain (NYO) recorded a series of performances of the boundary-breaking music in their Open Up: Running Riot! programme. They went beyond just playing in the orchestra and took a lead in interviewing their role models and engaging the audience with creative insights into the pieces, which include Gabriela Ortiz' Téenek, Dinuk Wijeratne's Concerto for Tabla & Orchestra, as well as a riotous performance of Stravinsky's The Rite of Spring.
The results can be seen on the orchestra's YouTube channel, with a new video premiered every Wednesday evening in October. Episode 1 was released on Wednesday and features Gabriela Ortiz Téenek, including an interview with Gabriela herself, interviewed by NYO musicians, Connie and Aidan.
During June 2020, the Royal Birmingham Conservatoire (RBC) planned to premiere a new piano concerto specially commissioned by outgoing principal, Julian Lloyd-Webber, who says of the piece, "One of my last acts as Principal of Royal Birmingham Conservatoire was to devise a concert which emphasised the rich diversity that exists in classical music when you look beyond the surface. I also wanted to celebrate two wonderful talents closely associated with the conservatoire; the pianist and RBC alumna, Rebeca Omordia and the composer and RBC professor, Errollyn Wallen. The result was RBC’s first-ever commission and a new Piano Concerto by Errollyn composed especially for Rebeca"
COVID put paid to that premiere, but finally on 4 November 2022, Rebeca Omordia will premiere Errollyn Wallen's new Piano Concerto, with the Royal Birmingham Conservatoire’s Symphony Orchestra conducted by Michael Seal, at the conservatoire's Bradshaw Hall on 4 November 2022. The concert also includes Dorween Carwithen's ODTAA Overture, and music by Angela Elizabeth Slater and Leonard Bernstein.
The concerto is also being recorded by Rebeca Omordia, BBC Concert Orchestra, conductor John Andrews for release on the Resonus Classics label.
Swedish composer Lisa Streich who is Huddersfield Contemporary Music Festival 2022 composer-in-residence
The Huddersfield Contemporary Music Festival (hcmf//) has renewed its partnership with Swedish cultural institutions and the 2022 festival, which runs from 18 to 27 November 2022, will feature a wide-ranging survey of contemporary Swedish voices. Composer Lisa Streich is the festival's 2022 composer-i-residence and alongside a comprehensive survey of her music will be performances of by composer, musician and artist Ann Rosén, music by Johan Svensson and Lisa Järnegard performed by the virtuosic Heather Roche/Eva Zöllner duo, and a solo set by David Granström, as part of a day dedicated to electronic music in partnership with the ORAM Awards (a platform for innovation in sound, music, and related technologies, that is a partnership between UK-based organisations, The Radiophonic Institute, PRS Foundation, and the Daphne Oram Trust, to elevate the work and voices of women and gender minority music creators in electronic music).
The Ethiopian-born Swedish experimental singer, composer and improviser Sofia Jernberg will take the artistic lead in Freedom to Move, a three-day creative intensive workshop with five UK-based singers across genres, to be selected through an open call, which culminates in a public performance.
The Swedish programme at hcmf// is supported by STIM (Council for the Promotion of New Music) in collaboration with Stim Forward Fund, Export Music Sweden, Västra Götalandsregionen, The Swedish Composers’ Society and the Embassy of Sweden.
Farinelli: Operatic Castrato Sensation, Leo, Porpora, Hasse, Broschi; Maria Ostroukhova, Richard Energy, Les Bougies Baroques, Ian Peter Bugeja; A Queer Georgian Social Season at Burgh House Reviewed 13 October 2022
Dazzling vocal pyrotechnics, and period instruments alongside a very 21st-century drag king in this wonderful reinterpretation of Farinelli's life and times
In the LGBT lexicon, 'queer' can be defined as anyone who does not fit society's standards of gender and sexuality; so, someone might be unhappy with the specificity of labels such as lesbian, gay or bisexual but happy to identify as queer. During the 18th century the word simply meant oddity, but in all senses of the word, witness the well-known quote 'All the world is queer save thee and me, and even thou art a little queer'
So, A Queer Georgian Social Season, co-founded by Ian Peter Bugeja's period-instrument ensemble Les Bougies Baroques and Burgh House, director Mark Francis-Vasey, aims to do far more than leaven performances of 18th-century music with a bit of campery. The season looks at 18th-century moeurs and music through a modern lens, enabling us to consider the significant roles played in 18th-century Society by those who did not conform to norms, 'the wrong sort of people'. It enables us to remember or discover how 18th-century artistic society was often based around those who failed to fit in with the social conventions.
On Thursday 13 October 2022, the latest event in A Queer Georgian Social Season was Farinelli: Operatic Castrato Sensation at Burgh House, Hampstead when Ian Peter Bugeja and Les Bougies Baroques were joined by mezzo-soprano Maria Ostroukhova and drag king Richard Energy for a salon that featured music by Leonardo Leo, Niccolo Porpora, Johann Adolph Hasse and Riccardo Broschi, alongside discussion, drinks and socialising.
The Roadside Fire: Vaughan Williams Songs of Travel, Farrar, Warlock, Head; Ossian Huskinson, Matthew Fletcher; Royal Academy of Music Bicentenary Series on LINN RECORDS
Youthful energy and poetry from bass Ossian Huskinson in this fine debut recital as part of the Royal Academy of Music's Bicentenary celebrations
As part of the Royal Academy of Music's bicentenary celebrations, four recipients of the Academy’s 2020/21 Bicentenary Scholarships scheme – Julie Park, Camilla Harris, Ossian Huskinson and Charlie Lovell-Jones – will each release a new album. The first of these, on Linn Records, features bass Ossian Huskinson and pianist Matthew Fletcher in The Roadside Fire featuring RVW's Songs of Travel alongside other travel songs by Ernest Farrar, Peter Warlock and Michael Head.
Huskinson comments in his booklet note that the "recording is dedicated to Sally Bauer, my first singing teacher, who handed me Vaughan Williams’ ‘The Vagabond’ over eleven years ago, and started my very own journey". What is fascinating is that Huskinson has paired RVW's cycle with songs by younger English contemporaries exploring the same theme, including some of Ernest Farrar's Vagabond Songs including a setting of the same R.L. Stevenson poem as RVW.
We first came across Ossian Huskinson in 2019, in Tchaikovsky's Iolanta with Royal Academy Opera [see my review], since then he has been an Alvarez Young Artist at Garsington, winning the Simon Sandbach award in 2021 [see my article], and now as a Harewood Artist at English National Opera has appeared memorably in HMS Pinafore,The Cunning Little Vixen and Tosca.
This new disc reveals him to have a finely burnished and beautifully flexible bass voice, his fluidity and sense of line perhaps surprising given the deep dark tone, but he can also lighten things. His performance of RVW's Songs of Travel is notable for the wide variety of timbre that he brings to the piece, allied to remarkable dynamic range. Yes, the voice thrills in the climaxes but in the serious centre of the cycle in numbers six and seven, he can be finely intimate and gentle, even in the higher reaches. And his diction is very fine indeed; granted, I know the songs well, but the words come over all the time, allied to a sense of line that is admirable.
Royal Welsh College of Music & Drama (Photo Kirsten McTernan)
The Autumn season of concerts at the Royal Welsh College of Music and Drama in Cardiff includes the WhirlWinds Festival (14-16 October 2022), a weekend curated by Robert Plane, the college's head of woodwind, to celebrate all things woodwind, and hear an incredible range of instruments played in classical and jazz styles. The festival is opened by jazz-legend Courtney Pine in concert with pianist Zoe Rahman, with a new album, Spirituality, bringing the bass clarinet to the fore.
The woodwind quintet, The Orsino Ensemble, present two concerts Youth and Tradewinds as well as a masterclass, and they will also be popping up in the foyer with a series of Cameos performing eclectic works embracing electronics. Clarinettist Robert Plane will be performing Boulez' Dialogue de l’ombre double combining live performance with pre-recorded tracks, and Plane also joins forces with former colleagues from the BBC National Orchestra of Wales for Mozart's Gran Partita, side by side with college students.
Students and junior college performers will be giving free foyer events, including the UK premiere of Nicola LeFanu’s evocative In the Forests of the Night alongside a Led Zeppelin classic in the student saxophonists' concert Stairway to Heaven.
College students will be joining with performers from Wells Cathedral School for a lunchtime concert, and there will be a massed performance, Community Currents (16/10/2022) bringing together students from music services, as well as enthusiastic amateurs of all ages directed by Ceri Rees, director of the Royal Welsh College Big Band.
The Barber Institute at the University of Birmingham is home to a fine Art Deco concert hall and a recital series that dates back to 1945. The Autumn series of Barber Concerts launched last week with pianist Isata Kanneh-Mason and on Friday pianist Iyad Sughayer gives one of the Barber's series of free lunchtime concerts with a programme of Mozart, Sibelius, Schumann and Helen Ottaway.
The Barber Concerts have announced a new partnership with BBC Radio 3 and four concerts from the 2022/23 season will be broadcast on BBC Radio 3 beginning with the Mithras Trio on 21 October 2022 in a programme of Beethoven and Hungarian-Austrian composer Ivan Erőd (1936-2019).
Other performers this season include Sean Shibe (26/10/22) in a wide-ranging programme on classical and electric guitars, mezzo-soprano Claire Barnett-Jones and pianist Sholto Kynoch in a partnership with Oxford Lieder Festival in songs and sagas of royal figures across the ages from Judith Weir's King Harald's Saga to Schubert, whilst master sarod players Amaan Ali Bangash and Ayaan Ali Bangash join violinist Jennifer Pike to share the traditions of Indian and Western music, finding common ground in ragas and medieval modes (30/11/22)
BEAST is Birmingham ElectroAcoustic Sound Theatre and on 29 October it welcomes Iranian electronics composer and performer, Hadi Bastini, and former University of Birmingham resident artist, Loula Yorke. And the University Chorus, conductor Julian Wilkins will be performing Will Todd's Mass in Blue (26/11/22)
There are two lecture recitals this season, first is pianist Kenneth Hamilton talks about the demonic and divine in Romantic music (28/11/22) with music by Busoni, Chopin and Liszt. Hamilton's second lecture-recital is in January 2023. American pianist and musicologist Clipper Erickson presents the music of Canadian-American composer Nathaniel Dett (1882-1943), followed by a piano masterclass (2/12/22).
Full details from the University of Birmingham website.
Metanoia - Ensemble K & Simone Menezes at Milan Cathedral (Photo Maxime Patrick Hans Chatillon)
In Christian theology, metanoia is commonly understood as "a transformative change of heart, especially a spiritual conversion". But what does it mean in a musical context? The conductor Simone Menezes has recently produced a film, Metanoia, with her Ensemble K and Emmy-winning film director Paul Smaczny, described as a celebration of the power of beauty which invites the viewer to contemplate the question of transcendence.
When I ask what the film is about, Simone laughs and says that the subject was so complicated that she had to make a film about it to answer the question. The project simply began as a concert at Milan Cathedral where she wanted to bring an element of introspection and contemplation to the programme. The music was to include Puccini's Messa di Gloria, the Sarabande from Bach's Violin Partita No. 1 in B minor and Villa Lobos' Prelude from Bachianas Brasileiros No. 4, also in B minor. But things happened, COVID happened, the dates changed. Also, she became interested in the question of what do some composers have, that they can make magic. What happens in music that makes it go beyond intellect and makes something transcendent.
It was this issue of thinking about transcendence which led to the film, which is set in Italy where the Renaissance was created. She wanted to open the discussion to include other arts and philosophy, to ask the question what is transcendence in both art and music. In order to give the concert in Milan Cathedral, the authorities had wanted them to perform just sacred music, which led to the question what was sacred music? But it helped that metanoia, which Simone translates as beyond intellect, a way of seeing the world beyond the intellect, also has the theological meaning described above.
Metanoia - Ensemble K & Simone Menezes at Milan Cathedral (Photo Maxime Patrick Hans Chatillon)
For the film, they included the music from the concert, Puccini, Bach and Villa Lobos, and alongside put Arvo Pärt's In Spe. Simone also wanted to include an element of dance and so included Borodin's Polovtsian Dances which Ensemble K performed on their Accents disc [see my review]. There was also a small homage to Ennio Morricone, the film composer who died whilst the film was being planned.
In the film, each piece of music is performed in a different place, and each has an associated philosophical discussion, and Simone describes it as a series of tableaux. Among those appearing in the film are the conductor Antonio Pappano, the painter Michael Triegel, a Jesuit father, Father Alessandro, the director of the Michelangelo Foundation, Alberto Cavalli and the choreographer Valerio Longo,
By including a philosophical element, the intention was to replace a musicological/historical approach to the music with a philosophical one. She also wanted to bring music into a broader context, alongside other arts. The film tries to examine what is special about art and music, but in a non-academic way using simple language. It asks what is essential and tries to show that art is essential.
The film's director, Paul Smaczny is known for his musical films include a documentary about Daniel Barenboim and the first film about El Sistema. Simone says that Smaczny has a wonderful team behind him, and she feels that the photography in the film is a work of art in itself.
This month, Simone and Ensemble K will be performing their Metanoia programme in London, for an invited audience and looking ahead there are concerts in Paris and USA. She wants the film to have a life, and it will be on Medici TV and is available on Vimeo on demand, you can also buy the DVD or Blu-ray (on Accentus) whilst the associated CD from Accentus has also developed a life of its own.
Simone is also still working on her Amazon project with photographer Sebastiao Selgado (based around Villa Lobos' Floresta do Amazonas and Philip Glass' Aguas da Amazonas) with concerts planned in Madrid, Zurich and Brussels. And with Ensemble K, she is just finishing a project based around Holst's The Planets orchestrated by George Morton.
London-based Ukrainian baritone Yuriy Yurchuk has organised a fundraising concert for the Ukraine, to take place on Sunday 16 October 2022 at Omnibus Theatre, Clapham Common, London. Yurchuk will be joined by Armenian soprano Anush Hovhannisyan and pianist Edward Batting for a programme of arias. Tickets are £25 and this will go to The Ukrainian Institute London which champions Ukrainian culture, going beyond the headlines to shape the conversation about Ukraine.
Since the launch of Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, The Ukrainian Institute London has been working tirelessly to give Ukraine a reliable voice in UK and world media, to respond to a constant stream of enquiries and to maintain our events programme, educational courses, cultural initiatives and support for displaced Ukrainians. The Ukrainian Institute London is an independent charity, and relies on donations to keep up their work
Yuriy Yurchuk has just finished performing the role of Giorgio Germont in Northern Ireland Opera's critically acclaimed new production of Verdi's La Traviata at the Grand Opera House in Belfast. He is also about to go to Belgium to perform in the lead role in Tchaikovsky's Eugene Onegin at La Monnaie in Brussels. We caught Anush Hovhannisyan this summer as Tatyana in Eugene Onegin at Opera Holland Park [see my review]
Full information from the Omnibus Theatre's website.
The conductor Jonathan Bloxham takes up a new role this month as London Mozart Players' conductor-in-residence and artistic advisor. His next appearance on the podium with the orchestra is in February 2023 when he will be conducting a programme of Bloch and Mendelssohn at Fairfield Halls (where the orchestra is resident) with cellist Sheku Kanneh-Mason, and the concert will include on-stage conversation between Bloxham and Kanneh-Mason discussing the works being performed.
Bloxham made his debut with the orchestra in November 2019 at Kings Place with a programme of Mozart, Schubert and a new commission. Since then, his projects with the orchestra have included Beethoven and Mendelssohn symphonies, Shostakovich’s Cello Concerto No.2 with Sheku Kanneh-Mason, Glazunov with saxophonist Jess Gillam and Tchaikovsky with the orchestra's young artist in residence, pianist Leia Zhu.
A former cellist (he made his concerto debut at the Berlin Philharmonie in 2012), Bloxham was assistant conductor with the CBSO from 2016-2018. Other engagements this season include invitations back to Salzburg, Munich, Residentie Orkest and Royal Liverpool Philharmonic. He made his Glyndebourne debut in 2021 with Verdi's Luisa Miller. Bloxham is the founder of the Northern Chords Festival based in Newcastle [see my article about its 2022 season]
Further details about London Mozart Players' season from their website.
Michael Tippett: The Midsummer Marriage; Robert Murray, Rachel Nicholls, Toby Spence, Jennifer France, Ashley Riches, Susan Bickley, Joshua Bloom, London Philharmonic Choir, ENO Choir, London Philharmonic Orchestra, Edward Gardner; LPO Reviewed 10/10/2022 (★★★★★)
Gardner's 2021 concert performance transferred to disc in a vibrant and vividly realised performance that places the orchestra at the ecstatic centre of Tippett's opera
The post-war period was a remarkable one for British opera, there was Britten's Peter Grimes, Walton's Troilus and Cressida, and Tippett's The Midsummer Marriage along with many other that are not so well remembered, including Bliss' The Olympians with a libretto by J.B. Priestly that in some ways intersects with Tippet's opera.
Premiered nearly ten years after Peter Grimes, Tippett's first opera has never quite achieved the popularity or ubiquity of Britten's. It is a very different work, arguably more complex both in terms of its writing and its subject matter, but it has its adherents and has slowly gained ground.
The work's premiere is a thing of legend but listening to the live recording of the 1955 performance with Richard Lewis and Joan Sutherland, conducted by John Pritchard, there is plenty to enjoy. The work had to wait until 1970 for its first studio recording, with Alberto Remedios and Joan Carlyle, conducted by Colin Davis; a recording that arose out of Covent Garden's new 1968 production of the opera. Since then, there has been little in the way of complete recording and there does not seem to be DVD currently available.
In his illuminating booklet article, Oliver Soden talks about how the opera owed its genesis not so much to post-war Britain as to the immediate pre-war years, notably the symbolic verse dramas of T.S. Eliot (whom Tippett asked to write the libretto of A Child of our Time) and Christopher Fry, which meant that the opera, when finally produced in 1955, seemed somewhat out of time. It is indeed at odds with the naturalism of Britten's output of the period.
The Spanish ensemble El Gran Teatro del Mundo specializes in the performance of music from the 17th and 18th century. Named after the Baroque mystery play of the same name from 1655 by the Spanish poet Pedro Calderón de la Barca, the idea of single protagonists as representatives of the existential human conditions in the theatrum mundi also represents the aesthetic concept of the ensemble. Recent winners of the Diapason d’Or for their first album Die Lullisten, the ensemble won the Cambridge Early Music Prize at the York Early Music International Young Artists Competition in 2019.
El Gran Teatro del Mundo is now about to embark on its first UK tour from 14 to 20 November 2022. Promoted by the National Centre for Early Music and supported by the Creative Europe EEEmerging+ programme and The Ministry of Culture of Spain through the (INAEM), The National Institute for Performing Arts and Music, the tour will take the ensemble to St John’s Smith Square, London (14/11/2022); Turner Sims Concert Hall, University of Southampton (15/11/2022); Cambridge Early Music (16/11/2022), Lakeside Arts, Nottingham (17/11/2022); St George’s Bristol (18/11/2022); National Centre for Early Music (20/11/2022)
For the tour, the six-piece ensemble (violin, recorders, oboe, cello, archlute, harpsichord) will celebrate the musical genius of Vivaldi, Telemann and Fasch in a programme entitled The Art of Conversation.
BBC Young Musicians finalists - Ethan Loch, Jaren Ziegler, Sofía Patterson-Gutiérrez, Jordan Ashman, Sasha Canter at Bridgewater Hall (Photo Dan Prince/BBC)
The winner of this year's BBC Young Musician was announced last night as being 18-year-old percussionist Jordan Ashman from Cambridgeshire. Ashman's winning performance was of American composer Jennifer Higdon’s Percussion Concerto, accompanied by the BBC Philharmonic conducted by Mark Wigglesworth. Higdon's concerto was written in 2005 for percussionist Colin Currie and scored for a mix of pitched and non-pitched instruments [read more about Currie's thoughts on the concerto in my 2021 interview].
Jordan Ashman & BBC Philharmonic Orchestra (Photo Dan Prince/BBC)
The BBC Young Musician 2022 final was filmed on Thursday 29 September at Manchester’s Bridgewater Hall, and it also featured performances by the other four 2022 BBC Young Musician Category Winners:
19-year-old trumpeter Sasha Canter, a Royal Academy of Music student from Oxfordshire
18-year-old pianist Ethan Loch from Glasgow, currently studying at the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland
17-year-old flautist Sofía Patterson-Gutiérrez from Stockport, in her final year at Chetham’s School of Music
viola player Jaren Ziegler, also 17, from London, a Junior Royal Academy of Music student and A Level student at University College School
Jordan began playing the drum kit when he was 7 and soon expanded into percussion. He is currently studying at the Royal Birmingham Conservatoire. He has played with the National Children’s Orchestra, National Youth Orchestra and the National Youth Brass Band. On Jordan’s performance at the Grand Final, Anna Lapwood (a member of the jury) said: "Jordan Ashman’s performance started not with loud, flashy playing, but with exquisite, gentle beauty. He held the entire room throughout that delicate opening and kept that magic through his whole performance"
The TV broadcast of the finale is available on BBC iPlayer.
Hollie Harding has been Associate Head of Composition (UG) at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama since 2020. She was 2017 Composer in Residence with CoMA, subsequently led workshops on their Summer School in Orkney, and had pieces performed at their 2018 and 2020 Festivals of Contemporary Music for All. Her 2019 piece, Melting, Shifting, Liquid World was the first composition to incorporate the use of open-ear, bone-conduction headsets alongside live acoustic and amplified instruments to create a multi-layered sonic environment for the audience to move around and within.
What was scattered was completed during what the composer calls a difficult period of lockdown, she sees the work having an underlying sense of longing and searching colouring the piece, as it coloured the world around me at the time.
Handel: Tamerlano - Jorge Navarro Colorado, James Hall - English Touring Opera (Richard Hubert Smith)
Handel: Tamerlano; Jorge Navarro-Colorado, Ellie Laugharne, Rodrigo Sosa Dal Pozzo, James Hall, April Koyejo-Audiger, director James Conway, conductor Jonathan Peter Kenny; English Touring Opera at Hackney Empire Reviewed 8 October 2022 (★★★★★)
A darkly serious, intense account of one of Handel's finest operas, showcasing some superbly dramatic and highly musical performances
Rebecca van Beeck's set was a semi-abstract construction of grills and gantries, which set off the tiny cage in which Jorge Navarro Colorado's Bajazet was confined. Costumes were loosely ancient inspired modern, this wasn't taking place in a particular place, yet there was clear differentiation between the various groups. It wasn't a glitzy production; the big set pieces had no extraneous theatrical dazzle and there were no supers. Tamerlano's court was primitive and violent, drama was dark and concentrated, with emphasis on the characters' interaction and their emotional journeys.
Handel: Tamerlano - April Koyejo-Audiger, Ellie Laugharne, Rodrigo Sosa Dal Pozzo, Jorge Navarro Colorado, James Hall - English Touring Opera (Richard Hubert Smith)
Handel: Agrippina - English Touring Opera (Photo Richard Hubert Smith)
Handel: Agrippina; Paula Sides, Edward Hawkins, Esme Bronwen-Smith, Tim Morgan, Hilary Cronin, Matt Paine, Jerome Knox, Edward Jowle, director James Conway/Bradley Travis, conductor Leo Duarte; English Touring Opera at Hackney Empire Reviewed 7 October 2022, (★★★★½)
A wonderful vivid account of Handel's early anti-heroic satirical opera with a fine cast having the time of their lives and vibrant playing in the pit
English Touring Opera's Handel season at Hackney Empire continues with a revival of Handel's Agrippina (seen 7 October). James Conway's production was revived by Bradley Travis with Paula Sides in the title role, Edward Hawkins as Claudio, Esme Bronwen-Smith as Nerone, Tim Morgan as Ottone, Hilary Cronin as Poppea, Matt Paine as Narciso, Jerome Knox as Pallante and Edward Jowle as Lesbo. Leo Duarte conducted the Old Street Band. Designs were by Samal Blak, revived by Rebecca van Beeck, lighting was by Tim van't Hof. The opera was sung in a performing edition by Peter Jones, in an English translation by James Conway.
Premiered in Venice in 1709, Agrippina uses one of the best librettos that Handel ever set (by Cardinal Vincenzo Grimani), but the opera is very different to the great sequence of Italian operas that Handel would write for London. Agrippina is pacier, more risque and funnier, there are moments that approach farce and the drama has little of the contorted feel of the London operas. Here there is a narrative flow to the scenes that feels more modern. The London operas are about emotional situations, with plenty of space in the arias, whereas Agrippina is about character and story.
Handel: Agrippina - Paula Sides, Jerome Knox, Esme Bronwen-Smith, Matt Paine - English Touring Opera (Photo Richard Hubert Smith)
Karen Grylls is the founder and conductor of Voices NZ (Voices New Zealand Chamber Choir), one of the major chamber choirs in New Zealand. The choir's range is wide, in the past they have collaborated with Dame Kiri Te Kanawa and with the Kings Singers whilst when we spoke, they had just been working with composer Eric Whitacre on his Sacred Veil. Other major recent projects include Voices Love Opera, an event that had to be abandoned due to COVID but which saw the group performing operatic repertoire including music from Nico Muhly's Two Boys.
The choir also engages extensively with New Zealand composers, in 2017 they performed Passio by the late Jack Body (1944-2015), in an immersive staging of a work inspired by 16th century chant and involving six New Zealand composers. Since 2000, the choir has also been extending its engagement with Māori composers and Māori music. In 2014 they performed Requiem for the Fallen [a work which was subsequently recorded] created by composer Ross Harris, poet laureate Vincent O’Sullivan and taonga pūoro (Māori traditional instruments) specialist Horomona Horo to commemorate the centenary of World War I, for an ensemble that placed Māori instruments alongside the singers.
Karen studied in New Zealand and then the USA. Back in New Zealand she was asked to audition for the role of conductor of the New Zealand Youth Choir which had been founded in 1979 by Peter Godfrey and Guy Janson. She then has spent 22 years at the helm of the New Zealand Youth Choir and the New Zealand Secondary Students Choir. By the time she had worked through several iterations of students in these ensembles, she realised that there was no suitable national ensemble for the young singers to move on to, that they needed a place with a professional level of music making.
Guitarist Sergio Sorrentino has collaborated with composer Gavin Bryars on a new disc, Gavin Bryars: Electric Guitar Works on the Suoni Possibili label, which includes a selection of works for electric guitar (multiple guitars and guitar and piano) by Gavin Bryars, performed by Bryars himself together with Sergio Sorrentino (also producer of the release).
The new album includes the world premiere recording of the unedited early work Catalogue originally written by Bryars for Derek Bailey on 1965 and recorded live by Gavin and Sergio, and Burroughs II (2014) for multiple guitars recorded in studio by Sorrentino. The album also includes a new version of The Squirrel and the Ricketty-Racketty Bridge (1971), recorded live by Bryars and Sorrentino: the previous version of this was recorded by Bryars together with Brian Eno, Derek Bailey and Fred Frith released on Obscure Records in the Seventies.
The Vache Baroque Festival (VBF) is celebrating 300 years since Bach's Well Tempered Clavier (Book 1) and the Anna Magdalena Notebook with Looking Bach, at gala concert at Conway Hall on 19 November 2022. Performers include pianist Libby Burgess, harpsichordist and melodica player David Gordon, the David Gordon jazz trio, sound artist Dan Samsa, and a consort of Vache Baroque singers and players.
At the gala, young people will be performing side-by-side with leading professionals and VBF is proud to be showcasing at this event their Children’s Choir and pianists from their masterclass weekend. the Children's Choir builds on the success of the inaugural choir course in 2021, children aged 8 - 15 resident in Buckinghamshire will enjoy five days of workshops and rehearsals led by Suzzie Vango, Shivani Rattan, and Jonathan Darbourne. And for the Piano Masterclass Weekend, pianists aged 15 – 18 will take part in a masterclass residency weekend at The Vache exploring the music of J. S. Bach’s The Well-Tempered Clavier and Notebooks for Anna Magdalena led by pianist Libby Burgess)
Doors open at 7.30pm with the performance at 8.15pm, and guests are encouraged to arrive early to explore VBF's sound and art installations, as well as food and drink on offer!
The London Sinfonietta's 2022/23 season mixes modern masterpieces with innovative new work from contemporary classical composers. The ensemble will be at the centre of Saturday's Xenakis at 100 event at the Southbank Centre (8/10/2022) with their concert Xenakis: Architect of Sound. Other modern masters being explored in the season include Toru Takemitsu with Takemitsu: Turning Points at Kings Place (27/11/2022) exploring the Japanese composer's influences and legacy. The concert will be preceded by the Couch To Concert podcast, hosted by Cerys Matthews and Paul Morley, a three-part series to train new audiences to attend their first contemporary classical concert.
On 5 March 2023 at the Queen Elizabeth Hall, the ensemble pays tribute to one of its longest-standing collaborators with Sir Harrison Birtwistle: a tribute, then on 6 April 2023 at the Royal Festival Hall they celebrate New York minimalism with Steve Reich's Reich/Richter alongside music by Julia Wolfe, Julius Eastmann (1940-1990) and Mira Calix.
Other events include the premiere of a new work by Lithuanian composer Juste Janulyte which echoes a sleeping human body and all the regular but not synchronised sounds within, alongside music by composers from Sweden, USA, UK and Italy, Lisa Streich, Tyshawn Sorey, Jack Sheen, and Salvatore Sciarrino (Sleeping Patterns, 2/12/2022), and there is a collaboration with the EFG London Jazz Festival at the Purcell Room (18/11/2022). More composite programmes include Fireworks (25/5/2023 at Queen Elizabeth Hall), a showcase of virtuosity from different musical cultures including Dai Fujikura's Shamisen Concerto and music by Tania Leon, Augusta Read Thomas and Gyorgy Ligeti, and Turning Points: Sound Unwrapped (24/6/2023 at Kings Place) which explores electro-acoustic music.
Full details from the London Sinfonietta's website
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