Author Archives: Ben

Ludo 2017 Roundtable and Performance

I’m pleased to be part of a roundtable/performance session at the upcoming Ludo Musicology conference, Ludo2017, at Bath Spa University. I will be part of a roundtable session (21st April) chaired by James Saunders featuring Blake Troise (aka Protodome) and pianist Yshani Perinpanayagam. We will be talking about the ‘Piano Play: Power Up’ project and Yshani will premiere new works by Blake and me. My piece, Mr Turquoise Synth, features Yshani performing alongside a little (turquoise) 1-bit synth built by Blake.

The Loop Project

This weekend I’m directing a weekend of performances and workshops exploring musical loops at Turner Sims in Southampton. First up is a a great (free) concert on Friday lunchtime featuring Liz Kenny and Ivo Neame and a workshop on Saturday morning.

The main event is on Sunday 5 February at 7pm features leading jazz musicians Ivo Neame, Jasper Høiby and Jon Scott performing alongside University of Southampton students in  the HARTLEY Loop Orchestra. We will perform a major revision/adaption of my Loop Concerto, which was premiered by Ivo and Kent County Youth Orchestra in 2013. I’ve rescored  the work for jazz trio and large ensemble and am super excited to see what the trio bring to the piece. Rehearsals have been going well and they arrive on Friday. Katie Harding from Turner Sims interviewed me about the piece for the Turner Sims blog here.

Also on the programme is the world premiere of Andrew Fisher’s Piano Concertino, Mozart’s Piano Concerto in D (after J C Bach) in which Mozart loops a J C Bach Sonata, and Gavin Bryars’ 1972 seminal work Jesus’ Blood Never Failed Me Yet.

Tickets are available from the Turner Sims Box Office:

https://www.turnersims.co.uk/events/the-loop-project-with-ivo-neame/

The Loop Project - FINAL LOGO - 5cm wide

Ensemble Paramirabo UK tour

Canadian new music group, Ensemble Paramirabo performed my The Circus Animals’ Desertion in Turner Sims as part of the University of Southampton Music Department’s Lunchtime Concert Series on Monday. It was great to have the ensemble here and they did an awesome job on my piece. They are also playing the piece tonight at a concert at Birmingham Conservatoire.

Catchup on Juice performance on BBC Radio 3

Last Friday Juice Vocal Ensemble performed two of my Songs for Stanley live on BBC Radio 3. Composed in 2014 and dedicated to my then newly born son, Songs for Stanley is the second work I have written to celebrate the arrival of my children into the world, the first of these pieces being Lullaby for Joni for the BBC Symphony Orchestra. Songs for Stanley was commissioned by Riot Ensemble and Juice in 2014, and it is great that Juice have gone on to the perform the pieces on a number of occasions since.

You can hear the BBC broadcast on the IPlayer for a while (my piece around 34 minutes): http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b080xz8w