Directing Stravinsky’s Soldier’s Tale earlier this month was a big highlight of my conducting career. Awesome music of course, brilliant musicians (including a number of great friends it was a delight to work with again), great cast and an awesome creative team. Hope we can do more PACS soon! Here are a couple of snaps from rehearsals from the project…
I’m really excited to be musical director and conductor for the Performing Arts Collaboration South production of Stravinsky’s Soldier’s Tale. Lovely Turner Sims, great lineup of musicians, some wonderful actors and an awesome dancer. Should be pretty wonderful. Tickets: https://www.turnersims.co.uk/events/the-soldiers-tale/
Was really great to have the London Sinfonietta down to visit Southampton last week to undertake the recording of my newest piece A-Listers for piano and electronics. Clíodna Shanahan was in the Steinway recording hot seat and was fantastic to work with her and Adam Flynn from the Sinfonietta who was engineering. My collaborator on this London Sinfonietta Community Commission, artist Alys Scott-Hawkins, will work with the recording, animation and archive footage to make a film for release later this year or early in 2022. Both the music and film interpret the story of Anil Sood, who is well-known in Southampton for running a dance music record shop and drum’n’bass events in the 1990s and 2000s.
I was in Folkestone a few weeks ago for the first day of performances of Sam Belinfante’s great new piece for Folkestone Triennial, On the Circulation of Blood. Was awesome to hear it all come together and really proud to have played just a small part. Here is a film about the project (my piece for the project appears later in the film).
Was really great to speak to my mate and colleague Matthew Shlomowitz for his great podcast (made with Håkon Stene) Soundmaking. We spoke about my theorbo piece for Liz Kenny, Extending from the Inside and podcast finishes with the Linn recording of the piece from her CD Ars Longa. You can hear it on Soundcloud, Spotify and Apple Platforms!
I was super pleased to be invited by Sam Belinfante, along with five other brilliant composers – Sarah Dacey, Neil Luck, Elaine Mitchener, Bernhard Schimpelsberger and Josephine Stephenson – to contribute a new piece to his Folkestone Triennial commission, On the Circulation of Blood. My contribution is called Beacons and features visual heartbeat click tracks, which I created with the help of Professor David Simpson from the University of Southampton.
Sam’s work is an itinerant, multimedia installation and performance work as part of ‘The Plot’, the fifth edition of Creative Folkestone Triennial. Initially unfolding at The Old Drying Grounds, adjacent to St Peter’s School in Folkestone, the work will then move to Market Place in central Folkestone before making its final journey to the Lower Leas Amphitheatre. At the heart of the project is a series of monumental, outdoor installations constructed from specially adapted theatrical apparatuses and bespoke fabric netting. It’s going to be an amazing thing.
There are multiple performances, details available on Creative Folkestone’s website.
I first worked with Sam on a project back in 2005, where he tied me up and puppeteered me when I was conducting… video documentation available here!
I’m delighted to be writing a new piece for toy piano and synth for New York based pianist Dorothy Chan. Blake Troise (aka Protodome) is creating a new synth for me to write for. More soon!
Super delighted Mr. Turquoise Synth was selected by Score Follower for their Fall 2020 #FollowMyScore call for works. The piece features the piano skills of Yshani Perinpanayagam and the synth building skills of Blake Troise (aka Protodome).
In November Rachel Warr and I did a cool outreach project around Pythagoras’ Tool Kit for the University of Southampton’s Hands on Humanities Day. You can watch the broadcast about the project and find out more at the special project Padlet.
The amazing Duncan Honeybourne recorded some of his Contemporary Soundbite commissions in July and is released on various channels and on a great new CD by Prima Facie today. The recording of my ‘From the Sublime to the Ridiculous’ sounds absolutely fantastic.
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