Just a reminder that guitarist, Tom McKinney, will be playing bet maryam (2011, for solo guitar) at 5:15pm on Wednesday October 30th in the RNCM’s Carole Nash Room, part of the 2013 New Music North West Festival. I hope some of you can pop along.
Matthew
Really excited to have been invited to spend part of this week teaching on the South West Music School’s autumn residential composer’s course in Exeter. It’s my first time working with on this particular project and I look forward to meeting all the awesome young artists involved.
I’ve subtitled the course: “The String Quartet: Inside/Out” - we’re going to be writing for and learning about string quartets, working closely with professional players who are going to be in residence throughout the course. I’ve designed the course to look particularly at the ways different composers have approached issues of idiomatic writing in their music and what that does/can come to mean. They’ll be composing. They’ll be listening. And they’re be quite a lot of crazy, exciting music. Hopefully a fun time will be had by all!
This week is actually a ludicrously busy one for me. I’ll be rushing back from Exeter to be around for the second half of the 2013 New Music North West festival, hosted by the RNCM and The University of Manchester. It was such a shame that these two exciting projects have overlapped. Unfortunately, I’m not going to be in Manchester for the Tom McKinney’s performance of bet maryam at 5:15pm on Wednesday, which I am really disappointed about - although I’m absolutely convinced that it will be stellar - but I shall be attending everything else I possibly can from the evening of the Wednesday to the close of the festival on the Saturday, including Tom Bayman’s performance of my own bet merkorios at 10pm on Thursday night.
So, on this occasion, I genuinely plead with you that you do go along in my absence and send some support to both the Toms. While I’m away, I’ll be sending out the best possible vibes I can from down in Exeter.
Hope your weeks are all equally exciting, if not more!
Matthew
Just a reminder that violinist, Emma Lloyd, will be performing my piece bet denagel (2013) at 9pm tonight in Bar Bloc, Glasgow. I hope some of you might be able to pop along.
Matthew
Just a reminder that brilliant organist, Tom Bell, will be performing my piece five visions from the book of enoch (2009) at 1pm Today in St. Lawrence Jewry, City of London. I hope some of you might be able to pop along.
Matthew
It has just been announced that organist and dear friend, Tom Bell, will be taking my five visions from the book of enoch on his upcoming tour of the USA. My piece will be featured at two of his transatlantic performances:
5:15pm on Sunday 6th October in Washington National Cathedral
1pm on Tuesday 8th October in Martin Luther College, Minnesota
Hope some of my international colleagues can make it. I’m going to try and be there myself!
Matthew
absolutely thrilled to be able to introduce you to this freshly uploaded recording of bet denagel, for Baroque violin, masterfully performed here by Emma Lloyd (collaborator and dedicatee).
We made this studio recording as part of the concert preparations; an event that itself went on well into the wee small hours of the night, expertly assisted by Emma’s brother, recording engineer, David Lloyd. The close mic setup captures all of the little cracks, glitches and nuances that are an absolutely integral part of the composition: I recommend a good pair of headphones for a really intimate listening experience.
I’ve written some words about the piece in a previous post (which, if you missed, you can view here) so I won’t duplicate too much now. That said, the performance conditions for the piece require a substantial detuning of the Baroque instrument, creating a highly unstable instrumental canvas with which the various gestural materials interact. The violin becomes an environment where the material is transformed by the intrusion of performative ‘glitches’ such as involuntary pitch-falters and substantial bow noise. The composition is also written in the form of a matrix: a interconnected grid of modules of music through with the performer can travel at will. As a result, the length of the composition in performance can highly vary. This recording is just over 20 minutes; the premiere was nearly 28.
Huge thanks are obviously due to both Emma and David for their hard work preparing and making this recording, which I am loving more and more every time I listen to it. The premiere performance (which in itself was absolutely stunningly played as well) was recorded as well and I’ll throw a copy of that in your direction as well as soon as its in a state suitable for upload.
Hope you enjoy it!
Matthew
Just a reminder that violinist, Emma Lloyd, will be premiering my piece bet denagel (2013) at 7:30pm Tonight in St. Cecilia’s Hall, Cowgate, Edinburgh. It would be great if some of you might be able to pop along.
Matthew
Finally, I’ve managed to upload the other of the two videos produced by Daryl Buckley, guitarist and artistic director of ELISION, that announce our collaboration on a new composition for electric lap-steel guitar.
In this second video, Daryl and I begin to explore the potential soundworlds the lap-steel guitar has to offer and discuss the various ways in which some of the conceptual ideas from the first video could potentially be activated in the new composition. It’s really a video about the first exploratory steps composer/performers make together prior to the pen hitting the page for the first time.
Oh, and stay tuned for the little bit after the credits at the end. Daryl said that he couldn’t resist putting in the final cut!
Hope all is good with everyone, let me know your news!
Matthew