It's been a busy few weeks but has somehow felt less eventful than for a while, but that might say more about my state of mind than anything else.
The Brighton Guitar Quartet played our final couple of public performances of the year. In early September we played an afternoon show at Ellis Gordon Court in Newhaven, celebrating the 60th anniversary of Housing 21. We turned in a couple of sets featuring pieces we've rolled out over the year and revived a few from previous seasons, and it seemed to go down pretty well. Thanks to Housing 21 for asking us along (and happy birthday!) and to Ruairi for organising it all.
A couple of weeks later we played in the opening concert of Sussex Musicians Club 2024/25 season, alongside the amazing soprano Daria Robertson and pianist Kevin Allen, who treated us to Schoenberg's Op.23 - quite the season opener! We played Olga Amelkina-Vera's Ninochka, Phillip Houghton's Opals suite (our best performance of the piece so far, IMO - it certainly seemed to be especially well received) and my own arrangement of Bach's Sheep May Safely Graze.
So that's us done for the year, but we're already at work on material for next year, getting our teeth stuck into a fairly large-scale work by Vincent Lindsey-Clarke and my arrangement of John Barry's You Only Live Twice. Anyway, I just want to take this opportunity to thank James, Olivier and Ruairi for their commitment and great company this year, and of course thanks to our director Gregg Isaacson for all his guidance, insight and patience with us. Here's to 2025!
While I'm on the subject of classical guitar, I'm looking forward to the third instalment of Guitars By The Sea in a couple of weekends' time. Put on by Jon Rattenbury and Steve Gordon, the weekend is a kind of festival-come-workshop, and this year feaures Mark Eden of the brilliant Eden Stell Duo as guest workshop leader. The dazzling young guitarist Kianush Robeson will be giving a concert on the Saturday night, which you should get along to if you can! I'm especially excited to be giving my duet The Aleph its first live outing in performance with the excellent Shaun Bullard.
Right then, away from the guitar...
Saturday just gone I was delighted to have my first "formally" composed piano piece, Johnson & Johnson premiered in a New Music Brighton concert given by the fantastic Karen Kingsley at the Friends Meeting House here in Brighton. The concert featured 15 pieces by NMB composers, drawing on a massive array of influences including Baroque fugue (John Petley), Chopin (Lewis Dixon-Szul) and jazz (Lluís Nadal). Perhaps the most impressive entry, for obvious reasons, was Theme from an Unmade Film, by the 12-year-old (!) Ellery Mitchell. Congratulations - and thanks - to Karen for her Herculean work in putting the programme together. Thanks also to my friends Helen, Allan, Mel, Nick, Nigel and Marc (and of course Sarah) for coming along and supporting me, and thanks to the inestimable Peter Copley for his help in knocking the piece into shape (and making it vaguely playable). The concert was recorded, so once the performance of my piece is available I'll stick it up on Soundcloud. In the meantime, here's a MIDI rendition, complete with score.
As I mentioned last month, I'm now at work on another piano piece for possible inclusion in another NMB concert to be given by the brilliant pianist and composer Nathan Williamson in the spring. It's a very different sound world to J&J, something of a hymn, dedicated to Joe, Frank and Lily in commemoration of their terrible shared year, with love and admiration at how much they've supported each other. I hope to have the piece finished over the next few weeks, but in the spirit of sharing work in progress, here's the latest draft:
I haven't made it along to much live music over the last few weeks, but what I've seen/heard has been fantastic. Last weekend my good friend and Angel Academe colleague John Souter took me along to the Troxy in East London to see Godspeed You! Black Emperor's unexpected return to touring. I've seen Godspeed many times over the last two decades, but this was the most assured performance I've ever seen them give. As I pointed out on Twitter, the bloke in front of me in the queue to get in was wearing a Black Flag t-shirt, while I was wearing a Yes t-shirt, which I think sums things up nicely. If you don't believe me, check this:
Or as some wag on Twitter put it:
At the other end of the musical spectrum, Sarah and I (and Olivier!) went along to the first concert in the string orchestra Musicians of All Saints' 2024/25 season. The concert featured Handel and Mendelssohn alongside new work by Geoffrey Alvarez and NMB's Peter Owen and was brilliantly conducted by Maria Copley. Their next concert is November 9th, again at the All Saints Centre in Lewes. The concert will include two premieres of work by Peta Crompton and Guy Richardson. You can buy tickets here - and please do, these concerts are always a treat and we should support grassroots classical music-making of this quality.
Finally, my Brighton buddy and former Radio 3 colleague to me along to the Albert Hall for Prom 67, with the BBCSO conducted by Tarmo Peltokoski playing Vaughan Williams and Shostakovich. The highlight, though, was Patricia Kopatchinskaja performing Schoenberg's Violin Concerto; a truly mesmerising performance. Thanks to Brian for taking me along; as I write there are 6 days left to hear the prom on BBC Sounds.
I mentioned last month that my son Frank has got his first show of the year lined up for next week at the Waiting Room in Stoke Newington. I'm gutted not to be able to make the gig, but please get along if you can. Tickets are available here.
A highlight of the last month was attending a day-long conference at Goldsmiths College co-hosted by Goldsmiths and the University of Surrey: More Sounds, More Personalities, British Post-Minimalism, 1979-1997. The day had been curated by composers Ian Gardiner and Tom Armstrong (one of the tutors on my Master's programme) and featured a series of fascinating - and wide-ranging - presentations looking at the turn British art music took in the 80s as it embraced pop aesthetics and electric instrumentation. Well, that and much more besides. Several of the papers are available as YouTube videos or blog posts; links to them can be found on the MSMP page on Ian Gardiner's website.
One name that cropped up a lot over the course of the day was, not unreasonably, that of Gavin Bryars. As it happens, at the event, I ran into composer David Lancaster whom I first met at a Gavin Bryars workshop in the French Pyrenees last summer. It was great to catch up with both him, and of course with Tom.
In the meantime, my record-buying habit, if not exactly out of control, is certainly coming along nicely ;-)
Some of that lot features in this Spotify playlist of highlights from my listening over the last three months, with hat tips, as ever, to Ted Gioia, Stuart Maconie's Freak Zone and three Radio 3 shows in particular: the New Music Show, Record Review and Late Junction. The playlist also features more recent jazz than normal, as a result of reading Nate Chinen's Playing Changes - Jazz for the New Century, recommended to me by Paul Dallaway. It's an informative, if occasionally frustrating read, and if I get the chance I'll write a little bit more about it here.
And now for a little bit of reading/listening/watching, with the usual caveat that some of this will not jive with everyone's interests or inclinations!
Milton Mermikides: Magical Mystery Tour - The Invention of The Beatles
Discogs: 3 Trends That Prove CDs are Making a Comeback
Florence Read interviews Geoff Dyer
Improvising Life and Music with Jazz Legend Pat Metheny
Sam Harris interviews Richard Dawkins about his new book, The Genetic Code of the Dead
Ted Gioia: What's Happening to Entertainment?
And again: The Decline of the Novel - it's worse than you think
Nina Welsch: The nurseryfication of culture
Radio 3's The Sound of Cinema: John Barry - the music of James Bond
David Elstein: The near-invisibility of the Proms on BBC TV is a symptom of the collapse of public service broadcasting in Britain
Frank Furedi: We’re sending far too many people to university
Alexandra Wilson - The inexorable decline of arts education and the rise of knee-jerk politics and managerialism
Marilyn Simon: Why does hot girl summer have to end?
Matthew Crawford: Individualism creates mass men, not individuals
The Atlantic: The Elite College Students Who Can't Read Books
Robin Ashenden: The 1990s were Britain’s sunset years
Sam Buntz: Yuval Noah Harari has written another long book with little wisdom
Oh, and some recent non-screen-based reading!
Finally, from the DGMFS, er, archive... Abyssal Labs is a project I began in 2012 and abandoned in 2014, a series of dark ambient soundscapes (or whatever) originally conceived to accompany yoga and other contemplative practices. I don't think it really achieved its aims, but in revisiting the music I figured it stood up on its own terms and last year revived the series with Ghosts of the Kemptown Branchline. Anyway, back in 2012 I put together a series of short playlists showcasing some of the music that inspired the series, and I've recently combined them into one set, which runs to a fairly mammoth 28+ hours. So enjoy!
That's it for now. As ever, thanks to Sarah for her endless love, patience and support.
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