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Colloquium Presentation at Harvard

Harvard ‘Veritas’ Crest

I have re­cently joined the PhD pro­gramme at Har­vard Uni­ver­sity to study with Chaya Cz­er­nowin and Hans Tutschku, which is going to take up a sub­stan­tial chunk of my life for the next six or so years.

Through­out the year the Har­vard Group for New Music or­gan­ises a se­ries of pre­sen­ta­tions by cur­rent stu­dents, plus oc­ca­sional guests, to open up op­por­tu­ni­ties for dis­cus­sion and group cri­tique. In order to in­tro­duce my­self to the com­mu­nity, I am pre­sent­ing today at 12pm and will talk about and play my re­cent music, and dis­cuss prob­lems I am cur­rently fac­ing in my work.

Icebloom première in New York

Longleash Trio (L-R: Pala Garcia, John Popham, Renate Rohlfing)

On Thurs­day, 12 Sep­tem­ber, the New York-based string trio Lon­gleash are ap­pear­ing at Opera Amer­ica with a pro­gramme that will in­clude the première of my Ice­bloom along­side works by Haydn, Schu­bert, Reiko Füting, Younghi Pagh-Paan and Beat Fur­rer. Maybe see you there!

Below you can hear them in the Al­le­gro mod­er­ato from Haydn’s Trio in E Major and a short ex­cerpt of Ice­bloom as played in a work­shop in Feb­ru­ary by the Cu­ri­ous Cham­ber Play­ers.

still point at Wigmore Hall

Orfea Duo: The Mobile Project

On Wednes­day, 4 Sep­tem­ber, the Orfea Duo — Mea Wade (oboe) & Olivia Jageurs (harp) — will pre­sent a cu­ri­ous pro­gramme at Lon­don’s Wig­more Hall built around Heinz Hol­liger’s 1962 open-form work Mo­bile. This mod­u­lar and re­con­fig­urable work comes in 12 bits and it will be pre­sented in­ter­min­gled with 12 new match­ing minia­tures, in­clud­ing my (tiny) still point.

The con­cert is pri­vate, but I have two in­vi­ta­tions to give away. Leave me a tweet @swith­in­bank or a com­ment below, and on Mon­day evening I’ll pick some­one at ran­dom to go along.

March Music: Stockholm & Brussels

Caravaggio’s Incredulity of St Thomas

I’m lucky enough to be fin­ish­ing this month with two con­certs. On 22 March, the Cu­ri­ous Cham­ber Play­ers will per­form The In­credulity of St Thomas as part of Samtida Musik’s Vårflod Fes­ti­val in Stock­holm. The rest of the pro­gramme fea­tures re­cent works by Swedish com­posers and the con­cert is fol­lowed by a recital given by Garth Knox.

List­ings: Vårflod Fes­ti­val

soundinitiative

Two days later, soun­dini­tia­tive will give their sec­ond per­for­mance of my most re­cent piece, All that is solid melts into air, at the What’s Next Fes­ti­val in Brus­sels. The con­cert will also in­clude the sec­ond per­for­mance of Joanna Bailie’s Ar­ti­fi­cial En­vi­ron­ment Nos. 9a–d and Re­becca Saun­ders’s Molly’s Song #3 — shades of crim­son, which they played with in­ten­sity and sub­tlety in Feb­ru­ary, so don’t miss it!

List­ings: Ars Mu­sica | soun­dini­tia­tive

Icebloom in Graz

snowing

This morn­ing, Stock­holm’s Cu­ri­ous Cham­ber Play­ers will read my minia­ture Ice­bloom, a piano trio with music box draw­ing on Schu­bert’s Win­ter­reise, as part of the Im­puls Acad­emy in Graz, Aus­tria. While here, I am also en­joy­ing lec­tures on and per­for­mances of new music, meet­ing plenty of fel­low com­posers and per­form­ers, and tak­ing lessons with Georges Aperghis, Chaya Cz­er­nowin and Georg Friedrich Haas. I am grate­ful for the schol­ar­ship from Fon­da­tion Roy­au­mont which is en­abling this trip.

Up­date, 9/3: Here’s an ex­tract of Ice­bloom recorded in the read­ing ses­sion last month:

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