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.
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.
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
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
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:
On Sunday 3 February, soundinitiative will give the first performance of All that is solid melts into air at the Collège Franco-Britannique (MÉTRO Cité Universitaire) in Paris.
The concert will also include a new version of my All the time that you have what we have. / All the time that you have. for mezzo-soprano and two violas, the premiere of Joanna Bailie’s Artificial Environment Nos. 9a-d, Rebecca Saunders’s Molly’s Song #3 — shades of crimson and Jonathan Harvey’s Tombeau de Messiaen. Hope to see you there!
Listings: Facebook | soundinitiative | Resonanta