My friend has just released a new EP with his band From the Alpine, Swim – post hardcore awesomeness. They’re offering a free download at the moment and here’s a little advert for the release.
My friend has just released a new EP with his band From the Alpine, Swim – post hardcore awesomeness. They’re offering a free download at the moment and here’s a little advert for the release.
So the last 6 months has been crazily busy and exciting [yes I am ignoring the fact that I have not updated my website for that long - I'm turning over a new leaf!]. We’ve launched a new composition company called Etch providing bespoke music composition service for emerging medias. We’ve been working hard and we feel it’s starting to pay off.
A number of performances are happening/have happened – I had a brilliant performance of a recent piece called ‘Did You Scream It In The Street’ by the brilliant Decibel Ensemble. Back in November Garth Knox put on an awesome performance at Birmingham Conservatoire, which included ‘This Is Not My House’. I’ve extended some of my piano suite however it is not finished yet – Rolf Hind was kind enough to workshop the new part ‘Scram’ pushing it in some interesting new directions. In the near future, Di Mare Theatre Group in Holland are using some previously written music of mine in what is pipped to be a vibrant and larger than life performance! And to follow on from that, Mary Wiegold will be singing a new premiere of mine in Birmingham and at The Forge, London in October of this year, in collaboration with Thumb.
I thoroughly enjoyed giving a Songwriting workshop to some incredible home grown Birmingham talent with artist development and management company Aspire4U through Project Talent. I have also been working closely with Charlie McEwan, a brilliant songwriter from Birmingham with performances at LG Arena and very shortly at the Town Hall Birmingham. We’ve been working in the studio for a couple of months now with a recording on the cards very soon…watch this space.
Just a quick update – the concert with the premiere of my new piano work After is at Stratford Music Festival on 16th October 2011. You can grab tickets from the stratford music festival website. I’m very fortunate to have the brilliant Martin Roscoe playing it so very much looking forward to it.
I have also been asked to write a short work for Garth Knox for when he performs at Birmingham Conservatoire on 4th November 2011. The piece is coming along nicely and is nearly finished and I had a great session with viola player Vicky Strudwick to record samples for the electronic part.
There’s also some more theatre work in the pipeline which I’m really excited about – more news on that to follow soon.
On a slightly different note, the Thumb website is due to be relaunched in the next few days – it’s been brilliantly coded by Adam Sanders so huge thanks to him.
I’ve just been asked to write a short piano piece for Martin Roscoe to perform at the Stratford Upon Avon Music Festival. Looking forward to getting my teeth into it!
Also, upcoming performance at Greenbelt Festival in August – a double whammy performance of both Physics and Slow Down. Looking forward to hearing Physics in it’s new arrangement. Unfortunately I won’t be at the Festival, but for good reason – I’m really looking forward to this years HYT Theatre Production which I shall be working on from 25th August until 10th September. It’s going to be another epic year!
I was digging around in the archives of Birmingham Conservatoire library and stumbled across the performance of my song cycle ‘Sit Down’ in the Philip Bates Prize in 2008. Alongside this I shall shortly be posting a recording of my latest vocal work, ‘Climb’ that was performed by Thumb at The Forge.
In the mean time, I’ve put up a recording of a short Viola & live electronics piece i wrote in 2010, ‘Soon We Will Have No Social Skills’!
I really need to get better at updating my website!
So…a lot’s been happening. The MERGE concert was brilliant with a performance of ‘Answers’ by Thumb. They did a fantastic job so thank you very much to all who came.
More recently, Thumb have been collaborating with the Masters composers at Birmingham Conservatoire to work on a songwriting project. We were extremely grateful to have Mary Wiegold on board to give advice to composers on good songwriting practise. The result was a performance at The Forge, London and Birmingham Conservatoire Recital Hall on the 22nd & 23rd June. The Forge concert was part of a bigger programme alongside the brilliant Giro Gleks and Sebastiano Dessanay. It was a fantastic evening with a diverse range of music in a brilliant venue. At this concert, my new piece ‘Climb’ was performed by Thumb and tenor Steve Mills who did a sterling job.
I am also pleased to announce that we’ve finally released the Thumb: Live CD which has ‘Frenetics’ on it alongside pieces by Robert Peate, Ed Bennett and Tom Bassett. You can get your free copy now by going to thumb.bandcamp.com and downloading.
I’m excited this summer to be working again with Tim Ford down at The Nuffield Theatre, Southampton as part of the Hampshire Youth Theatre residency. I also have performances lined up of my small ensemble piece ‘Physics’ and song cycle ‘Sit Down’. More details will follow on that shortly.
Make sure you get down to Birmingham Conservatoire Recital Hall on Monday 23rd May to see the Thumb concert ‘MERGE’. I’m having my piece Answers played and it’s been sounding great in rehearsals.
Hopefully see you there!
Felt it was about time I put an update for all the goings on of the last couple of months.
Rebecca Hastie, Bryn Bowen and Dan Hayward gave a great performance of Toast at the Fusion concert. Recordings and media will be up on the website soon.
I was down at The Nuffield, Southampton last Sunday helping with the music for the Hampshire Youth Theatre summer residency production. It was great to be amongst an amazing team of musicians and meet everyone. Looks like it’s going to be a great production, more news on that to follow…
I also had a new piece for Thumb played in an open workshop at Birmingham Conservatoire on Thursday. The players did an awesome job of the piece and we were really pleased to have guest performers Rowland Sutherland, Chris Redgate and David Le Page. The whole workshop was great with fantastic new pieces from Alex Patterson and Nick Stuart and read throughs of pieces by Sean Clancy and Luke Iveson. It was great to kickstart what’s looking to be an exciting summer programme for Thumb with a concert on 23rd May and concerts in June. Check the Thumb website for more details.
I plan on adding more media to the website over the next few weeks so keep checking back.
The saxophone piece for Rebecca Hastie has been finished and shall be performed on 29th March at Birmingham Conservatoire, would be great to see you there if you can make it!
Just finishing off some songs for Thumb and various singers who are friends of mine…hopefully should have some recordings soon.
Thumb have got some concerts on the way which will be updated on the Thumb website shortly.
Hope everyone is well!
Sorry it’s been a while, life is somewhat manic at the moment!
There’s a fair bit of news, the first being that my piece ‘Physics’ is being used for the Gaudeamus Performance Competition in Amsterdam by good friends of mine, Neil McGovern, Paul McEachran, Domonic Childs and Naomi Sullivan for their quartet entry. I shall be posting more information on their ensemble shortly as they’re a brilliant quartet putting on amazing performances!
I’m also finishing a piece for Rebecca Hastie, a piece for alto saxophone and 2 percussionists. I’m really pleased with it so far, news will be posted of the performance dates shortly.
Finally, projects with Thumb are being finalised as we speak. Not only are there performances in collaboration with the Birmingham Conservatoire Composition Department but also a new recording on the way. We also are very excited to be performing a premiere by Midlands based composer, Simon Lesley. more news on that to follow…
