Plug 2011

This is the week of PLUG in RSAMD. Ten concerts in five days and most of the music being played are premiers by the composers within the composition department. I have two pieces being played both on Thursday. The first is 'Silence, Imperfect Silence' for odd chamber orchestra at 1pm. I say odd because its for flute, sax, 4 singers, 2 pianos, percussion, 2 violins and a viola. It would almost make sense if there was a cello to round it off but nope. The idea behind it is the undergraduates have a module called 'Style in Performance' and in their 3rd year they have to play contemporary music so some of the composition department. This then explains the reason for the odd ensemble. The instruments available were auctioned sorry faily divided between the composers and thats what I ended up with. Considering I wanted flute, sax, 4 singers, piano, percussion, violin, viola and cello I think I did pretty well. Some people didn't get any of the instruments they asked for!
Anyway enough of that back to the gist of this post. So that piece is at 1pm on thursday and the other is at 7.30pm on the same day. The other piece is one you will have heard a lot about if you have been following this blog.... Its Dichroic Light on its second outing! It is once again played by Lydia Whittingham, my collaborator in the composition. If you want a taster of the piece before coming along you can listen to it on my website here.

Below I've embedded the full programme of the festival. I shant pick out certain concerts (apart from my own) to suggest you come to because from the rehearsals I've heard they are all going to be excellent! Tickets for all concerts in RSAMD are available from the box office. https://boxoffice.rsamd.ac.uk/peo/default.asp

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Concerts

Three months have gone by and not even one update, I feel ashamed of myself considering the amount that has happened.
October saw the continuation of rehearsals for the opera, there was quite a lot of stress and a few arguments that had to be calmed down but eventually it all worked well for the concert in November. Really happy with how Puddle Wonderful went and managed to get a, rather bad quality, recording of the last night which is up here. All four operas were well received, we didn't fill the place but I think there was about 300 came over the three nights. The week after that the second Queen's Composers' Concert happened. The hall was about 3/4 filled (which again I was really happy with). Afterwards I got quite a few emails congratulating me on the concert. Again the performance of Untitled went really well, though up until the last two rehearsals it wasn't quite coming together so I had to step in and flail my arms about in some kind of uniform pattern and tempo, this helped make it an excellent performance.
After this concert there was a rather large feeling of emptiness upon realising I had no planned performances planned. This swiftly changed when I joined, and was made secretary of, the Irish Composers Collective. Due to this group I now have a performance of Imagined Notes (22nd February) and of an as yet unwritten violin and cello duo on the 22nd of March both of which will be in the National Concert Hall in Dublin. Two days after the latter concert will be the third Queen's Composers' Concert, and the final one organised by me. For this concert I'm conducting The Space Within, a septet written last year for my final composition. It will be my last Composers' Concert because as of September I will be in Glasgow Collage of Music studying MMus in composition. Finally at some point within the next few months I'll be getting a performance of a soprano and guitar piece called Rain, with words by Edward Thomas, written for Becca Hopkins and Declan Keenan. Hopefully more concerts will come my way soon but I think thats a decent amount to be going on with. Though I'm starting to think of organising an ICC concert in Belfast before the end of the summer but that is still a very hazy idea.
I think thats a brief catchup of everything thats happened for anyone thats interested.