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

Open publication - Free publishing - More glasgow

This week

This week has been an amazing, though stressful week. Monday and Tuesday was preparing for the Queen's Composers' Concert on Wednesday final rehearsels, getting programs printed and all that kind of stuff. The concert on Wed was a great success, 64 people turned up to it! Also got multiple emails and people saying well done about it. The whole concert was recorded so will have a new excelent quality version of my Quartet No. 1 on my site by Monday also possibly might have links to the other peoples pieces as well for anyone thats interested.
The atmosphere after the concert was great as well with people hanging about for at least 30mins after (much to the porters annoyance).The Head of School has also said it should become a fixture which was the intention anyway. The next one will probably be late November, early December so piles of time to organise it and more importantly write some music!

The other great thing about this week, last night we (SPARK opera company) got £5000 funding to put on the 4 short operas! This was £1000 more than we asked for, its not the full amount that we need but its definitely a massive start. Winning the money is all doesn to Kate Guelke and Marianne McKnight but I think having abotu 20 of the company there helped as well. We have got a venue organised for November time, again piles of time to get it sorted and thankfully for this one all I have to do is write the music. It will be an interesting experience but it is happening!

Oh yes theres also piles of uni work to get done over Easter. Going to be really busy for the next few weeks and months :):).

Working

Surprisingly almost finished the draft of my septet and what’s left to do I know exactly where its going to go so shouldn't be too long before doing the final version.

As for the other pieces, well they are getting done slowly but surely, I think.
Deadlines are starting to come closer so really need to seriously get them
finished.

The concert is going ahead, not sure on time yet but it will be the evening of 1st April in the Harty Room in Queen's. So far the line up is a Piano trio by Piers Hellawell, a Piano Duet by Eddie Zatriqi, a septet by Omar Zatriqi, a quartet by Daniel Barkley, and two trios by Joel Cathright and myself. Might change a little before then but I dont think by much.