David Bruce - Composer
David Bruce - Composer |
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 David Bruce is a British-American composer, living and working in
St. Albans, UK. This site contains information on his music. Contact David Bruce |
Dances for Oskar in the Lake DistrictPosted on 07 August 2008  Above is my son Oskar listening to the string quartet that bears his name. He enjoyed it, but then, as you can see from the picture, he was in an especially good mood! The Heath Quartet gave an excellent first performance at Kendal Town Hall during the Lake District Summer Music Festival yesterday. I decided not to bring the work's dedicatee along to the concert for fear of disruption. But I can officially say that during part of the especially 'bouncy' second movement he definitely danced a little... and here's the quartet and me receiving a little light thanks from the generous audience  I'm astonished and delighted that after much struggling I've written a piece for string quartet that I'm happy with, and shows I think a reasonable competence in writing for the instruments. I've decided henceforth I can officially call myself a real composer. Angela from Push! at Tete a Tete FestivalPosted on 05 August 2008  Louise Mott will be reprising her role as Angela from Push! as part of Tete a Tete's Opera Festival over the coming days. Louise and other performers will be performing 'Lite Bites' - operatic excerpts of various kinds at assorted venues in the Hammersmith area throughout the festival. The festival itself is the usual fantastic mix of shows from the 'operatic fringe' (and some not so fringe) and is a must for anyone serious about their new opera. Lagerphones and lamentsPosted on 22 July 2008 It's nice when life and art interact and feel like they are all part of one larger picture. I first met Michael Ward-Bergeman at the Carnegie Hall workshops for Piosenki back in 2006. He introduced me to the lagerphone and later I introduced him to the famous laments or 'Treny' of Polish poet Kochanowski (I even made a post about it here) I built and used the lagerphone for Piosenki, and Michael has decided to set the laments for a new commission from the Terezin Chamber Music Foundation. The circle is completed in November this year, when Dawn Upshaw will sing both my Piosenki and Michael's new piece, in Carnegie's Zankel Hall (further details of the concert here). Michael's now embarked on a series of podcasts about his commission, and in this opening one below, he talks about our friendship, lagerphones, and the laments. Check our Michael's blog for further podcasts. Two summer festivals, two new commissionsPosted on 30 June 2008
August brings two new premieres, both from Summer festivals in some of the most beautiful areas of the UK. August 25th is the premiere of my Gigue for flute and harp at the Presteigne Festival, and earlier on August 6th it's the turn of the Lake District Summer Music Festival and the Heath Quartet's performance of my string quartet Dances for Oskar. Stephanie Berger PhotographsPosted on 06 June 2008 I got hold of these two wonderful pictures of the Bard College performances of A Bird in Your Ear from photographer Stephanie Berger - both will make lovely covers to my promotional CDs!
New Quartet for the HeathsPosted on 28 May 2008  Some mediums are clearly harder to write for than others; for me, the String Quartet is probably the hardest of them all. I know many composers feel the same, for a mixture of reasons - As far as this last point goes, I love intellectual music - Berg is one of my favourite composers - but I think it was something of a coming of age for me when I realised I'm not really an intellectual composer. I think as soon as I started writing operas I realised I was much more interested in, well, whatever the opposite of intellectual music is - music that's just music, music that moves you in some way, makes you dance, sing, cry, whatever. At least for now I think that's much more what I need to focus on. So, earlier in the year Lake District Summer Music Festival commissioned a quartet from me for this year's festival, to be played by the exciting young Heath Quartet (pitcured above). After quaking in my boots for some months, when I finally got down to work on the piece it went really surprisingly smoothly. The key decision for me was that these would be a series of 'dances' in the Baroque sense. They would start in one place, explore the possibilities therein and stop. No Beethovenian developments, no 'musical philosophising' if you like. And that did the trick. I wrote five dances, each about 3-4 minutes long, and I'm really excited to hear them at the festival in August. They're called Dances for Oskar. Meet the Composer GalaPosted on 07 May 2008  This May 28th Meet the Composer Foundation is holding a gala dinner in honour of world-renowned soprano and great muse of composers, Dawn Upshaw. I'm thrilled that Dawn requested a piece of mine to be played at the event, and delighted that my friends at Metropolis Ensemble have agreed to help out - all very last minute - and perform a specially arranged version of Three Pieces from Piosenki with the adorable Melissa Wegner and the charming Kyle Ferrill (; This annual event organized by Meet the Composer honors a prominent American artist. The benefit committee includes Esa-Pekka Salonen, James Levine, Robert Spano, Osvaldo Golijov, John Adams, among others. Dawn was involved in the original Carnegie Hall commission of Piosenki, and has recently been incredibly supportive of my music, commissioning Bird for her students on the Graduate Vocal Arts Program at Bard College, NY and scheduling performances of Piosenki herself in the fall (of which more soon). More details about the gala... Listen and learn about Piosenki... Bird picturesPosted on 01 May 2008 I've finally managed to get some stills from the DVD recording of A Bird in Your Ear, a selection below:       Satie's Tennis BallPosted on 01 May 2008 Mike and Metropolis perform Tennis from Sports by Satie arranged by me. Satie arrangementsPosted on 23 April 2008  The full recording of my arrangements of Satie's Sports et Divertissements is now available here. The first performance here was given by the Metropolis Ensemble, conducted by Andrew Cyr and narrated by Mike Daisey. I've added the texts that Mike Daisey read and the full recording including Mike's narration is at the bottom of this page. I must say I was particularly pleased with the tennis ball effect in no.21 (it's the conductor bouncing it). Here are a couple of my favourites: 02 - La Balancoire - In a swing: My heart it is that swings and swings, it never gets dizzy. What tiny feet it has. Will it want to come back to my chest 09 - Le Bain de mer - Sea-bathing: The sea is wide madame. At least it's deep! Don't sit on the bottom it's very damp. Here come some nice old waves. Oh Madame! You are all wet. Oui Monsieur, they're full of water 10 - Le carnaval - Carnival: Confetti is falling all around. That one has on a melancholy mask. A tipsy Pierot tries walking straight. Enter, gracefully, some masked ladies. People push to see them, are they pretty? 15 - Le Pique-nique - Picnic: Everyone has brought potato salad. You have on a lovely white dress. Oh my! An aeroplane. Not at all, it's a storm coming up. 19 - Le Flirt - Flirtation: They say pretty things to each other. Modern things. 'How are you?', 'Don't you find me nice', 'Leave me alone', 'You have such big eyes', 'I wish I were on the moon'. He sighs. He shakes his head. 21 - Le Tennis - Tennis: Play? Yes! He has a good serve. What handsome legs he has. And a fine nose! A slashing serve. Game! Archive 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | |
