My old friend who now goes by the new name of Sequoia is a wonderful pianist I've worked with many times. He recently recorded my solo piano piece Undula. The piece explores senses of water and movement, inspired by David Hockney's 'pool paintings'. The video playfully adds a few of these watery effects over the top of Sequoia's hands at the keyboard, and the score itself.
Chroma will perform Kundalee, a short study piece for clarinet, cello and viol, as part of their Awakenings Tour. Kundalle is a Hindi word meaning 'Spiral' and the piece draws inspiration from South Indian Konnakol rhythmic traditions which spiral faster and faster as the piece progresses.
At the end of the month, I am delighted to have had the chance to write for two of the world's leading operatic stars - Bass Matthew Rose, and soprano Katherine Broderick. The new work, for Matthew, Katherine and String Septet, is called Out of Hours and is a setting of 5 poems sharing a common theme of those parts of the day - the early morning and the late evening - where we're prone to feeling more connected to life and emotions.
I'm delighted to have fulfilled a life-long ambition to have a piece performed at the BBC Proms in the Royal Albert Hall. As I mentioned in my YouTube video How to get to Carnegie Hall (or your own personal equivalent), when I was 15, my mum even offered to buy me a grand piano if I ever achieved this goal.
The Prom is on 15th July, Prom 3, and it's a wonderful concert, celebrating 40 years of the BBC Young Musician of the Year, featuring many of the previous winners and finalists. I've been asked to write for four of them, oboist Nicholas Daniel, with whom I've worked many times before of course; violinist Jennifer Pike, French Horn player Ben Goldscheider who was a finalist last year, and clarinettist Michael Collins. The piece will also feature the full BBC Concert Orchestra.
The title Sidechaining refers to a process found in digital audio software, I will post more about that soon.
Next month I'll be attending the premiere of an unusual new piece commissioned by NDR in Germany, to be played in the small hall of the amazing new concert venue Elbphilharmonie in Hamburg.
It's a piece that takes my love for 'plucked' instruments to a new level, as it's written for five of them - Mandolin, Guitar, Harp, Theorbo and Harpsichord. As any of you who know my career will know, the mandolin part is taken by my dear friend and awesome colleague Avi Avital, who helped organise the commission.
The piece, despite being mainly uplifting and full of energy is entitled 'Death is a Friend of Ours'. I was inspired by a book of poems by Helen Dunmore, who died from cancer last year and in her very last poem she charted a rather unexpected relationship with death. Her final poem starts 'Death, hold out your arms to me, embrace me, Give me your motherly caress, Through all this suffering You have not forgotten me."
I was very touched by this idea of death as a caring friend or even a parent, and also by the book's treatment of life as like the ride a surfer takes along the inside of a wave - something full of wonder but inevitably short-lived. The three movements of my work are something of a response to this and are kind of 'dances with death'. Like Dunmore's poems, the dances take a surprisingly positive and uplifting look at the experience. They are telling us we should take joy from our brief time on earth.
The line 'Death is a friend of ours' strikes a similar tone to Helen Dunmore's poems, but comes from the English philosopher, and native of my home town St Albans, Francis Bacon.
Undula is a new solo piano piece written for New York-based Molly Morkowski. The premiere takes place at a recital she is giving in Montana State University this October 7th. Undula is inspired by the Californian pool paintings of David Hockney. Read more about it here
I was honoured to be asked by San Diego Symphony to write a celebratory fanfare in honour of their departing maestro Jahja Ling, who conducted the premieres of my Night Parade and the Violin Concerto Fragile Light. The former of these pieces Jahja also brought to Carnegie Hall for the orchestra's debut there, as well as on their tour of China in 2013. I enjoyed working with Maestro Ling, who had a firm but gentle approach, and the orchestra has clearly flourished under his tenure, with a raft of excellent younger players joining and creating his legacy for the future.
The fanfare is a 3 minute work for full orchestra, you can hear it by clicking the youtube video above. It's called Fanfarrón, the Spanish word, said to be the origin of the word 'fanfare', which translates roughly as 'show-off' or 'loud-mouth' - a reference to the character of the music of course, rather than the man himself, who is anything but!
Mandolin rock-star Avi Avital and the leading US quartet Dover Quartet tour Cymbeline in North America throughout February, as well as recording the piece for a future release, alongside Bruce's The North Wind was a Woman. Described by the Financial Times as "a vibrant piece with a golden hue that finds much sonic variety in the instrumental combination", Cymbeline is inspired by the spiritual place the sun has had in human culture and forms three movements relating to positions of the sun - sunrise, noon, and sunset.
Tour dates:
Feb 7 2016 Hunter Museum of American Art, Chattanooga, TN (Avi Avital, Dover Quartet)
Jennifer Koh performs the premiere of David's new solo violin piece Marzipan and the NY Phil Biennial concert at National Sawdust in Williamsburg,NY this May 24th at 7pm, along with a collection of other new commissions from the likes of Kaija Saariaho, Andrew Norman and Vijay Iyer. The event will be broadcast live on WQXR and available to stream from this page.
