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Monthly Archive: September 2007


Piosenki in New York

Posted on Friday, September 28, 2007




More info on the two NY performances of Piosenki coming up at the start of October: Tickets for the Carnegie performance. For the performance at Filene Recital Hall,Skidmore College on the 5th Oct please call the college's Department of Music at 518-580-5326.

More info about the Academy program here.

Update
Nice reviews of the concerts:
NY Times
Times Union
Feast of Music Blog

Update 2 - Pictures of the concert
with thanks to Feast of Music Blog


Me giving my Pre-performance talk


Baritone Kyle Ferrill in full flow on the lagerphone





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Pokrowsky Ensemble

Posted on Friday, September 28, 2007


A couple of months ago I attended a concert in London as part of the Ades festival, which included a mind-bending performance of Stravinsky's Les Noces by a stellar line up of pianists that included the Labeque Sisters, and the Russian 'folk-choir' the Pokrovsky ensemble. The gutsy voices of the choir added a fascinating extra dimension to the piece, which drew it closer to its ethnic roots while at the same time maintaining its absolute originality and bizarreness. It was one of the most inspiring performances I've seen in a long time. I went out and bought the CD - the disc contains many of the original folk songs that were incorporated into Les Noces in some form or other, and many of them are trully wonderful. It's let down by a hideous recording of Les Noces with awful sounding electric pianos and a bucket-full of reverb (I hasten to add these were not the same performers as in the concert - the CD doesn't even list the pianists and percussionists who may well have been prerecorded by one player I suspect). The disc is worth it for the folk songs alone though.






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Opera Group at Selfridges

Posted on Saturday, September 8, 2007


We had a fascinating day today at Selfridges, Oxford Street for the premiere and seven subsequent performances of my mini-opera Out of the Ordinary. It was a busy Saturday for shopping, and I learnt a lot about writing for such an environment - make it loud, make it obvious! The best performance of the ones I saw took place in the sweet department - the clientele there was a bit more relaxed and up for it than they were upstairs next to the £200 shirts and £30000 diamond-encrusted mobile phones...






Alexander Grove and Frances Bourne in Selfridges, Oxford Street at the premiere of Out of the Ordinary






Ed Hessian and Andrew Sparling








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All going on

Posted on Thursday, September 6, 2007


It's all happening at the moment.





















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