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.
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 Ł200 shirts and Ł30000 diamond-encrusted mobile phones...
Alexander Grove and Frances Bourne in Selfridges, Oxford Street at the premiere of Out of the Ordinary
I've finished an arrangement of Satie's Sports and Divertissements which I think should make a very enjoyable addition to any chamber ensemble's repertoire. (details of the premiere to follow)
The Opera Group are rehearsing my new mini-opera Out of the Ordinary which will receive no less than 10 8 performances in its first day alone - it's being presented in collaboration with Selfridges this Saturday 8th Sept, then again on Thursday 13th, both at Selfridges Oxford Street, and in Selfridges Manchester the following Saturday. The plan is for it to happen 'guerrilla-style' in the midst of a busy shopping store - should be interesting.
I was delighted to get a call from Dawn Upshaw, who I worked with on Piosenki. She tutors some wonderful singers at BARD College, NY, and Dawn very kindly helped open the door to a new commission from BARD for soloists, choir and chamber orchestra (call it a dramatic cantata if you like) - I'll be working again with Alasdair Middleton who did a fabulous job on the Opera Group piece. The current plan is a 45 minute piece based on an old Russian folk tale about someone who learns to understand the language of birds.
Update
The current plan for the Selfrifges Oxford Street performances on Saturday 8th are as follows (may be subject to change but I'll try to post if so):
I now understand that attempting to make your own steel drum is something of a challenge. According to the toucans.net website panmakers in the Trinidad temper their drums by building a fire on the beach then plunging the red hot steel drum into the ocean - and that's just the beginning. Anyway, the site has a nice tutorial on an easier cousin called a Dudup which is made by hammering a slightly off-center line along a coffee can or an olive oil can. All I could find was a can of baby milk powder. I gave it a good hammering, but the results were little better than disappointing:
Recently I introduced a composer friend to the famous Laments of Polish poet Jan Kochanowski, which are available in an excellent translation by Seamus Heaney. The laments all deal harrowingly with the death of his daughter, and as a father I find them hard to look at these days, but if your like your poetic emotions stark and piercing, Kochanowski's your man.
After I'd bought my friend a copy of the poems he's now thinking about setting some of them, and he asked my wife to record a few of them to get a sense of the Polish language. Here's the first lament and the recording:
Wszytki płacze, wszytki łzy Heraklitowe
I lamenty, i skargi Symonidowe,
Wszytki troski na ¶wiecie, wszytki wzdychania
I żale, i frasunki, i r±k łamania,
Wszytki a wszytki zaraz w dom sie mój no¶cie,
A mnie płakać mej wdzięcznej dziewki pomo¶cie,
Z któr± mię niepobożna ¶mierć rozdzieliła
I wszytkich moich pociech nagle zbawiła.
Tak więc smok, upatrzywszy gniazdo kryjome,
Słowiczki liche zbiera, a swe łakome
Gardło pasie; tym czasem matka szczebiece
Uboga, a na zbójcę co raz sie miece.
Prózno, bo i na samę okrutnik zmierza,
A ta nieboga ledwe umyka pierza.
"Prózno płakać" - podobno drudzy rzeczecie.
Cóż, prze Bóg żywy, nie jest prózno na ¶wiecie?
Wszystko prózno; macamy, gdzie miękcej w rzeczy,
A ono wszędy ci¶nie: bł±d wiek człowieczy.
Nie wiem, co lżej: czy w smutku jawnie żałować,
Czyli sie z przyrodzeniem gwałtem mocować.
In essence it tells all the griefs and laments of the world to come and help him grieve for his daughter, and then asks what is not in vain in the lives of men.
Tete a Tete is continuing it's tradition of boldly taking opera where no opera has gone before and is putting on a very exciting three week opera festival at the Riverside Studios the August. As part of that there'll be an event in which I'll be presenting with Bill Bankes Jones the plans for my new opera which is currently under a development commission from ROH2.
The new opera is planned to be based on Sally Wainwright's BBC TV script of The Taming of the Shrew, (which starred Rufus Sewell and Shirley Henderson who were both sensational). It follows the broad outlines of the Shakespeare but the characters and context are all thoroughly modern. It's hilarious, over-the-top, slightly deranged, and very moving - everything a good opera should be.
Please come along if you can and give us some feedback, it's billed as a 'starter' before the appetising main course later that evening.
STOP PRESS! Update
The very exciting news is that the fabulous soprano Mary Plazas is now confirmed to sing a couple of arias from the new opera during this event - new arias so hot off the press they're still steaming! I've seen Mary perform a number of times, including in the TV version of Ades's Powder Her Face, and she's always been outstanding.
UK pianist Matthew Schellhorn will give the premiere of my piano piece Berimbau this November in Hertford, UK. Matthew has been making quite a name for himself in recent years, being selected as a “Talent to Watch” for 2007 by BBC Music Magazine, and described as “one of Britain's most exciting young pianists” by Classic FM.
I'm delighted that The Academy, a program of Carnegie Hall, The Juilliard School, and The Weill Music Institute have decided to put on two performances of Piosenki this autumn, including a repeat performance at the Weill Hall at Carnegie on October 10th.
The Academy features some of the leading younger generation players from Julliard and has been set up to help ease the sometimes difficult first steps into the profession. I've been invited to help the players get to know the piece at Skidmore College in Saratoga Springs, NY which is where the other performance will be held on October 5th.
There's also another NY ensemble interested in Piosenki, of which hopefully more soon.
Although I'm working on a much longer-term opera project with ROH2 I've accepted a smaller scale 'mini-commission' from the Opera Group to write a self-contained 5-minute piece that will be played out in shopping centres around the country on their next tour this autumn (apparently Selfridges in London and Manchester are already signed up).
I spent an enjoyable couple of days last month with conductor Patrick Bailey, director John FullJames, librettist Alasdair Middleton and a group of singers developing ideas. I think we broke the world-record for the fastest turn around from blank page (Thursday morning) via libretto creation (Thursday teatime) and score creation (Thursday evening) to fully acted and sung workshop performance (Friday afternoon). It was thrilling and liberating, even if the resulting hastily-composed music produced a marvellously over-the-top Puccini-meets-Bernstein slush-fest.
But I do get the feeling if we're going to stop people dead in their tracks while they're browsing for new chair covers, we'll need something that slaps them around the face a bit. Should be interesting...
