The Philharmonia Orchestra’s Composers’ Academy
This programme is aimed at ‘exceptional musicians from diverse backgrounds who are looking to develop their skills in composition’ – and offers:
- Masterclasses
- Support from a Composers’ Academy mentor
- Dedicated time to rehearse a composition with Philharmonia musicians, a conductor and your mentor, and to receive feedback
- A performance of your composition at the Royal Festival Hall in London
- A professional recording of that piece.
A pretty good package all round.
There are three chosen composers each year and the 2023/4 contingent have just ‘graduated’.
Mathis Saunier is the artistic director, guitarist, and composer of the noise-pop band Mauvais Sang and collaborates with international ensembles. His musical universe combines electronic music, acoustics and visual lighting. More on his site.
Yfat Soul Zisso is both a singer (coming out of Wales) and a composer. You can hear some of her music here on her site but in her interview she talked about how she uses breathing as a musical idea and how this informed her composition, Spiral.
As jazz pianist, orchestral percussionist, vocalist arranger, electronic music producer and teacher Florence Anna Maunders has dipped in and out of composition for years – along with exploring medieval dance music, prog-rock, electronic minimalism, bebop jazz, Eastern folk music, Stravinsky & Messiaen, and the grand orchestral tradition of the European concert hall… In her work for the Philharmonia she was focused on sound as an end in itself, without the need for deeper meaning. To listen to some of Florence’s music, go to her site.
However, if you would like to hear all three, NMC Records, a long term supporter of the Philharmonia Composers’ Academy and indeed of all new music in the UK and Ireland, has released all three pieces for a mere £5.99 – and you can catch snatches of each before you buy right here.
Meanwhile, over at LSO St Lukes, another young composer scheme was showcased last Saturday. LSO Jerwood Composer+ supports early-career composers in planning and delivering two artistic projects. On Saturday it was the turn of Welsh/Irish composser Anselm McDonnell who both curated and contributed to a fascinating programme of violin and electronic music, The Expanded Violin. This included two pieces of his own plus pieces, none more than 11 minutes long, from six other composers, each played by one, two three or four violins.
Solo violins and electronic music seem to me to have a natural affinity – they both understand and complement each other perfectly. Anselm McDonnell’s own pieces, Rusted Sugar and Genesis Cradle (inspired by evenings spent playing Debussy’s Clair de Lune to his unborn child in his wife’s womb – the baby was born two days after the piece was finished) certainly bore that out, as did pieces by Leo Chaburn and Judith Ring.
Of the Chadbourn piece, De La Salle, the composer says:
When I wrote piece, 25 years ago, I was very interested in music that followed a strict process so, De La Salle (Violins) systematically works its way through all the intervals (pairs of pitches) in a nine-note scale. But, when I listen to it now, I don’t hear the machinery of its composition. Instead, it evokes the weather for me: clouds passing, rain falling sparsely, then heavily, then sparsely again, and the sun coming out.
And indeed it did – magical.
The Judith Ring piece also involved water, Swept Through the Floods, reflecting on the many flooding disasters currently engulfing the world – the electronics often threatening to engulf the solo violin which floated above the waters.
Britten Sinfonia and Will Gregory Moog Ensemble
Will Gregory playing a Moog
The Doors, the Rolling Stones, the Grateful Dead, Tangerine Orange, the Beatles, Emerson, Lake and Palmer – yes, they were all Moog enthusiasts. But what exctly was a Moog? For those who don’t know – it was a synthesizer or electronic ‘machine’ (developed by American engineer Robert Moog) which, via a keyboard and control desk, could create musical notes and other sounds to be woven into a composition. The famous Dr Who theme, for example, with its other wordly swoops, was created in the BBC Radiophonic Workshops using a synthesizer.
In the ’70s and ’80s synthesizers mushroomed – becoming widely used in pop and film music. But as computer programmes became more sophisticated offering ever more sound possibilities to composers, analogue synthesizers somewhat fell from fashion. However, they still had their enthusiasts who found the experience of creating analogue electronic sounds via a machine that you actually played more fulfilling than sitting in front of a computer screen creating digitally. Among those was Will Gregory, musician, record producer and half of the electronic music duo, Goldfrapp.
Gregory was first introduced to synthesizers as a kid by Wendy Carlos*’ 1968 record Switched on Bach played on a Moog syntheiser. (Switched on Bach sold over a million copies and became only the second classical album ever to be certified platinum). And then, as an adult he started to collect them – and one day wondered how they would sound if taken out of his garage, put together in a studio and played like any other collection of instruments. The result in 2005, was the Moog Ensemble – a group of 15 Moog enthusiasts who are still together today.
But if they were to be played as instruments, could they not also be played with other instruments – as part of an orchestra? The result of that thought was a collaboration with the BBC National Orchestra of Wales to record Heat Ray: the Archimedes Project – reproduced for us the other night by the Moog Ensemble and Britten Sinfonia at the Barbican.
The Archimedes Suite – a musical snapshot of the great mathematician Archimedes’ mathematical truths – formed half of the programme. The other half consisted of iconic film music (Dr Who, Chariots of Fire, A Clockwork Orange, Fahrenheit 451) in which synthesizers had played such a crucial role.
The result of the collaboration? Amazing! The Moogs blended seamlessly with the orchestra giving an added dimension to the music that felt truly as though it had always been there. If you get a chance, go listen.
*Wendy Carlos was arguably the greatest electronic musician of the 20th century and a pioneer in the use of synthesizers, working closely with Robert Moog. This is a fascinating article in El Pais in 2022 about her music and her life as an almost total recluse in New York as a result of her gender dysphoria.
Meanwhile, have you booked for….
Monday 4th November – 6.30pm – Kyan Quartet
£30 to include the concert, wine and supper. For more details and to book go here.
Thursday 7th November – 6pm – William Jack
£15 to include a glass (or two) of wine. For more details and to book go here.
Wednesday 27th November – 6.30pm – Shirley Smart & Toby Medland
£30 to include the concert, wine and supper. For more details and to book go here.
For other future happenings in at Hampstead Lane and elsewhere – see our Upcoming Events page.
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