Lore Lixenberg James Gower

Sunday 17th July

Lore Lixenberg and James Gower took the foyer by storm in Is This It? on Thursday at the Linbury Studio, Covent Garden - a fabulous performance of my first dalliance with opera (and I'm hooked) ...with a wonderful team of people supporting the whole thing - thanks guys. Film footage will be available soon...

 

Now time to draw breath and work on more reflections from David Hart's Crag Inspector - first up: violin and cello duo, second: clarinet quintet.

 

June 24th

Opera finished and ready for rehearsals, Inflorescence - an amazing first performance by saxophonist Kyle Horch and pianist Pavel Timofejevsky...

May 25th

The opera is taking shape: 

Is This It?

When an extra angel appears in the foyer of the opera house the management are thrown into confusion, especially when it begins to become apparent that this is no ordinary angel. One man must take action to save the theatre, the audience, the earth - not to mention the heavens - from the angel in the foyer. Addressing the issues of individual action and personal responsibility, this new opera by Liz Johnson and Rosalind Haslett is a companion piece to Luke Bedford's Seven Angels.

July 14th 7.30pm Linbury Studio, Royal Opera House, Covent Garden

May 2011

Well, Spring definitely sprang and a very exciting time... I've just finished Inflorescence a new piece for sax and piano which is inspired by the wonderful poetry of David Hart in the Crag Inspector. A series of flowers mentioned in the poem combine to create an "inflorescence" of the character - the formation of the flowers as they appear.

Deeply drawing breath I'm now setting out on the next big adventure which is to write a short opera with writer Rosalind Haslett for the Opera Group, to be performed in July at the Royal Opera House. It precedes Luke Bedford's wonderful new work Seven Angels, and will be staged in the foyer to the Linbury Studio at 7.30pm on July 14th - for one night only...

New Year's Day 2011

SO... looking back it's been a fantastic year. Recent excitements have included Ben Hartley Reflections with the wonderful Tamsy Kaner (cello) performing with the local choir in Ermington, despite the late Novemberish conditions and lack of heat - made up for by the warmth of all those involved down in Devon. Forty-Something for the Fitzwilliams was another exciting do in Birmingham, with the promise of a new cd of all my quartets to be recorded soon - Images of Trees, For Elliott, Intricate Web, Sky-burial, and Forty-Something - finger crossed...

AND... looking forward to the coming year, well, there are a few new things in the pipeline including a set of pieces for the fabulous Kyle Horch (saxophone) based on fragments from David Hart's Crag Inspector, a clarinet quintet featuring every size of clarinet known to man, new songs and choral pieces. And there's always the potential to complete some long term projects like Wild Man Dances for two pianos. Time will tell...

Otherwise there's the stained glass window projects, wood sculpting and garden design to keep me busy...

Summer 2010

The Summer term has been full of excitement with the culmination of 2 big projects: Banded About with BCMG and the Birmingham Hub, and Creative Partnerships at St John's School, Bedford. Now lots of new beginnings are now being focused on...

40-Something a new string quartet for the Fitzwilliams to celebrate their fourth decade of music-making

Ben Hartley Reflections - a new suite of pieces for solo cello...

 

Liz Johnson conducting at the CBSO Centre

So...Spring 2010 has been an exciting patch - here's me conducting the fabulous combined forces of the Banded About Project Practitioners on a CPD day earlier in the season...

Banded About is a massive music-making project in schools across Birmingham and I'm working for BCMG in 2 schools with musicians Elaine Ackers (cello) and Ben Markland (bass and sax). At City Road Primary the two Year 6 classes have been creating wonderful ideas based around "The Quest" as a starting point. In March, class 6J did a fabulous performance at the CBSO Centre which showed all their performance skills to their best. In Our Lady Of Fatima RC School I've started working with the Year 6 children on a time machine piece which we'll be finishing off at the end of the Summer Term, and the Year 5 class is currently creating songs about BCMG.

I've just finished working on the BCMG Families' Concert, which is always exhilerating, and I've been running creative composing sessions at Yardley Primary School with the 3 Year 5 classes over the last couple of months. We've been creating new versions of Bruno Maderna's Serenade for a Satellite, Berio's O King and Param Vir's Constellations, all of which featured in the concert on Sunday 18th April at the CBSO Centre Birmingham and Saturday 24th April at the Barbican, London.

My Birmingham Conservatoire teaching this year has included running a Music and Health module with Esther Jackson at Heartlands Hospital. This involves nine undergraduate performers who are now working with children on the wards at Heartlands in teams of three - a steep learning curve for the students but a really exciting area to be working in.

Composing-wise there's lots cooking on the stove - some tenor songs for the lovely tenor James Geer and his excellent accompanist Ron Woodley to make a set with Cabbage Dreams (which they performed last Autumn in Birmingham and Durham), and a new set of pieces for solo cello inspired by the paintings of Ben Hartley - Ben Hartley Reflections which will be performed as part of the Ben Hartley exhibition in Plymouth this coming November.  Two anniversary pieces are a 40th birthday celebration piece for the Fitzwilliam Quartet which receives its premiere on November 19th 2010, and a 20th Anniversary piece for the Bournville Young Singers which is being celebrated next Spring.

Other performances include another saxophone concert featuring the fabulous Kyle Horch:

June 14th 1pm St Peter's Church, Notting Hill O Vos - Liz Johnson performed by Flotilla

New projects include working at St John's School in Bedford over the summer months to create some songs and music with the disabled students at the school using Soundbeam, samplers and other acoustic things too!