July seems to have been endless this year. The relaxation of the "lockdown" in the UK hasn't reached the music world yet. No shortage of online performances, but at this point we're all itching to get back to performing, listening, teaching in a face-to-face, in person way.
As usual I've been applying to a whole range of calls for scores, competitions, schemes, projects and so on - with some success, including being shortlisted for the rather prestigious RPS scheme - but there seems to be a lot of playing the waiting game right now. Still, I certainly have enough commissioned work to keep me busy for the rest of the year!
One group who've been really supportive through the whole period is the fab quartet at Willingdon House Music - they've performed a few of my arrangements in their 3-times-a-week online concerts, but here they are performing an original work I wrote especially for them:
I've actually written stacks of short solo pieces for friends to perform at home during "lockdown" - and slowly but surely the recordings are coming in. There was a fab performance this month by oboist Debbie Fuller of the new piece she commissioned from me "Turned Tables" for solo oboe as part of her online solo recital. Here's a really decent home recording of the solo piece I wrote for the wonderful cellist Jude Barnby:
The amazing quintet at PRISM Ensemble recorded an interview with me and also performed their own interpretation of a selection of six of my "Dendroforms" (tree forms) pieces. They're such superb musicians and their musical response to the graphic score of the piece is really quite beautiful. I loved working with them so much!
Coming up, there's all sorts of exciting events and premieres, including, for the third time this year, a performance of one of my pieces by the amazing folk at Red Note Ensemble. They're going to play my new piece "Formic Dances" for trumpet and amplified classical guitar on the 21st August at 3pm UK time - check it out! Here's the link: https://www.rednoteensemble.com/event/digital-noisy-nights-11/
