Author Archive

Solfa’s six-part, female voice choir arrangement of Irish folk song ‘The Foggy Dew’ is to be performed by Cantiamo this weekend at Sennen Church in Cornwall, on Sunday 22nd at 7:30pm. Donations from the concert will go towards Little Harbour Children’s Hospice. The programme also features works by Faure, Brahms and Tavener.  A recording of the piece can be heard here and sheet music is available for purchase here. 

Irish flautist William Dowdall will give another performance of ‘Dystopia’ in Corfu this coming Tuesday, 22nd May. Details of the concert and associated masterclass are available here.

Dowdall has given several performances of Dystopia in Ireland and gave its Irish premiere in 2011 at the Kevin Barry Room, Irish National Concert Hall. Sheet music for the piece is available through the CMC website.

A new piece for organ, ‘Gott hat das Evangelium’ will be performed by Tom Bell, organist this Friday at St Nicholas Puckley in Kent. The piece is part of a volume of organ pieces curated by William Whitehead, based on the Bach Orgelbuchlein, and has had contributions from several composers in the UK and abroad. More information on tickets here.

Solfa has produced a new piece for organist Tom Bell, as a contribution to the The Orgelbüchlein Project, curated by William Whitehead.  The Orgelbüchlein Project is a major international composition project to complete J S Bach’s Orgelbüchlein (Little Organ Book), and features short works by an international group of composers, each writing in their unique idiom. The new piece is based on ‘Gott hat das Evangelium’, No. 141 in the original Orgelbüchlein, and like the other pieces commissioned, is roughly two minutes in duration. More information on the project, including scores by some of the composers commissioned, is available here. 

Three Byzantine Hymns, as commissioned by Cantata Dramatica in 2016, have been recorded as an educational resource for choirs interested in performing the works.  Scrolling-score videos and recordings are available on the Cantata Dramatica website here.

‘Between Sea and Sky’ will receive a performance by ‘Untune the Sky’, at Exeter College on 2nd Feb, at their ‘Music for St Francis’ concert.  Details are here.  Untune the Sky are an Oxford-based group of singers.  More information about the group is available via their website and Twitter.

Later this month, conductor James Potter and Cantata Dramatica will record three of Solfa’s choral pieces as an educational resource for choirs preparing to learn the St Cuthbert Cantata in 2018. The pieces were written in collaboration with librettist Nicholas Pitts-Tucker, and comprise a setting of St Patrick’s Hymn from the St Cuthbert Cantata, along with Hagia Sophia and The Winter Storm, from a previously-commissioned suite of choral pieces based on the life of St Gregory of Nazianzus. Also at the end of November, organist Richard Moore will give the premiere of Solfa’s new piece Edwyllm at All Saints Margaret Street.

Solfa’s piece ‘Silver Tree Fanfare’ has been recorded by Illumina Duo on the Convivium label along with other contemporary pieces for trumpet and organ, performed by Ellie Lovegrove and Richard Moore. The CD was launched at a concert at St Lawrence Jewry Church on 4th Oct 2017. The CD ‘Dances and Poems’ is available to purchase here.

DPhil Thesis (2016) Oxford

Solfa’s new piece for solo organ ‘Edwylm’, will be premiered by Richard Moore at All Saints Margaret Street on 26th October 2017.  Solfa is also collaborating with librettist Nick Pitts-Tucker on a cantata based on the life of St Cuthbert, which will be performed in 2018.

Solfa’s piece ‘Dystopia’, as performed by flautist William Dowdall, features as part of Royal Irish Academy of Music’s conference day on 24th March 2017.  The Irish salute to female composers comprises a series of free-admission events, to take place at the RIAM and Smock Alley Theatre 1662. Information below and here.