Author Archive

Solfa has been announced as the winner of the Orchestra of St.Paul’s Composition Competition, 2011. Her piece, ‘The Copper Faye’ will be performed by members of the orchestra on Sunday 19th June at St.Paul’s Church, Covent Garden.

Information about the Orchestra and their concert diary can be found at: http://www.orchestraofstpauls.org/

Opal for eight female voices, which received its premiere in June at the NCH, is having another performance by SoundSet, a new ensemble founded by Laura Kilty and Emma O’Halloran. Details of the concert below:

CMC presents two Christmas Concerts with new vocal group SoundSet on 15 December

The Contemporary Music Centre is delighted to celebrate the Christmas season with two concerts featuring SoundSet, an innovative new ensemble, on 15 December 2010. Both concerts will take place in the Centre’s new platform for performance space on the ground floor of its building in Fishamble Street. Entitled Winter Variations the concerts feature a selection of contemporary Christmas carols by Irish and International composers.

Irish composers Anne Marie O’Farrell, Jane O’Leary and Nick Roth have all written new works specifically for the ensemble and the occasion. Irish composers Stephen Gardner, Piers Hellawell and Solfa Carlile also feature. A call for contemporary carols by the Contemporary Music Centre, through its international networks, has resulted in an international carol by Pawel Lukaszewski of Poland.

SoundSet, under the direction of Laura Kilty and Emma O’Halloran, aims to put on high quality concerts which feature repertoire from a huge variety of musical genres – contemporary, electronic, Renaissance, Baroque and anything well-written and exciting!

“The Contemporary Music Centre is very pleased to provide SoundSet with their first performance opportunity and for SoundSet to be the first ensemble to perform in the Centre’s new platform for performance. We hope this is a sign of many future collaborations for our new space and continuing opportunities for Irish composers to have their work performed” says Karen Hennessy, Promotion Manager, The Contemporary Music Centre.

The first performance on 15 December is at lunchtime, 1pm – 2pm. It is open to the general public and free of charge. Booking is recommended as space is limited. To book tel: 01 6731922 or email info@cmc.ie The second performance is for friends, colleagues and supporters of the Contemporary Music Centre and takes place 6pm – 7pm, followed by a reception.

Programme – Winter Variations

Opal Solfa Carlile

The Mahogany Tree (premiere) Stephen Gardner

Emerodde Piers Hellawell

Two Christmas Motets (Irish premiere) Pawel Lukaszewski

A Winter’s Prayer (premiere) Anne-Marie O’Farrell

Ding, Dong (premiere) Jane O’Leary

Maoz Tsur (premiere) Nick Roth

Solfa has completed a fifteen-minute work for members of the Aldworth Philharmonic Orchestra, Reading. The piece, ‘Phantom Isle Suite’ will be performed on 22nd of January at the Public Hall, Reading. More ino available on the Aldworth Philharmonic website: http://www.aldworthphilharmonic.org.uk/

Solfa’s piano piece ‘Elidor’s Capture’ has been published by the ‘Simplified Music Notation’ initiative and the Creative Arts Trust. Solfa will perform her piece at the launch on Friday 12th at the Conservatoire in Blackheath, which takes place at 6.30pm. Details in the following link:

http://www.simplifiedmusicnotation.org/spweb/launchdetails.php

and also via the website: http://www.simplifiedmusicnotation.org/

Here is the recording of my piece ‘Breathe Shine Seek’ (ca. 4 mins) from the BBC Singers Workshop, on Tue 26th Oct. The recording was done by Jude Obermuller, also a participant in the workshop.

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

Today I took part in a workshop with the BBC Singers at Maida Vale Studios. It was co-ordinated by The Royal College of Music in collaboration with the BBC Singers. The workshop was led by Gabriel Jackson and David Hill (Conductor). There were a number of RCM Composers involved; all having written pieces lasting 3-6 minutes. One of the pieces was my ‘Breathe, Shine, Seek’ (based on a poem by John Donne).

I was really impressed with the Choir – they sightread extremely difficult pieces and seemed to pluck notes out of thin air. They had a repetiteur/pianist present to help them with the pitches as all the pieces were written for choir a capella.

My piece was the second – at about 11.45am. I was initially concerned about the time constraints (we were given 35 mins approx per piece), but it worked out perfectly as the singers sightread everything almost flawlessly at once, and some of the pieces were more challenging than others, so they were allowed more/less time. I ended up getting about 40 minutes which was perfect.

I learned a few things – firstly about layout; I need to create Ossia-type staves rather than dividing up the line, and put one line of text above the stave if there is an elaborate divisi passage. (Alison warned me that this would be mentioned, but I’d already handed in the piece by the time I showed it to her).

Also – comments were made about my metronome marks (I’d written the piece in 3 or 4 days as there was about a month’s notice for the workshop..not including ‘rumours of’ the workshop, and I’d been working on something else at the time). The metronome marks were a bit inaccurate and some sensitive suggestions were made by David about varying it a bit more, most of which I took on board and worked out really well. I also changed a couple of dynamics based on balance (solos etc) and learned something about the subtle difference between grace notes ‘on the beat’ and accented semiquaver upbeats. A debate was triggered over whether the composer or the conductor should be responsible for the tempo variations. I thought: Surely the composer is responsible, but the conductor can create a unique interpretation based around the directions…(?) David Hill reminded me that some composers are more meticulous than others when it comes to directions, and don’t want their ideas to be ‘meddled with’.

My poem gets pretty dodgy towards the end – I only used the first few lines. Jude told me that John Adams used the exact same poem in ‘Doctor Atomic’ (with more of a ballady setting), which surprised me, as since I started setting it all I could think of was what a terrible choice I’d made…! It did work out though, apart from the whole ‘Battered Cod’ joke it evoked (again thanks Alison, for the heads-up)! Text below for the few lines I used:

Batter my heart, three-personed God; for you
As yet but knock, breathe, shine, and seek to mend;
That I may rise and stand, o’erthrow me, and bend
Your force to break, blow, burn, and make me new.
I, like an usurped town, to another due,
Labor to admit you, but O, to no end;

Solfa has written a choral piece ‘Breathe, Shine, Seek’, is one of six young composers’ pieces which will be workshopped by the BBC Singers next Tuesday (26th Oct). The workshop was partly co-ordinated by the Royal College of Music where Solfa is studying for an MMus.

International Congress of Musical Signification.

Me giving my talk today (see previous entry for abstract). Excuse the blurriness. The paper went well; I think it was fairly clear. It was noted that all my research subjects were very young: (21-26) and that their common views/experiences might have something to do with this. I might ask the same gang of people in fifty years whether their philosophy and views about the composer/audience relationship has changed at all…!

I was told it was comprehensive and it did provoke a lot of questions and discussion. I was pleased to find that a handful of the audience were Composers, and I had a good crowd of 16 or so; not bad seeing as I expected about 4! Memorable questions asked afterwards were: “Do you imagine yourself as an audience member while composing?” and “Do you think that we can be conditioned to experience clear emotions through atonal music?” The ’emotions’ thing becomes a little clichéd, but I defended the next speaker (Piotr Podlipniak) when he was attacked for his over-use of the term, in his research on ‘The universal aesthetic value of tonality and the ubiquity of tonal music‘ (already a provocative topic)! I made the point that for a lay audience, emotion is the first port of call in their attempt to encode what they hear (back to the ‘Constructivist theory’ about people not just passively receiving sensory input but being inclined to find meaning somehow). As children we often learn about classical music in this way; we identify major and minor keys by their potential to express certain ‘moods’. Speaking of moods, there was another talk on Tuesday about how we have to connect a mood to someone, or a legimate circumstance – so, a landscape can’t really be ‘gloomy’, but a painting of a landscape can be etc (Krzysztof Guczalski: Expressive meaning of music – a pioneer conception).

The main ‘discoveries’ in my research were:

A. The majority of composers suggested pre-concert talks or programme notes as a means of explaining to the audience what their music is about. This was interesting considering that a couple of the composers had elsewhere in the questionnaire insisted that the wider audience’s response was irrelevant to them. By insisting on these tools to translate their musical ideas, they are actively imposing a certain meaning on the piece for the audience, so therefore they must be at least a little concerned about how the audience hears the piece.

B. There was a divide in the mindset of some of the composers I questionned, between those who used the lay audience’s ‘ignorance’ as an inspiration to ‘write to challenge’ and those who decided that to acknowledge the audience as an important factor would inevitably hinder their development.

There were other little discoveries but I think those two were particularly important. I gave the audience a printed copy of some (anonymous) answers from the composers I used as research subjects.

Last week, for two days (Tues-Thurs) I had the honour of staying in Connecticut with legendary orchestrator William David Brohn. This was all thanks to the aforementioned Septimus, who makes my life all the more interesting..! He first met Bill in 2006, following a performance of ‘Mary Poppins’ at the Prince Edward Theatre in London. Tim had been a fan of Bill’s since the 1994 re-orchestrated revival of ‘Oliver!’, and thankfully decided to tell him so. Thus began a wonderful friendship, which resulted in ‘Broadway to West End by Special Arrangement’ – a massive gala last year at London’s Drury Lane theatre, in honour of Bill, which was co-produced and created by Tim.  Bill’s most famous scores are probably ‘Wicked’ and ‘Ragtime’. He counts his ‘West Side Story Suite’ (for Joshua Bell) as a work that is particularly special and personal to him.

Bill was working on a re-orchestration of Michel Legrand’s ‘Marguerite’ – which premiered in London in 2008, and I happened to see three times but has since been re-written, book and score. The songs have been changed and this forthcoming production also has a larger band. We heard a demo by Michel Legrand and his wife, performing ‘China Doll’ from Marguerite- originally for solo female but re-written as a duet. We were delighted to discuss the production with Bill, who hadn’t seen the show in performance. I also highlighted a couple of accidentals in the harp writing, which I thought might have been an interesting modal effect but turned out to be a pedal error.

I noticed that Bill’s orchestration style is characterised by a lot of individual, lyrical lines and countermelody, rather than filling in a particular harmony. It’s very refined and creates a sense of polyphony, but still emphasises the vocal line. At times it can be very thick and hearty as well, such as in ‘Journey On’ from Ragtime, and the Gershwin arrangements for Joshua Bell. I noticed the glorious orchestral combination of Gran Cassa, Tubular Bells and Timps for a combined dramatic ‘thud’!

I played ‘Entwining Brances’ (finale) from my ‘Deirdre and Naoise‘ for Bill, and he was very complimentary about it. He liked the fruity ‘Cello solos, and strangely didn’t complain about the Glock, though it’s the biggest problem in the piece for me. There are things about the orchestration that I would change considerably now, but I guess it was a good effort for the stage I was at four years ago. At Bill’s I also studied the full (orchestral) score for ‘Ragtime’, and ‘Ragtime Symphonic Suite’ (of which I had recordings). I also had the honour of studying the score for Stephen Schwartz’s recent opera, ‘Seance on a Wet Afternoon’, and met Schwartz briefly on the Thursday morning before leaving for New York. ‘Seance’ is a beautiful diatonic work which is the kind of thing I was hoping for in Rufus Wainwright’s ‘Prima Donna’, but didn’t quite get.. The arias definitely had the distinct ‘Schwartz’ trademark on them.

As for the Broadway Shows, I can recommend Bacharach’s ‘Promises Promises’, and as always ‘Mary Poppins’! The orchestration is of course, stunning. I took a sneaky photo of Bill’s Tony Award for Wicked, which I will upload at some point after Tim does the photos.

Broadway to West End

Saturday 22nd January 2011 – 7.30pm

• Solfa Carlile – New Work  (APO Young Composers Award Commission)
• Poulenc – Organ Concerto (soloist: David Pether)
• Tchaikowsky – Symphony No. 6 (Pathetique)

The Concert Hall, Reading