Category: Performance

  • Quotation…

    Berio’s Sinfonia was my first encounter with quotation in music. Certainly my first experience of music where the appropriation of another’s music was used to achieve a particular effect. I was convinced that the third movement of Sinfonia represented an attempt to reinvigorate the idea of the ‘masterwork’ in an age of such musical diversity.…

  • The Passenger – ENO

    Hearing the players in the pit getting ready for a performance at the Coliseum reminds me of the limitless potential of the orchestra. It is a rich sonic palette that remains rich with variety and power. Weinberg’s orchestration in ‘The Passenger’ reminded me of Britten – in its use of solo woodwind lines in colouring…

  • Juniper Dreams

    Posters are up and rehearsals have started. I’m feeling remarkable fortunate to be having my first musical theatre work performed by the pupils I teach. For the first time in my compositional work I have the opportunity to work with the performers over an extended period and I am finding I am also composing as…

  • Listening to expectations

    Yet another Twitter discussion has inspired me to contemplate on a particular musical issue. Listening. I revel in the fact that music exists in the fourth dimension – how the first lecture of my degree started – and music is the manipulation of this dimension. Music orders sounds over a period of time and we…

  • Three plays in two days

    I enjoy being part of the National Theatre’s Young Patron scheme as there are regular emails to alert me to events that I might miss otherwise out of ignorance. I was really pleased to attend the second Double Feature in the Paintframe this week and see two very different yet intriguing plays. ‘Nightwatchman’ was a…

  • Dance steps…

    “To become integrated and healthy … You need to sense the patterns of preparation, stress, and release contained in your scores, and let these patterns inform and animate your gestures, which become varied and adaptable rather than habitual and fixed.” — Pedro de Alcantara, Integrated Practice: Coordination, Rhythm and Sound (OUP 2011) I’m really enjoying…

  • Integrating musicians

    I am really pleased to have received Pedro de Alcantara’s book last week and keen to start reading to write my review. I feel a little nervous about trying to encapsulate what I hope to be a very interesting read in 500 words but fingers-crossed. I’ve managed to read the introductory pages and already nuggets…

  • Forward and Up

    Several years of Alexander Technique have had a rather huge effect on my entire thinking. I recall the lessons, particularly the two I was fortunate to have with Pedro de Alcantara in Paris, with excitement as every one gave me a renewed understanding of my body and how it interacts with space. At the time…

  • Is it the notes or the performance?

    I’m frantically writing on my iPhone between Brent Cross and Hampstead – as my train descends underground – as I have spent over three hours today listening to the same Fauré nocturne and I’ve been wondering what is making me rather obsessed with the piece. Is it the subtle harmonic movement, the piano writing that…