Composition
The course is designed to enable students to focus intensively on the process of composition working amongst a stimulating group of composers.
During the course you will:
- Write a new piece for a public performance (Saturday 22nd August 2009)
- Work daily with an assigned chamber ensemble
- Receive individual teaching and rehearsal guidance.
- Receive a recording of your piece in performance and typeset your score and parts on Sibelius.
- Attend daily seminars on compositional techniques, new sounds and ideas, orchestration and important 20th/21st century works.
- Attend Improvisation and music-theatre workshops
- Have the opportunity to meet some of the finest young chamber musicians.
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The composition course is led by Peter Wiegold and Richard Barret. This year they are joined by guest composer, Claudia Molitor.
Peter Wiegold
Recent works include:
The Great Wheel, parts 1,2 and 3 London Sinfonietta and musicians from Uzbekistan, Glasgow/ London 2003, 'That man's talking nonsense' Stephen Gutman and Richard Benjafield London 2003, Brief Encounter' National Opera Studio/ Southbank Sinfonia London 2004, "Farewells take place in silence' (new version) Birmingham Contemporary Music Group, Birmingham 2004 'the burden'd air' for cello (Matthew Barley) and live electronics, 2006 'cho cho' Japanese ensemble Tozai mixing trad and modern instruments 2006.
Peter Wiegold has been a regular conductor of the Composers' Ensemble (recent concerts in Dartington, London, Brighton, Bath, Oxford, Darmstadt, Salzburg, Holland and Macedonia) and has also recently conducted bcmg the London Sinfonietta, Endymion Ensemble, Northern Sinfonia, Southbank Sinfonia, Royal Philharmonic Orchestra, Joensuu Orchestra, Symphony Nova Scotia and Orchestra Camarata Labacensis, Slovenia.
In the summer of 2002 he directed the Composers Ensemble in a "Proms Portrait' of Pierre Boulez in the presence of the composer. He directed the Northern Sinfonia in a new work by Piers Hellawell in the opening weekend of the Sage, Gateshead.
He has worked extensively internationally, in the last years in Canada, Italy, Spain, Norway, Finland, Holland, Belgium, Austria, Japan and Australia.
He wrote a new work for ensemble xx.jahrhundert, Vienna, 'Earth and Stars' for October 2006, celebrating 250 years since Mozart's birth.
He led an extended project with bcmg mixing improvisation, realisation and composition. This culminated in the opening concert of their 2004-5 season 'Invisible Cities' which received outstanding reviews.
The BCMG continues to astonish and delight with its virtuosity. Its natural talent for improvisation, shaped by Wiegold's inspirational direction............. the entrancing mood seemed to suspend time itself (the independent)
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Richard Barrett
Richard Barrett, born in Swansea in 1959, studied composition principally with Peter Wiegold. His compositions have won the Kranichsteiner Musikpreis (1986), Gaudeamusprijs (1989) and the British Composer Award for chamber music (2003). He taught electronic composition and performance in the Institute of Sonology in The Hague from 1996 to 2001; during 2001-02 he was a guest of the DAAD Berlin Artists’ Programme, remaining in Berlin until 2006 when he became a professor at Brunel University.
Richard Barrett’s work encompasses both composition and improvisation, ranging from chamber music to innovative uses of live electronics and collaborations with visual artists. Recent projects include NO, commissioned by the BBC Symphony Orchestra and premiered in February 2005 at the Barbican Hall in London, conducted by Tadaaki Otaka, and the ensemble pieces Melos and Island, both premiered by Elision in November 2006 and both part of CONSTRUCTION, a two-hour work for voices, ensemble and electronics commissioned by Liverpool Cultural Capital to be premiered complete in 2008.
Richard Barrett also continues his twenty-year collaboration with Paul Obermayer in the electronic duo FURT and performs regularly with vocalist Ute Wassermann, saxophonist Evan Parker, bassist Adam Linson, cellist Arne Deforce and numerous ensembles from both compositional and improvisational areas, including the vocal/instrumental/electronic octet fORCH, which gave its first performances in Germany and Switzerland in late 2005. His work as composer and performer is documented on over 20 CDs, including four discs devoted to his compositions and four by FURT.
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Guest composer: Claudia Molitor
Born in 1974, Claudia studied Music and Media at Sussex University, went on to do an MA in Music at City University, London and completed her PhD in Composition with Michael Finnissy in 2004.
In March, 2006, Oh Du Kleines Kabinett, commissioned by Queens’ College Cambridge, was premiered by Anton Lukoszevieze and musicians of Queens’ college. This piece was short-listed for a RPS Music Award in 2007. Her piano piece, Tango, was short-listed by spnm in 2004-5 and was performed by Rolf Hind at the music festival fuseleeds 06.
The Norwegian accordionist Frode Haltli performed Even if the world is infinitely complex as part of spnm’s HINDSIGHT series at Wapping Hydraulic Power Station in London during April 2006. That May, Who kissed my head?, for live electronics and acoustic instruments, was performed by players from the London Sinfonietta in collaboration with Sound Intermedia. She was commissioned by CoMA (Contemporary Music Making for Amateurs) to write a flexibly scored piece called I had to protest for their 2006 Open Score Project.
It descends occasionally, Kürbis and For Leone were performed in early 2007 by the Kürbis ensemble in London and at Cambridge’s Kettle’s Yard and there were performances of Leek in London and Manchester by the BackBeat Percussion Quartet.
She took part in spnm’s 2006/07 Adopt a Composer scheme which pairs amateur ensembles, in this case the City of Southampton Orchestra, with a composer for a year. The piece was performed at Southampton’s Guildhall in November 2007.
Untitled [fizzy painting makes me happy] for Apartment House was performed during Wien Modern in Vienna, Austria, in November 2007 and lorem ipsum for the vocal ensemble EXAUDI was also performed in November in Gerona, Spain, and Edinburgh.
Future concerts include a performance of Pink Beads Pop for recording and broadcast by the German radio station WDR Cologne in March 2008 by Apartment House; a sound recording for a 3D slow-motion film by Brian McClave, to be shown in Stoke-on-Trent in March 2008 and a performance at Cambridge’s Kettle’s Yard in February.
Current work include an oboe solo for Christopher Redgate for the Wild Dog Festival in 2008, a voice duo piece for recording by NMC Records for The NMC Songbook, a celebration CD for their 20 year existence, a short film with live performance elements and a piece for Ensemble Scratch the Surface for a concert in Nimes, France.
A Flicker Book Score was published in new notes in 2007 and will be published again in The Liberal in early 2008.
She released her first CD Lopsided in 2007. A piece from the CD was broadcast on Radio Reverb.
Her work has been performed at the Brighton Festival Fringe, the London New Wind Festival, fuseleeds, Spitalfields Festival, York Late Festival and the Summer Institute for Contemporary Performance Practice in Boston, USA.
Both Leek and Das Schwein, das Schwein were recently broadcast on Hear & Now, BBC Radio 3. Articles about her work have been published in the BBC Music Magazine and the Observer Review. She was just awarded the George Butterworth Award 2007 by spnm and was a panellist at the 2007 Battle of Ideas Festival.
Together with Sophie Appleton and James Weeks she is founder of the Kürbis ensemble.
Claudia is also the festival director and co-founder of Soundwaves Festival. The festival took place in June 2007 for the first time.
Sample Timetable
| 8.30-9am | BREAKFAST |
| 9-11am | Seminar |
| 11-11.30am | COFFEE BREAK |
| 11.30-1pm | Seminar |
| 1-2pm | LUNCH |
| 2-4pm | Workshop (or free time) |
| 4-4.30pm | Work with Players |
| 4.30-5pm | TEA BREAK |
| 5-7pm | Seminar / Individual Lessons |
| 7-8pm | SUPPER |
| 8.15-9.30pm | Improvisation and theatre skills workshop / Work with Players |
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Audio
| 2006 | Emily Smith: Violin solo |
| 2007 | Gregor Riddell: A versus D |
| David Ibbett: Song and Dances | |
| Charlotte Bray: High Flight | |