Ensemble Adapter gave the world premiere of Numbers 91-95 by me (text by Simon Howard) at the Wien Modern Festival on 10th November 2011, in the Casino Baumgarten in Vienna.
I’m really happy with the piece and the performance, and so were the Ensemble. They performed it again the following week at the wonderful Borusan Müsik Evi venue as part of the new music series.
Tagged Berlin, borusan, Ensemble Adapter, Flute, harp, istanbul, numbers 91-95, Simon Howard, speaker, tape recorder, vienna, Wien Modern
I’m delighted to say I’ve written a short piece for viola and tape (or optional speaking chorus), as a new soundtrack to Sebastian Schmidt’s short film Contrasts in Space.
This will be performed by Ensemble Amorpha at the British Film Institute on 1st December in London, at an event called Shorts Amorpha.
Here’s more info about it. Do go along if you can! There’s lots of new scores to silent short films, by some very good composers including Luke Styles, Chris Mayo and Naomi Pinnock.
Here’s the trailer, too….
Posted in Other, Performances, Videos
Tagged BFI, ensemble amorpha, sebastian schmidt, short films, shorts amorpha, tape, Viola
I just received a copy of the Signals volume of new music for oboe. It looks great! It features my Metamorphoses after Britten in it, and I also designed the snazzy front cover! (not bright pink, this time..)
The volume was edited by the amazing Melinda Maxwell, for whom I wrote my Metamorphoses, and John Stringer an oboist-composer. It’s now available on musicroom.com - though I don’t know why they haven’t put up my lovely cover yet! :-)
If you play the oboe, go out and buy it now – it’s got a great selection of stuff in it. And not all of it that difficult either. Very suitable for Grade 7-8 upwards to university/conservatoire/professional, I think.
Fuck forever from Philip Venables on Vimeo.
I’m delighted that my 3-minute Six Word Opera was premiered last week (11th and 12th August) at Riverside Studios in London, as part of the Tête-à-Tête Opera Festival. It was performed by the wonderful John Savournin (speaker/singer), James Young (piano and MD), Rosalind Acton (cello) and Matthew West (woodblock). Check out this video of one of the performances.
James Young asked me to write one (and he probably regrets it…) for the second year of the successful Six Word Opera project. I was very glad to! As almost all of my recent pieces have involved spoken word in concert music (I —- the body electric, numbers 91-95, numbers 76-80 : tristan und isolde, The Schmürz all in the last 12 months), this seemed a great way to try out some ideas. Also a good testing ground for the project that I am working on with Jorge Balça and Omar Ebrahim which is also a mini-opera, semi-staged, with themes of sex, sexuality and violence.
Hope you enjoy it!
I’m glad to say that I’ve just finished my latest piece, numbers 91-95 for the Berlin-based Ensemble Adapter. The piece is a setting (of sorts) of the poem by the same name by the British poet Simon Howard, whose work I really love. His poetry blog is here.
Ensemble Adapter are a fearless new music ensemble that aren’t afraid to make unusual concert presentations, including video, speaking, improvisation and conceptual performance. This piece by no means pushes the boundaries of what they have done in the past, in this sense, but it certainly does push the boundaries of my work, in that it is for speaker, two tape recorders, flute, harp and woodblock.
My numbers 91-95 is not really a setting in the traditional sense… more just a reading of the poem with musical accompaniment, and some verses of the poem replayed on old cassette tapes, which echoes the themes of dreaming and forgetting in the poem.
The premiere is on 8th November at the Wien Modern festival in Austria… I’ll keep you posted!
Tagged 2011, Ensemble Adapter, numbers 91-95, Simon Howard, Wien Modern
Flipp, for two saxophones (2011) by philipvenables
Year: 2011
Duration: 3 minutes
Orchestration: two of the same saxophones
Flipp was first performed on 24th May 2011 at BKA Theater, Berlin, Adrian Tully and Christoph Enzel, as part of the Unerhörte Musik series.
Posted in Chamber, Solo, Works
Tagged Adrian Tully, BKA Theater, Christoph, Duo, Flipp, Saxophone, Unerhörte Musik
I recently found out that one of my solo piano pieces has been shortlisted for the Presteigne Festival Composers’ Competition 2011. I wrote two more piano studies, based on material I used for Klaviertrio im Geiste, and submitted them in February. Alissa Firsova is going to workshop and record the pieces next Tuesday at Birmingham Conservatoire, and then they’ll announce the winner. Fingers crossed.
Once the competition is over I’ll add these Two Studies to my growing collection of piano studies. These two are another study in tremolo, and one in the use of pedals. They’re little ‘crystallisations’ of classical sonata movements (in this case, a scherzo and a rondo)… but without the fluff (particularly in the case of the rondo, which is very sparse). I’ll post up a recording soon and perusal score soon.
JUNK BAND! is a new band / installation that was devised for the Kings Place Festival 2010. It is curated and composed for by Philip Venables, and directed by Serge Vuille.
Check out the video to see us building the junk installation in Kings Place. It took three and a half hours to install, but you can watch it here in two and a half minutes! More videos of performances will follow.
The full performance programme at Kings Place is:
Clapping music – Steve Reich (performed on polystyrene pieces)
Brouhaha – Peter Wiegold (adapted for junk)
Lotus – Philip Venables (written specially for the installation)
Performers: Serge Vuille, Adam Clifford, Pete Handley, Sarah Cresswell
The sculpture is designed to encourage people to have a go on it, experiment, find interesting sounds and make their own music. We project some handy tips about playing it, and some video material, onto the walls of the gallery around the sculpture. There’s everything in it, bar the kitchen sink: plastic buckets, helium bottle, bits of wood, newspaper, cooking items or cardboard box drum kit. We’re looking for a kitchen sink to add…
The band is available to conceive “Made to Measure” sculptures and matching musical programmes for Festivals, Art Galleries or any event needing a touch of energetic and original sound, and something to bring adults and children together in public spaces.
Go to Serge Vuille’s page about the Junk Band
Pics: setting up in the atrium space; rehearsing on the kit. More pics and videos coming soon!
Year: 2008
Duration: 6 minutes
Orchestration: soprano and guitar
Time Stands Still was commissioned for the Sing Softly tour by Juliet Fraser.
It was first performed at the Soundwaves festival, The Pavilion Theatre, Brighton, on Friday 27th June 2008, by Juliet Fraser (soprano) and Alan Thomas (guitar). www.alanthomas-guitar.com
Time Stands Still is a free response to Dowland’s song by the same name. It uses the same principal notes in the vocal line: a downward major scale. In this case, F major. Around this long, mostly static vocal line is spun a vigorous guitar accompaniment, which is mainly independent of the vocal line. I wanted to explore the idea of stasis and motion. The harmony of this piece is quite static, but the gestures are always moving, with the exception of the slow, pulseless, final section of the piece.
The only words used are those of the title “Time stands still”.
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Tagged Alan Thomas, Dowland, guitar, Juliet Fraser, Lute song, soprano
Year: 2011
Duration: 12 minutes
Orchestration: piano, violin, cello
I –[Tacet]
II – Adagio
III – Scherzo
IV – Rondo
Klaviertrio im Geiste was commissioned by the Phoenix Piano Trio, with funds from the RVW Trust, to be performed by the Phoenix Piano Trio in several concerts alongside Beethoven’s Klaviertrio in D-Dur, op.70/1 “Geistertrio” (“Ghost” Trio).
In the last few years I have written pieces based on music by Dowland, Bach, Mozart and Britten, and I’ve really enjoyed experimenting with these older musical forms, bringing them far away from their original modes of expressions – sometimes even subverting them – but maintaining some kind of essence of what was there. In a similar vein, I took most of the raw materials for Klaviertrio im Geiste (notes, tempo ideas, gestures and figurations, etc.) from the slow movement of Beethoven’s Geistertrio – the music that gave his trio this nickname. Out of this I have fashioned what I would consider to be a ‘reflection’ of the classical form: miniature movements with simple and transparent textures, few ideas and a certain neatness. The sonata form first movement is, at the moment at least, tacet.
Im Geiste means, in German, ‘in one’s mind’s eye’ or, more literally, ‘in spirit’, as well as ‘der Geist’ having the literal meaning of ‘ghost’. So Klaviertrio im Geiste means ‘Piano trio in spirit’. I thought it a fitting pun for the provenance of this piece.
Klaviertrio im Geiste (2011) – II – Adagio by philipvenables
Klaviertrio im Geiste (2011) – III – Scherzo by philipvenables
Klaviertrio im Geiste (2011) – IV – Rondo by philipvenables
Tagged Beethoven, Classical, Phoenix Piano Trio, Piano Trio, Sholto Kynoch
