We just finished the ‘about me’ video for the London Sinfonietta’s Blue Touch Paper project, which starts on Friday with the Collaborators’ Day. It’s just a short video introducing my work, my ideas and thoughts about collaboration. Here it is:
About Philip Venables (London Sinfonietta Blue Touch Paper) from Philip Venables on Vimeo.
Posted in About, blog, Projects
Tagged Blue Touch Paper, Collaboration, Interview, London Sinfonitta, Video
I’m delighted: I’ve been picked to take part in the first stage of the London Sinfonietta’s new Blue Touch Paper scheme. The chosen composers, artists, poets, writers, filmmakers, scientists, etc, will all attend a collaborators’ day on Friday 8th July in London, to find out about each other’s work, hear from some established artists about their collaborations, and to begin to pair up with people with whom we might want to make some work.
In the meantime, I have to make a 5-minute video about me and my work… I’m a little stumped about exactly what I want to say.. but it has to be done this weekend, so watch out for it on here!
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’m still buzzing after the BBC Radio 3 interview and broadcast with the Phoenix Piano Trio on In Tune with Sean Rafferty.
They talked about and played a movement from my new piece for them, Klaviertrio im Geiste. They played the Scherzo, which is controlled pitch descent using notes from Beethoven’s Ghost Trio, second movement (the same piano ‘tremolo’ that appears there). The piano descends exponentially, the strings descend linearly. This is all part of my increasing use of process composition. Hopefully, it doesn’t sound clinical or mechanical, but instead gusty and with a natural ‘fall’ towards the end.
Listen to the broadcast here:
BBC Radio 3 In Tune – Klaviertrio im Geiste (Scherzo) by philipvenables
I just received the newly-designed scores from Musicsales, and I’m delighted with them! You can get them on musicroom.com. (Annoyingly they haven’t uploaded thumbnails of the covers yet, though.) There are 12 new scores now (I think) – here’s a pic of four of them.
Phoenix Piano Trio were on BBC Radio 3′s In Tune with Sean Rafferty on Friday afternoon, performing one of the movements, the Scherzo, from my new piano trio. It was wonderful! I’m delighted – they played it superbly. I was only sorry I couldn’t be in London to take part in the interview.
You can listen again on iPlayer for the next 5 days – click here.
The Phoenix are on from the beginning, and the bit with me in starts from about 12:45 minutes in.
Wonderful news: one of the movements (the Scherzo) from my new piano trio, Klaviertrio im Geiste, will be performed live on BBC Radio 3 on Friday afternoon, 10th June, from about 4.45pm. It’ll be performed by the Phoenix Piano Trio as part of a performance and interview about their Beyond Beethoven series.
They very nicely commissioned me last year to write this new trio, as a companion to Beethoven’s Ghost trio, which they’ll perform together with my piece at The Forge in Camden, London, on Wednesday evening, 8th June, and in Oxford at theHolywell Music Room on Saturday 11th June.
It feels like this piece is a big compositional step forwards for me: lots more process-based musical structure and much more clarity and simplicity than earlier pieces. It feels like a very positive change. So I’m particularly excited to hear it realised.
So, come along on Wednesday, Tune In to In Tune on Friday, or come along on Saturday!
Posted in blog, Performances
Tagged BBC Radio 3, Beyond Beethoven, Holywell Music Room, In Tune, Klaviertrio im, Phoenix Piano Trio, The Forge
Well – a few weeks ago I went along to the premiere at Unerhörte Musik in Berlin, of my new short saxophone duo, Flipp, which I wrote for Christoph Enzel and Adrian Tully. I have to say that the piece was written very quickly, after coming back from a slew of concerts in London just the week before the concert. It pretty much only uses two notes for most of the piece. They played it BRILLIANTLY – and i was pretty happy with the piece. I haven’t put up the info page here for it yet, but there is a recording of this piece here. It works really good with headphones, to get the stereo effects between the two players. (In live performance they stand at opposite sides of the stage.) Check it out.
Flipp, for two saxophones (2011) by philipvenables
Christoph also played my Metamorphoses after Britten on soprano sax – rather wonderfully too. The acoustic in the BKA Theater in Berlin is as dry as a bone, which affects how resonant and harmonic the slow movements sound, but the fast movements in there sounded punchy and clear and really energetic. I really hope Christoph and i can record them properly sometime, to go alongside the wonderful recording of Melinda Maxwell playing the oboe version of the pieces.
Anyway – I look forward to working with these two amazing players again soon!
Posted in blog, Performances
Tagged Adrian Tully, Berlin, Christoph Enzel, Flipp, Metamorphoses after Britten, premiere, Saxophone, Unerhörte Musik
FINALLY…. after a lot of cogitating, I have reached a draft of a research proposal that I am happy with. This morning I sent it off for my application for a place and funding for a Ph.D.
The proposal is called ‘Fight music’, and deals with my preoccupation with aestheticized violence in art (specifically music, of course!), and also my recent explorations into incorporating speech into concert music.
Fingers crossed I get a place and funding. But actually the exercise of writing the proposal has been really helpful. The process helped me clarify what exactly I want to achieve with my music over the next few years, and also where I should look for inspiration, aesthetic context and support. I’m definitely fired up to do something (apply somewhere else?) even if I don’t get a place this time round…
Big thanks to Taymour Soomro, Anna Galt, John Fallas and Tony Gilbert for second (third and fourth) opinions on various drafts.
Posted in blog
Tagged aestheticized violence, fight music, future, ideas, Ph.D, proposal, Speech, spoken word, violence
This gallery contains 6 photos.
So this week I had a lot of fun shooting photos for two flyers for concerts on 9th May (DREAMS, Out Hear, Kings Place) and 10th & 11th September (CONTACT, Kings Place Festival). I was in Chester the last weekend … Continue reading
