A composer of ferocious dramatic instincts
— Alex Ross
Some production images from the Opera Philadelphia production of Denis & Katya, September 2019. Directed by Ted Huffman, Design & Light by Andrew Lieberman, Video by Pierre Martin, Costumes by Millie Hiibel. The performers featured in the photos are Sienna Licht Miller and Theo Hoffmann, with cellists Branson Yeast, Rose Bart, Jean Kim and Jennie Lorenzo. All images taken by Dominic Mercier © Opera Philadelphia. They can be used for press purposes with the appropriate credit.
The French premiere of 4.48 Psychosis took place 18-22 September 2019 at the Opéra National du Rhin in Strasbourg, in collaboration with the Musica Festival. The Royal Opera production was performed by the Orchestre Philharmonique de Strasbourg and Sound Intermedia under the baton of Richard Baker, with Gweneth-Ann Rand, Robyn Allegra Parton, Susanna Hurrell, Samantha Price, Rachael Lloyd and Lucy Schaufer as the six cast.
Below are some excerpts of reviews (machine translated from original language):
“Philip Venables’ music translates the shift into an intimate space where depression becomes an intimate melody that accompanies this loss of self.” — The Wanderer
“A devastating musical writing with varied influences faithfully takes up the composite dimension of the initial text: fragments of lines, intimate dialogues, cognitive tests, lists of medicines telescope. Twelve musicians conducted by Richard Baker transcribe the permanent agitation of an unquiet body and brain in a score that sometimes lets out a dull din, assumes a proximity to the skilfully controlled cacophony or stretches out a throbbing hum to translate the uncomfortable and disturbing character of the work.” — SceneWeb
We sent Denis & Katya out into the world on 18th September at the premiere at Suzanne Roberts Theater in Philadelphia with Opera Philadephia. Scored for just two singers, four cellos and pre-recorded sound and video, the 65-minute pseudo-verbatim opera tells the story of two Russian teenagers who, while caught up with the police after running away from home, broadcast their last days online. Ted Huffman and I are so proud of what we’ve made, and it wouldn’t have been possible without our incredible collaborators Ksenia Ravvina, Pierre Martin, Rob Kaplowitz, Andrew Lieberman and Emily Senturia, all the team at Opera Philadephia, led by the exceptional David Devan, and our two dedicated, talented casts (Siena Licht Miller, Theo Hoffman and Emily Edmonds, Johnny Herford), our cello ensemble and technical crew.
The response to Denis & Katya by the press has been incredible. Here are a small selection of reviews.
“Most important for the long-term health of the art was the première, at Opera Philadelphia, of Philip Venables’s “Denis & Katya,” based on the real-life story of two Russian teen-agers who died after a standoff with police. With extraordinary sensitivity, Venables examined the fallout of viral Internet fame and media frenzy. […] What is remarkable about “Denis & Katya” is how it explores the psychological roots of our fixation on such sad and gruesome cases. […] Venables’s way of building tension through minimal means is astonishing throughout.”
— Alex Ross, The New Yorker
“The result of all these elements is an uneasily poignant reflection on storytelling, on the possibilities and limitations of our understanding — especially across space and language in the fragmentary era of social media. At just over an hour, with just six performers, it’s an intimate, haunting triumph.”
— Zachary Woolfe, The New York Times
“Employing the most slimly elegant resources, Festival O’s Denis & Katya is a monumental, dramatically shattering event.” […] “This is an important, out-of-the-box work, superbly performed. Denis & Katya deserves to have a long afterlife, and with luck, it will. But if you can see one of the remaining performances here at Festival O19, you absolutely should. It is utterly spellbinding.”
— David Fox, Parterre Box
“Opera Philadelphia opened its Festival O19 Wednesday on a level that eclipsed the expectations created by the unusually high success rate of past festivals, this time with the world premiere of Denis & Katya. Highly experimental in its manner, the piece exudes great confidence of purpose plus gritty, thoughtful artistry”
— David Patrick Stearns, Philadelphia Inquirer
“The arresting world premiere of “Denis & Katya” by composer Philip Venables and librettist Ted Huffman tackled a real-life fatal collision of unhappy teenagers, guns and social media. In 2016 in Russia, the eponymous couple, both 15 years old, ran away from home, holed up in a family hunting cottage, and posted photos and a video of their standoff with the police on social media. The 70-minute opera ingeniously deconstructs this event, recounting it through the eyes of six observers” […] “As was the case with his shattering “4.48 Psychosis,” Mr. Venables’s music is particularly good at conjuring up emotional atmosphere and building tension. The piece starts out almost boringly placid, with the singers describing bits of the video in flattened speech, and gradually gathers momentum to reach an almost unbearable peak, followed by a reflective coda.”
— Heidi Waleson, Wall Street Journal ($)
“Exactly what happened to Denis and Katya remains conjectural; Huffman and Venables takes pains to thematize the complexities and complicities inherent in their having created—and in our observing—the resulting opera.” […] “Denis & Katya may not assuage those Philadelphia operagoers still awaiting the return of Tebaldi, Tucker and Corelli performing Verdi and Puccini in front of faded painted panels. But it’s an impactful work of music theater that OP executed with admirable visual and aural precision and imagination.”
— David Shengold, Opera News
“Composer Philip Venables and Librettist Ted Huffman’s unsettling, unconventional new opera Denis & Katya challenges the ear, the eye, and the soul to accept a wholly new hybrid form of operatic expression. This is a performance quite unlike any most have ever experienced.” […] “Mr. Venables’ score is a wholly unique aural palette. The deep, often mournful keening of the cello sound grounds the composition in a suitable Russian melancholy. But there are ample flashes of brilliant overtones, and agitated writing as well to complement the often declamatory, angular vocal lines. It was a pleasure to encounter a composer new to me, whose work was forward-looking, yet abundantly accessible.”
— James Sohre, Opera Today
“Denis and Katya, a striking music drama receiving its world premiere as part of Festival O19, might stake a claim as the opera that most closely captures the 21st century’s virtual-reality ethos. The 70-minute work—crafted by composer Philip Venables and librettist/director Ted Huffman, with the aid of translator Ksenia Ravvina—is easily the best original offering I’ve encountered since Opera Philadelphia started presenting these festivals three seasons ago. Rarely has a work felt so connected to the culture in which it was created.”
— Cameron Kelsall, Broadstreet Review
Here is a press photo of Philip Venables, copyright Dominic Mercier, taken in Philadelphia in May 2019. It can be used for promotional use with the appropriate credit. Click on the image for very high-resolution version.
Denis & Katya, my second opera, has been awarded the prestigious Fedora Generali Prize for Opera this year. The prize was awarded at the Teatro la Fenice in Venice at a special awards ceremony on 28th June. The prize is awarded to contemporary opera that is currently being developed which takes risks or break conventions somehow. The prize money of 150,000€ goes to Opera Philadelphia in support of the development costs of Denis & Katya.
The ceremony was a grand affair, with a performance and reception afterwards. I’m very grateful to the Fedora Prize, the Jury who selected our project, and of course to Opera Philadelphia, Ted Huffman and our team who is making this project so exciting to work on. The premiere of Denis & Katya is on 18th September 2019 in Philadelphia, and will be followed by productions in the UK with Music Theatre Wales and in France with Opéra National Montpellier.
Here is a video with David Devan, CEO of Opera Philadelphia, talking about the Fedora Generali Prize for Opera.
Semperoper in Dresden have announced more dates next season for their production of 4.48 Psychose. The opera had its german premiere run in Semper Zwei in April/May this year, with sold-out performances. The dates next season will be 7th, 9th, 10th, 13th and 15th September, and tickets can be booked here.
Sempoeroper have made a new video trailer of the production using rehearsal footage, which you can watch, above.
My new latest music theatre piece, Denis & Katya, has been announced for its premiere production with the lead commissioner Opera Philadelphia. The work has been conceived and written with my long-time collaborator, Ted Huffman. It is pseudo-documentary music theatre, taking a true story about two Russian teenagers who died in November 2016 after a stand-off with armed police. It looks at the way the internet played a role in their death, and more generally, about how we interact with each other and show empathy in the internet age. We hope that the form of the piece is particularly exciting in the way that it tells the story.
Denis & Katya will also your the UK in February/March 2020 with Music Theatre Wales, including the London performances at the Southbank Centre, and the piece will make its french premiere in Montpellier. Music Theatre Wales and Montpellier Opera are both co-commissioners with Opera Philadelphia. More information about the piece and ticket booking is here, and the London performances are available to book here.
Denis & Katya has also been shortlisted for the prestigious Fedora Prize. The prize-giving ceremony is on June 28th in Venice.
From 6th—10th May, I will be the featured composer at the PLUG Festival, a contemporary music festival at the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland in Glasgow. The PLUG Festival predominantly features the work of student composers from the conservatoire in an packed schedule of chamber concerts. I will be giving some consultation lessons to young composers there, and presenting a seminar on my work. On the final night of the festival, the Glasgow New Music Expedition will perform Illusions alongside some other new works by both students and established composers, all conducted by Richard Baker.
Some production images from the Prototype Festival / Royal Opera production of 4.48 Psychosis, January 2019. Directed by Ted Huffman, Design by Hannah Clark, Video by Pierre Martin, Light by D.M. Wood, Sound by Sound Intermedia and Fight Direction by RC-Annie. The performers featured in the photos are Gweneth-Ann Rand, Lucy Hall, Susanna Hurrell, Samantha Price, Rachael Lloyd and Lucy Schaufer, with the Contemporaneous Ensemble conducted by William Cole. All images taken by Paula Court. They can be used for press purposes with the appropriate credit.
4.48 Psychosis made its american premiere in New York City a few weeks ago at the Prototype Festival. The exceptional cast, orchestra and crew gave six performances of the Royal Opera production (directed by Ted Huffman) over eight days in the Baruch Performing Arts Centre. The performances were sold out, and the response from the press was incredible. Here is a small selection.
“there was no denying the sledgehammer power of Philip Venables’s “4.48 Psychosis” […] Venables’s bent for politically charged topics is all the more conspicuous because of his frequent use of speaking voices, which are coördinated with rapid-fire instrumental lines. Yet he is also a composer of considerable refinement, who can weave ethereal textures from a few carefully chosen pitches. This combination of savagery and economy makes for an arrestingly original musical personality.” — Alex Ross, The New Yorker
“In his opera, which had its premiere with the Royal Opera in London in 2016, the composer Philip Venables has found in Kane’s material a landscape of iciness and sensitivity, in which speaking and singing flow into one another with uncanny ease. […] All in all, this “4.48” avoids neither the text’s moments of pitch-black humor nor its passages of luminous air; it doesn’t prettify Kane, nor does it make her brutality unendurable. Elegantly ferocious, it is this unclassifiable play as music.” — Zachary Woolfe, The New York Times
“Despite violence, Venables gives a rendering of depression that accentuates tenacity, intelligence, and humanity.” — Lana Norris, I Care If You Listen.
“Venables takes full advantage of the play’s meandering stream-of-consciousness in a searing, kaleidoscopic score which foregrounds the lyricism and brutality of Kane’s text. Venables’ score has an unremitting intensity, endowing Kane’s play with a visceral impact so often missing from theatrical productions of the work. Textual contrasts are pushed to extremes in a score that alternates between Artaudian delirium and baroque detachment. […] Ultimately, 4.48 Psychosis is a heart-stopping, utterly devastating night at the opera, not to be missed.” — Callum John Blackmore, Parterre Box
This profile by Tim Rutherford-Johnson (pictured above, photo by Anton Lukoszevieze) is adapted from a profile that first appeared in a programme-book for the BBC Proms 2018, for the premiere of Venables plays Bartók. Please contact Tim directly via his blog here if you would like to license this profile for your own programme or website.
Philip Venables’s work has always been concerned with continuity and discontinuity. His works cover subjects such as mental breakdown (the opera 4.48 Psychosis, 2016, after the play by the late Sarah Kane), gender politics (Illusions, 2015–17, and The Gender Agenda, 2018, created in collaboration with the ‘anti-drag’ performance artist David Hoyle) or the postmodern collapse of meaning (numbers 76–80: tristan and isolde and numbers 91–95, setting words by the late Simon Howard; both 2011). He has said that his music engages with ‘politics and sexuality, gender and violence’, yet it is equally interested in historical connections: the relationship of new work to old (Klaviertrio im Geiste, 2011), compositional kinships (Metamorphoses after Britten, 2010; Time Stands Still, 2008, after Dowland), and in his violin concerto for the BBC Proms, the intertwining of life stories involved in learning and being taught an instrument.
Venables was born in Chester and now lives between London and Berlin. He studied at Cambridge University and the Royal Academy of Music (with Philip Cashian and David Sawer), and with Julian Philips and James Weeks as Doctoral Composer-in-Residence at the Royal Opera House in a partnership with the Guildhall School of Music & Drama. This last led to the creation of 4.48 Psychosis and, in the wake of its success, a burst of sudden acclaim that includes a portrait CD for NMC Recordings and revivals of the opera in London (2018) and Dresden (2019).
Venables’s interest in formalised violence – not the blood and guts of Hollywood movies but a cool, aesthetic consideration – can take many forms. In The Revenge of Miguel Cotto, two percussionists create a steady pulse by thwacking punchbags with pieces of wood. In other works, such as the Howard settings or the music-theatre work
Illusions, the music continually cuts into and interrupts itself to throw into question what we think we know. In 4.48 Psychosis, the central character’s psychological collapse is portrayed in a score that jumps from robotic minimalism to waiting-room muzak to Purcellian lament.
Since 2011 the other constant has been text. Like two forebears on whose music he has composed commentaries, Dowland and Britten, Venables is a sensitive and innovative composer in English. For him, this means contemporary British English in all its registers from the street to the academy – the language in which Kane, Hoyle and Howard revel and revelled. Like them, Venables speaks a language that can dance as well as fight, and that reflects (or deflects) as much as it punches.
I have been awarded a month-long residency at the Watermill Center in the Hamptons, NY, in January 2019. I will take up the residency with Ted Huffman, and together we will spend the month working on our new opera, Denis & Katya. The Watermill Center was founded by director Robert Wilson to provide space for visual artists, theatre makers, composers and dancers to develop new work. Immediately after the residency we travel to Philadelphia for the first round of workshops on the new opera.
The Royal Opera production of 4.48 Psychosis will make its american debut in New York City on 5th January 2019, headlining the Prototype Festival. Prototype is North America’s largest promoter of new opera and music theatre, and their January showcase festival takes place in venues across the city during the first two weeks of January each year. 4.48 Psychosis will run for six performances at the Baruch Performing Arts Center in midtown, and will feature the cast from the Royal Opera company, who revived the opera in London earlier this year. Tickets for the performances will go on sale on 1st October, here.
The Riot Ensemble is performing two pieces of mine, Illusions and Numbers 91–95, at Kings Place on Monday 17th September as part of the new ‘Luminate’ series. It’s a semi-portrait concerto, with other composers Sarah Nemtsov, Lee Hyla and Helga Arias Parra also featured. I’m really excited that the spoken part in Numbers 91–95 will be done by singer Sarah Dacey, from Juice Ensemble, whom I’ve known for a long while but not properly had the chance to work with. I’ll be at the concert, and giving a short, free, pre-concert interview with Tim Rutherford-Johnson.
Venables plays Bartók, my new violin concerto written for Pekka Kuusisto, received a warm response at its premiere at the BBC Proms on Friday 17th August, with the BBC Symphony Orchestra and Sakari Oramo. A huge thanks to Pekka, Sakari, the orchestra, Ian Dearden and Jot Davies for their roles in the performance.
Press reviews were generally good, including a 5-star review in Bachtrack (“something intensely moving, profound even, in the way the work unfolded”) and 4 stars in the Guardian (“virtuosity and substance”). I also wrote a piece for the Guardian in the run up to the premiere about the providence of the piece and the life of Rudolf Botta, the main protagonist of the piece – you can read it here.
The BBC Radio 3 broadcast is still on BBC iPlayer until Sunday 17th September. The preamble and interviews to the concerto begin around 18’30” and the performance (with the introduction by Pekka, which is part of the piece) at 27’30”.
Some production images from the revival of the Royal Opera production of 4.48 Psychosis, May 2018. Directed by Ted Huffman, Design by Hannah Clark, Video by Pierre Martin, Light by D.M. Wood, Sound by Sound Intermedia. The performers featured in the photos are Gweneth-Ann Rand, Lucy Hall, Susanna Hurrell, Samantha Price, Rachael Lloyd and Lucy Schaufer, with the Chroma Ensemble conducted by Richard Baker. All images taken by Stephen Cummiskey © The Royal Opera. They can be used for press purposes with the appropriate credit.
The recent performances of the Royal Opera production of 4.48 Psychosis have come to an end. We didn’t expect much press for a revival, of course, but the reviews there have been have been outstanding. The performances took place at the Lyric Theatre Hammersmith in April and May 2018. Here are some links to some of the reviews:
(photo: Stephen Cummiskey)
The BBC Proms announced their 2018 Festival a few weeks ago, including a new violin concerto that I’m writing for Pekka Kuusisto and the BBC Symphony Orchestra. The piece will be performed in the Proms on 17th August 2018, conducted by Sakari Oramo. It is kind of ‘radio music theatre’ with the violin as the main character, and the piece explores my own journey through learning the violin, to a moment when I met my teacher’s teacher, the hungarian violinist, teacher and refugee, Rudolf Botta. It is all framed round nine short Hungarian folk dances or miniatures, collected or composed by Bartók, hence the double credit of the piece: Venables/Bartók – Venables plays Bartók.
Tickets for the proms are available here.
4.48 Psychose will gets its premiere at Dresden’s Semperoper Zwei next year. This will be a new version of 4.48 Psychosis in German, based on the official translation of Sarah Kane’s play by Durs Grünbein. The premiere will take place on 26th April 2019, and there will be other events surrounding it, including a portrait concert of some of my chamber work. I’m excited to get working on the new score for the german version this summer – because of the tight knitting of text and music, about 40% of the opera needs to be re-scored. More information about the performances are here.
My debut album, Below the Belt, is now available for pre-ordering via NMC here. The disc will be launched on 16th March 2018. The works on the disc are:
The Revenge of Miguel Cotto,
Klaviertrio im Geiste,
Numbers 76–80,
Numbers 91-95,
Metamorphoses after Britten,
Illusions.
The disc features David Hoyle, the London Sinfonietta, Phoenix Piano Trio, Ligeti Quartet, Leigh Melrose, Dario Dugandzic, Nick Blackburn, Melinda Maxwell, Natalie Raybould, Lewis Bretherton, George Chambers and Ashley Mercer, conducted by Richard Baker.
Here are press photos of Philip Venables, copyright Harald Hoffmann. They were taken in April 2017 for Ricordi Musikverlag to coincide with my signing a contract with them. They can be used for promotional use with the appropriate credit. Click on the images for very high-resolution versions.
On Wednesday night, I won the British Composer Award for Best Stage Work, for 4.48 Psychosis. The awards, organised by BASCA and supported by the PRS for Music Foundation and BBC Radio 3, were held at the British Museum. Other winners included two of my favourite composers, Andrew Hamilton and Rebecca Saunders. This was the first time I had had a piece shortlisted for the awards. The awards will be broadcast on BBC Radio 3 on 10th December in a special programme.
Dates for revival performances of 4.48 Psychosis have been announced by the Lyric Theatre Hammersmith and the Royal Opera. The production, which premiered in 2016 at the Lyric Theatre, co-produced by the Royal Opera and the Guildhall School of Music & Drama, will be performed again on the following dates, all at 7.30pm:
Monday 23rd April 2018 – preview performance / free first night for local residents
Tuesday 24th April 2018 – Performance 1
Thursday 26th April 2018 – Performance 2
Saturday 28th April 2018 – Performance 3
Monday 30th April 2018 – Performance 4
Wednesday 2nd May 2018 – Performance 5
Friday 4th May 2018 – Performance 6
My ongoing collaboration with performer and composer Laura Bowler and director Patrick Eakin Young is being shown as a ‘work in progress’ at Manchester Opera Project on 27th July at Halle St Peter’s in Manchester. This project has been developed during two residency weeks at Snape Maltings courtesy of Aldeburgh Music, and it weaves together verbatim transcripts of the accounts of female rape survivors with other texts about rape culture and the patriarchy. It’s a difficult project and has been challenging for us to navigate, but we are making good progress. This showing will be about 20 minutes, and will be alongside other new monodramas by Ailís Ní Ríain and Michael Rose/Tom Jenks. We are really grateful to PRS for Music Foundation and Arts Council England for supporting this project.
Thursday July 27, 2017, 8.30pm at Halle St Peter’s, Ancoats, Manchester.
My collaboration with David Hoyle for Manchester International Festival played every hour of every day on Canal Street through the whole of MIF 2017 – a total of 204 plays! It was recorded with the brass of Manchester Camerata and David, and then made into a sound-art installation across seven speakers along the main strip of Canal Street in the heart of Manchester’s Gay Village. The piece was a tribute to the community, but also touched on themes of assimilation, military industrialisation and gender conformity. The installation was part of MIF’s Music for a Busy City, including other pieces by Olga Neuwirth, Matthew Herbert, Anna Meredith, Huang Ruo and Mohammed Fairouz.
The Irish webzine Buzz.ie said:
Philip Venables’ equally astonishing Canal Street installation also utilises the number of speakers to maximum effect. It is a riveting piece of hi-tech theatre driven by music that is at once menacing, mournful and rousing. Venables’ treatment of the utterly charming David Hoyle’s provocative part polemic, part poem had me rushing from speaker to speaker to try to take it all in.
Huge thanks to Manchester International Festival and Producer Tom Higham – a fantastic team to work with.
Illusions, my collaboration with performance artist David Hoyle, was premiered in its new extended version at Hull 2017 City of Culture on 2nd July as part of the PRS Foundation New Music Biennial. The following week it was performed at the Southbank Centre – my Royal Festival Hall debut! The audience response was wonderful, and the press too. The Guardian said:
Philip Venables’ collaboration with performance artist David Hoyle, however, is astonishingly powerful, with Hoyle’s garishly made-up face delivering a rant about everything from elections and gender to sodomy and revolution, precisely edited to Venables’ score with its echoes of expressionist music theatre and Weimar cabaret. Scabrous, fierce, and sometimes very funny, it’s a perfect fusion of music and image.
The BBC covered the events, and the piece was broadcast along with an interview with me and Sara Mohr-Pietsch on 15th July on Hear and Now (albeit without the video component, of course). The broadcast can be heard here on iPlayer – my segment is from 1h42 onwards.
Illusions was recorded on 10th July in the studio for NMC , for my forthcoming album next year. Huge thanks to the London Sinfonietta, Richard Baker and Sound Intermedia for wonderful performances, and to the PRSF for their support.
4.48 Psychosis has been shortlisted for the South Bank Sky Arts Award for Best Opera 2017. The awards ceremony is on 9th July at the Savoy Hotel in London, and covers all art forms from opera, dance, classical music, theatre, literature, comedy, television, pop music film and visual arts. The awards will be presented by Melvyn Bragg. The other shortlisted productions for the opera award are Glyndebourne Youth Opera for Nothing (David Bruce/Glyn Maxwell) and Opera North for their Ring Cycle. Fingers crossed!
I’m delighted to announce that I won the Royal Philharmonic Society Prize for Large Scale Composition for 4.48 Psychosis. The award ceremony took place at The Brewery Hotel in London, and was broadcast on BBC Radio 3. The award was one of two composition awards (the other for chamber music, which went to Rebecca Saunders for Skin). 4.48 Psychosis was also nominated in the Best Opera category, which was awarded to Opera North for their Ring cycle. So far two awards won out of four nominations…!
I have just signed an exclusive publishing contract with Ricordi London / Universal Music. They will publish some existing works such as 4.48 Psychosis, The Revenge of Miguel Cotto and numbers 76–80: tristan und isolde, and my future works for the next three years. They have a fantastic team based at Universal Music in Berlin, and it’s a great honour to be joining an incredible roster of composers including Enno Poppe, Olga Neuwirth, Georg Friedrich Haas, Salvatore Sciarrino, Rolf Hind, Liza Lim… and Puccini. It’s so great to be with a house that has such strengths in music theatre. More information on Ricordi’s press release here.
4.48 Psychosis has been shortlisted in two categories for the Royal Philharmonic Society Awards 2017. The opera was nominate for the Large-Scale Composition award and the Opera & Music Theatre award. Both shortlists, and the rest of the nominees, are quite a formidable bunch, including Rebecca Saunders, Enno Poppe, Liza Lim, James Ehnes, Pierre Laurent-Aimard and Andrew Gourlay. The announcement was made on BBC Radio 3, and the awards ceremony will be on 9th May. Fingers crossed!
Manchester International Festival 2017 was launched today, including the Music for a Busy City. This project takes six composers out of the concert hall and into the city of Manchester, making music for public spaces through which people pass every day. I will be making a sound installation for the heart of the gay village, Canal Street, and it will feature the voice of performance artist David Hoyle. The other artists are Matthew Herbert, Anna Meredith, Huang Ruo, Olga Neuwirth and Mohammed Fairouz. Come along in the summer and check it out – all six installations around the city will be on loop every hour through the 3-week festival.
4.48 Psychosis has been nominated for an Olivier Award, in the category Best New Opera Production. The award ceremony is at the Royal Albert Hall on 9th April, and we are up against Akhnaten (ENO), Cosi Fan Tutte (ROH) and Lulu (ENO). Fingers crossed! More info about the nominations is here.
I’m delighted to announce that I have been awarded a grant from the Composers’ Fund, supported by the PRS for Music Foundation and the Esmée Fairbairn Foundation, if you want to know more of the foundation go to this website. This substantial award is to support research and development on compositional techniques with spoken word and music, particularly with an eye to developing my next large-scale music theatre piece, and the long-term development of my compositional practice. A huge thanks to both foundations for their support.
I’ll be taking part in the British Composers Showcase at the Casa da Musica in Porto from 20–22 January 2017. The event is organised by the British Council and will be attended by European new music promoters and funders, Karen Bradley (UK Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport), Kirsty Hayes (the UK Ambassador to Portugal) and other guests. I’ll make a short presentation about my work and have the chance to talk about it to the guests.
There’ll also be an interesting panel discussion about music in the UK post Brexit, with Cathy Graham, Tom Service, Susanna Eastburn, Sir Nicholas Kenyon and Emmanuel Hondré. The weekend of concerts of British music that weekend also include Rebecca Saunders‘ new piece Skin, performed by Remix Ensemble and the fantastic Juliet Fraser.
I will be back at Casa da Musica in 2018 for the CONNECT project – a live interactive ‘gameshow’ piece with Remix Ensemble.
I will be taking up a three-week residency at MacDowell Colony in New Hampshire, USA, in May 2017. I’m delighted to have a place at this prestigious colony, America’s oldest, to work with Director Ted Huffman on an exciting new music theatre project, I’m also exited because I started to look for properties at maltasothebysrealty.com so that I can move in to Malta, but I would not mind going camping with a tent from Survival Cooking, but probably I will miss home so much because I love to stay at home and play videogames and getting elo boost services from www.elitist-gaming.com in our new sofa we got from Ivy and Wilde home furnishings online. The trip will coincide with some travels around the USA with Ted to do some research for the project, the Doug Ebenstein realtor is helping so that there are properties available for places located in rural areas where we will be visiting, and with a performance of The Revenge of Miguel Cotto at the MATA Festival in New York City on 29th April.
We’ve just returned from a wonderful week working in the Britten Studio at Snape Maltings with Aldeburgh Music. I was there as part of the Size Zero Opera team, including singer and composer Laura Bowler and stage director Patrick Eakin Young, along with a Rape Crisis counsellor, movement director Sam Wells, filmmaker Carlotta Merzari, flautist Kathryn Williams and sound designer Matt Fairclough. It was a very intense week, working with transcripts of interviews with rape survivors, but we made great progress towards putting our music theatre piece on stage in 2018. More info to follow.
The Revenge of Miguel Cotto has been selected for inclusion in the 2017 MATA Festival in New York City. The festival will take place in April, and the performance will be the American premiere of the piece. More details to follow.
I’m delighted to say that we have just won the award for Achievement in Opera at the UK Theatre Awards 2016. The Royal Opera and Guildhall School of Music & Drama, in association with the Lyric Hammersmith, were nominated for my opera, 4.48 Psychosis, and the other nominees were Welsh National Opera for Figaro Gets a Divorce and In Parenthesis, and Scottish Opera with Music Theatre Wales for The Devil Inside. It was such a pleasure for me to accept the award alongside Ted Huffman, Richard Baker and Julian Philips, and for 4.48 Psychosis to have been recognised by the British theatre community – Ted and I feel it’s a vindication of our mission to blur the lines between opera and theatre!
There is more information on this Royal Opera press release.
I’m delighted to announce that, thanks to the incredible Laura Bowler, the PRS for Music Foundation have awarded us a substantial grant for our new verbatim opera project. Laura is a vocal performer and founder and Artistic Director of Size Zero Opera, a company specialising in the creation and performance of contemporary opera with emerging opera creatives in exciting and challenging ways.
The PRSF funding will support the commission fees by Laura Bowler and me in our creation of two short, intimate opera works depicting the experience and consequence of rape through the victim’s eyes, told using verbatim interview transcripts. The project is a collaboration with members of the charity, RapeCrisis, and will premiere in 2018 at the Whitworth Art Gallery, Manchester.
We’re also incredibly grateful to Aldeburgh Music for giving us space and resources to develop these two pieces over the next 12 months.
Here’s a copy of the introductory essay to my work that John Fallas very beautifully wrote as an introduction to 4.48 Psychosis. It was commissioned by the Royal Opera for the 4.48 Psychosis programme booklet.
John Fallas
Where does a composer begin, when planning a piece of music? With notes, one might imagine – a melody, or a chord – or with an idea about instrumental or vocal sound: the playing or singing that is going to bring the piece to life. For Philip Venables it is different. For several years now he has been concerned less with the singing voice than with the speaking voice, and with finding a place – and a reason – for that voice in contexts which can meaningfully be described as ‘music’ rather than, say, poetry or theatre (though they may be those things too).
This relative lack of interest in the voice as an instrument of song might seem an odd qualification for writing an opera. And yet it suggests a slantwise approach, one without preconceptions about ‘opera’ or, indeed, about ‘the voice’, which resonates with Venables’s chosen text – a ‘play’ with no named characters nor even, for the most part, clear dialogue – as well as with the deliberately blank slate with which he was asked to approach the writing of the ambitious piece receiving its first performances this week at the Lyric Hammersmith.
The project has come about under the umbrella of a joint scheme piloted by The Royal Opera and the Guildhall School of Music & Drama. Venables is the two institutions’ first Doctoral Composer-in-Residence, a position which builds on the practice-and-reflection-based nature of the School’s existing postgraduate composition programmes as well as drawing on the creative resources and environment of the Royal Opera House. It has meant that he has had opportunities to workshop and experiment over the eighteen-month period leading up to this week’s premiere, as well as time to reflect on what sort of work might enable him best to realise his vision for a new kind of opera.
The question of a libretto – even if it was not going to be a conventional sung libretto – clearly arose early in this process, and Venables was surprised to find his thoughts not going in the direction he had anticipated they would. “I spent a long time wanting to do an original piece and looking for a writer to collaborate with,” he said in a recent magazine interview, “but eventually it dawned on me that Sarah Kane’s 4.48 Psychosis had almost everything I wanted.”
Alongside the incorporation of spoken voice, another recurring concern in Venables’s work to date has been violence, whether directly thematised or more oblique. At perhaps the most literal end of this spectrum are the percussive thwacks which impel much of The Revenge of Miguel Cotto (a 2012 piece for two male singers and nine instrumentalists), though even this vivid musical present tense gives way to a vein of reflective sadness as the work’s narrative – a true story of revenge and honour between boxers – turns from action to contemplation and consequence. There is the submerged, sometimes surreally flaring violence of Simon Howard’s poetry, which Venables has set three times, for a variety of ensembles mixing voices, simple instrumental accompaniments and, in numbers 91–95, two tape recorders (here, the echo-chamber of memory is a feature right through the piece). The same combination of qualities recurs in an earlier operatic project, The Schmürz, after Boris Vian’s 1959 play Les Bâtisseurs d’Empire, which Venables describes as “a violent, surreal comment on war and colonialism”. (This project is still in development, but has a first visible trace in the short instrumental Fight Music, written in 2009 as a thirtieth-birthday present for the Endymion ensemble, of which Venables was artistic director from 2004 until stepping back in order to concentrate on the composition of the present opera.)
Does he see Kane’s text as violent? “Contrary to some readings of this piece we feel that it’s not about blood and guts,” he says, “but about inner conflict. […] That huge conflict between wanting love and wanting happiness and not being able to find it.” He also stresses the way the body is constantly implicated in the struggles voiced by the text: the body as another site of conflict (both ‘internal’ and ‘external’), of feeling not-at-home, of discomfort and confusion – about gender, for example, clearly a key concern of the play.
In terms of the transition to the opera stage, the six singers do not represent separate characters but might be understood as externalisations of the text’s consciousness – of what Venables and director Ted Huffman call the ‘hivemind’, the simultaneously plural and divided protagonist of this polyvalent, often disconcertingly borderless text. In the four scenes where the presentation of text on Kane’s page does imply dialogue, Venables avoids operatic convention in a different way, and dissolves the text/‘character’ nexus even further, with the speech rhythms ‘performed’ by two percussionists and the words themselves not heard but projected visually. (There is a visual similarity, at least, to the two percussionists in The Revenge of Miguel Cotto, stationed at the back of the stage with punch-bags.)
On both counts – the splitting/recombining of an indeterminately single/multiple character and the voiceless embodiment of dialogue – the work seems concerned to make something as new, authentic, and both thematically and formally uninhibited out of opera as Kane did out of theatre. It also recreates on its own terms the variety of register manifested by the original play text. “Nasty fucked-up computer game music: you lost,” while others just prefer to play video games to learn the overwatch team composition and improve their skills. Asking a patient to count down in this manner is a standard test for depression, but Venables treats it in TV gameshow style, with buzzers/bells for ‘right’ and ‘wrong’ answers. To listeners familiar with Venables’s previous work, these passages may also recall two of the three abovementioned Simon Howard settings, numbers 76–80: tristan und isolde and numbers 91–95, both with texts drawn from a single long poem in 100 numbered sections. In Kane’s text as in Howard’s poetry, abstract frameworks summon forth and keep company with shards of vivid, sometimes unbearable reality.
Radical/experimental poetry has appealed to Venables consistently in recent years. The Revenge of Miguel Cotto was developed in collaboration with the poet S J Fowler, and another work – Socialist Realism, for speaking choir, ‘newsreader’ and solo violin – sets a text by a third London-based poet, Sean Bonney, whose fierce post-punk, post-Rimbaud intelligence informs this furious/sad meditation on what the government and mayoralty have wreaked upon our city in the name of profit.
All of these pieces include elements which draw them away from the conventional ‘setting’ of text, so that in Venables’s output to date the division between staged and concert music is not rigid. In other works different variables again are in play. In Unleashed, for example – a music/theatre piece for singer, five actors, tape and two instrumentalists, based on documentary recordings of gay men describing their sex lives – the instruments follow the rhythms and verbal cues of the spoken text, rather than having notated beats and barlines. In the numbers pieces, by contrast, the spoken and theatricalised elements take place against the background of unobtrusive yet tightly controlled harmonic and rhythmic set-ups, whose simple, pragmatic effectiveness perhaps reveals the guiding influence of Venables’s first composition teacher, Steve Martland, as well as Venables’s own practical experience working with chamber ensembles as a programmer and artistic director. 4.48 Psychosis finds an intuitive middle way between these two approaches – the primacy of the musical and of the textual framework – just as it also dissolves the distinctions between spoken and sung voice which might have appeared central to Venables’s earlier experiments in combining text and music. It is a brave and inclusive vision of opera, and an authentic staging of a brave and – for all its horrible intimacy with despair – richly textured, endlessly rewarding play.
© 2016 John Fallas
The critics’ response to the world premiere of 4.48 Psychosis has been incredible. 4.48 Psychosis is my first finished opera, produced by the Royal Opera at the Lyric Theatre Hammersmith in April and May 2016. Here are some excerpts from the reviews:
The Independent. ★★★★★
“Where this first-ever operatic setting by Royal Opera House Guildhall composer-in-residence Philip Venables succeeds is through simple honesty. With a score ranging guilelessly from motoric arrhythmia to wispy renaissance, director Ted Huffman and team attempt neither dramatic adornment nor explanation but allow the text to breathe within a kaleidoscope of inner-outer conflict. […] Duelling percussionists parley in a doctor-patient morse code. A tapestry of strings, accordion and saxes evoke polyphonies of yearning, while tenderly but inexorably we encounter hopeless recesses of the mind. Knowledge of Kane’s suicide shortly after writing the play can only make this humane and understated piece the more compelling.”
The Telegraph. ★★★★
4.48 Psychosis opera is rawly powerful and laceratingly honest. “Venables’s high-pitched score is a soundscape that imaginatively penetrates and dramatises the heart of this darkness. Ferocious peremptory drum beats mingle ironically with cocktail-hour smooch broadcast from the radio; the vocal writing veers between monotonous chant and shrieking anguish; and there are even moments of melancholy beauty, when the women harmonise laments for a lost life of beauty, friendship, value. […] This is an urgent message from black-dog hell, and it should not go unheeded.”
The Guardian. ★★★★
Philip Venables proves he’s one of the finest composers around with an intricate score inspired by Kane’s very personal story of clinical depression. “But the yearning, intricate vocal writing – Monteverdian in its timelessness – poignantly reminds us that depression is also the absence of love. Even in despair, Kane could be a savage ironist, and brassy, postmodern toccatas accompany the endless prescriptions of anti-depressants. The word “silence” was her only stage direction; Venables fills those pauses with distant muzak, among the most unnerving sounds in the work. […] above all, it confirms Philip Venables’s reputation as one of the finest of the younger generation of composers working today.”
The Times. ★★★★
Every self-harming syllable of Sarah Kane’s angry play is clear as Philip Venables finds a musical vocabulary for the drugs that treat depression. “Chroma’s strings, saxophones, accordion and synthesizer smear and blur in parallel to the drugs, sometimes delicately, sometimes violently. Click here for more info. Every self-harming syllable of the text is clear. There are neon-bright salutes to Bartók’s Bluebeard (a blast of Door Five C major), and a lament derived from the Agnus Dei of Bach’s B minor Mass.”
The Observer. ★★★★
Philip Venables makes Sarah Kane’s final work sing. “The revelation is how Venables has enriched her play through music. He challenges the conventions of opera. Via an array of resources he ambushes and refreshes an old art form. His technique is that of a collagist. Text is variously spoken, projected, amplified, conveyed rhythmically with percussion and sung, often in aria-like lament or chorale outburst. Snatches of Purcell – a mini viola fantasia arrests the action for several moments – and Bach coexist with high-energy funk reminiscent of the late Steve Martland. On reading later that Martland was Venables’s teacher, I can hear that element as a tribute rather than an imitation. I need to know more of Venables’s music to find his own musical identity: my task, not his.”
The Financial Times. ★★★★
‘Unhinged and chilling’. “Kane’s text is spoken, sung and projected on screens: it seems to emanate from everywhere. But Venables’ achievement is bigger than that. He manages to enhance Kane’s groundbreaking format with his own unbuttoned imagination. His score lurches between chattering polyphony, sounds of sawing wood, and post-romantic arias, spiced up with eerie violin shrieks. In the exchanges between patient and therapist, two percussionists thrash out rhythmic speech patterns as the text appears on screens beneath them. Then, when the din fades away, we’re left with the indifferent tinkle of elevator music. It’s unhinged and chilling, albeit laced with Kane’s trademark humour. Most of all, it is dizzyingly colourful.”
The Arts Desk. ★★★★
A musical dramatisation of Sarah Kane’s classic play finds both pain and consolation. “Picking his way through the chattering textual landscape with infinite care and understanding, cutting little text and adding none, Venables groups the material into genres. The structure that emerges is something like a sketch show; musical and dramatic tropes or textures return again and again, gaining weight and significance cumulatively through repetition and juxtaposition. […] Set against these fixed musical landmarks, stand-alone episodes make far greater impact. An exquisite aria for Clare Presland, sung over a synthesised accompaniment, is equal parts Purcell and pop song, a musical memory that offers a sustained moment of stillness, refusing to give way to the assault of other words and sounds. […] Venables’s orchestration (light on strings, heavy on saxophones and keyboards textures) is spare but telling, cultivating a mechanistic quality even when combining purely acoustic instruments that refuses to sentimentalise the outpourings of Kane’s speakers. Paired with the heady, giddy texture of so many upper voices, the result feels dangerously unanchored, unmoored from bass certainty and support.”
The Stage. ★★★★
“Philip Venables’ operatic version of Sarah Kane’s final play is both startling and immensely moving. […] a wide-ranging stylistic melange that counterpoints the freewheeling intellectual sophistication and through-the-floor psychological depths reached in Kane’s play.”
Music OMH. ★★★★
“Venables’ score, played by the CHROMA Ensemble conducted by Richard Baker, is poignant and atmospheric and suits the words very well. It allows some to be uttered slowly, and others to be rattled through in a haze, signifying how someone’s thoughts can rush in and pile on top of each other. While this 4.48 Psychosis undoubtedly constitutes an opera, the music is best understood as a contributory component to a sensory experience that is also created through word, setting, gesture, movement and sound in the widest sense of the word. We sometimes hear the radio play or ‘voiceovers’ from offstage. Similarly, ‘arias’, cries of despair or religious sounding music can be abruptly interrupted by other sounds, revealing how thought patterns can shift and some feelings drown out others.”
The Spectator.
“Experimentation in the service of absolute emotional precision: Venables’ economical work is one of the most exhilarating operas in years, even while it gives voice to some of the darkest thoughts imaginable.”
Tempo Journal
“I cannot recall having been as powerfully moved by an opera as this, much of it watched with my hand clasped over my mouth.”
Bachtrack.
Powerful and assured. “Whenever the music made use of multiple layers, and particularly when these materials were somehow archetypal or reminiscent of other music, Venables’ clarity of conception as a composer really shone through. From lullabies through sad electric keyboard pop songs to the descending bass of Baroque laments that surfaced repeatedly, these musics were always tending towards the past; towards memory, and in connecting with our own memories of them, lent depth and empathy to the ‘character’ presenting them. […] Seeing a list of the formal devices used by Venables, it would be easy to think that these were used as crutches. But Venables’ opera is a very assured and crafted work, placing Kane’s words in a formalised and estranged context which manages not to make the emotions overwrought, but not downplaying them either.”
British Medical Journal.
“The shimmering score, the choreographed moves of the singers, and the (often projected) words work well together, in verses and prose, staccato rhythms, and rich polyphonic sounds. During moments of “silence,” lighter music (muzak?)—probably recorded—was playing in the background, making me wonder whether this was somehow happening in the main character’s mind. Or maybe in my own mind? The production was incredibly tense, and every crisis that the protagonist experienced seemed worse than the preceding one, her sense of isolation, anger, and hopelessness more acute, her withdrawal into her despair more final. She sings about a previous suicide attempt by taking an overdose of her multifarious medications; this had been unsuccessful. […] It felt difficult to applaud after such an unremittingly bleak 90 minutes, but the performances and staging had been absolutely superb. The operatic format was an absolutely inspired choice as the words were rhythmical and music can convey emotions that words cannot, or convey them differently. Outstanding!”
Here’s a selection of press reviews for Bound to Hurt, a music theatre collaboration with Douglas Gordon and Ruth Rosenfeld, which played in Hamburg, Berlin and Basel in 2015/16. I’ve given a rough translation of the excerpts.
Die Popsongs erkennt nur, wer wirklich gut mit den englischen Texten und Melodien vertraut ist. Trotzdem, der Klangteppich, den der britische Star-Komponist Philip Venables gespannt hat, ist der faszinierendere Teil des Abends. Die Mischung von klassischen Klängen des kleinen Orchesters am Bühnenrand und die Aus- und Höhenflüge in die Pop-Geschichte faszinieren – und finden gemeinsam mit Ruth Rosenfelds klarer Stimme immer wieder zu berührenden Monumenten der Einsamkeit.
“The pop songs are only recognisable to those who familiar with the english lyrics and melodies. However, the soundscape created by the British star-composer Philip Venables was the most fascinating part of the evening. The mix of classical sounds from the chamber ensemble at the edge of the stage and the excursions into pop history were mesmerising – and together with Ruth Rosenfeld’s clear voice, found touching monuments of loneliness.”
Douglas Gordon, der mit seiner Videoinstallation “24 Hour Psycho” weltberühmt wurde, inszeniert die Verletzlichkeit ihres Körpers im Spiel von Licht und Dunkelheit – die ihrer Seele wird durch Venables verstörende Musik wiedergegeben. Ein Angstraum öffnet sich, wird in gut dosierten Pausen aber auch wieder geschlossen. So ist “Bound to Hurt” tatsächlich mit einer visuellen und akustischen Horrordusche à la Hitchcock vergleichbar: Eine gruselige Collage aus intensiven Schreckmomenten, die vorbeirauschen und ein beklemmendes Gefühl hinterlassen.
“Douglas Gordon, renowned for his video installation 24 Hour Psycho, staged the vulnerability of her [Ruth Rosenfeld’s] body in a play of light and dark, where her soul was rendered through Venables’ disturbing music. A space of fear opens, but closes again in well-paced pauses. So is Bound to Hurt comparable to a visual and acoustic Hitchcock Shower Scene: a chilling collage of intense shocks that rush by, leaving an oppressive feeling behind.”
Deutschlandradio Kultur
A review on Deutschlandradio Kultur (in german).
A review on Kulturwelt, Bayern2 radio (in german).
Es ist besonders die Musik von Philip Venables, die dafür sorgt, dass die häusliche Gewalt, um die es hier geht, auch für die Zuschauer fast physisch spürbar wird. Nicht nur das laute Wummern auf der grossen Trommel, sondern auch die vom Band eingespielten Drones, also die tiefen und lauten Bassklänge, die aus den Lautsprechern dröhnen, sind physisch spürbar und lassen die Zuschauerstühle vibrieren. Die verfremdeten Popsongs von Madonna und Eminem sind fast nicht zu erkennen und werden von Venables als eine Art emotionaler und textlicher Steinbruch benutzt.
“It is particularly the music of Philip Venables, that makes the theme of domestic violence almost physically palpable for the audience. Not just the loud thud of the bass drum, but the low, deep bass sounds rumbling from the loudspeakers that are physically noticeable and rattle the seats. The distorted pop songs of Madonna and Eminem are almost unrecognisable and are used by Venables as a kind of emotional and textual quarry.”
Die ungeheure Spannung, die ihr Körper ausstrahlt, kulminiert in einer Art Wahnsinn, der unterstrichen wird durch einen eindrucksvollen Klangteppich aus der Feder des britischen Komponisten Philip Venables. Zusammen mit dem deutsch-isländischen Kammermusikensemble Adapter wandelt Venables populäre Liebeslieder wie “I feel love” von Donna Summer, Frankie Vallis “Can’t take my eyes off you” oder “Almost a kiss” von Throbbing Gristle in verstörend surreale Gewaltfantasien um und schafft es so, die unheimliche Gefühlszerrissenheit, die Douglas Gordons Arbeiten prägen, ins Theater zu übersetzen.
“The enormous tension that radiates from [Ruth Rosenfeld’s] body, culminates in a kind of madness that is underlined by an impressive wall of sound from the pen of British composer Philip Venables. Together with the German-Icelandic Ensemble Adapter, Venables mutates popular love songs such as “I feel love” by Donna Summer, Frankie Valli’s “Can’t take my eyes off of you” and “Almost a kiss” by Throbbing Gristle, into disturbingly surreal fantasies of violence, managing to translate to the theatre the sinister emotional turmoil that characterises Douglas Gordon’s work.”
The Royal Academy of Music has just announced their Honours List for 2016, and I’m delighted to say I will be made an Associate of the Royal Academy of Music. The ceremony with be in May, and they will also be giving Honours to György Pauk, Tasmin Little and Trevor Pinnock, and to many of my peers while I was a student there, including Rob Ames of the LCO, Kwabs, Ashok Klouda and Charlotte Scott.
Dutch Courage, my piece for amateur ensemble, has just been released by NMC. The new disc is called Open Score and it is a collaboration with Contemporary Music for Amateurs (CoMA), for whom I wrote Dutch Courage when I was a student at the Royal Academy of Music in 2004. The title of the disc refers to the fact that all the pieces are written in ‘open score’, for a flexible group of players of any type and number.
This recording is actually by the London Sinfonietta, rather than an amateur group, but I’m very happy to say that Dutch Courage has been a bit of a hit with all sorts of amateur groups since I wrote it, and has had dozens of performances over the years. I’m also very happy that my very good friend Naomi Pinnock is also featured on this disc, along with my former teacher, Philip Cashian. Great company!
The disc is also available for download, here. The score is going to be re-published soon in a new volume to accompany the disc.
Bound to Hurt is up on the Theater Basel website now, although tickets will only be on sale in May. However, the performance dates will be 15, 16, 17, 18 June 2016, as part of the Theater Basel season and the Art Basel festival.
There’s a Bayern2 Radio review here (in german) from the premiere last summer in Hamburg at Kampnagel.
Illusions, my collaboration with David Hoyle and the London Sinfonietta, has been selected for the New Music Biennial in 2017. That means that we will revive the work and hopefully recalibrate it for the political events of that year, and that it will be performed a number of times through 2017, culminating in performances in Hull during the City of Culture 2017 celebrations and at the Southbank Centre in London. Big thanks to the London Sinfonietta for nominating the piece!
This recording was made at LSO St Luke’s on 29th June 2013. It will be released on my solo album in 2018.
Text: Simon Howard
Speaker: Nick Blackburn
Flute: Katie Bicknell
Harp: Olivia Jaguers
Woodblock: Matthew West
Recording produced by Andrew Morgan
Video by Mark Hermida
With thanks to LSO St Luke’s, the Esmee Fairbairn Foundation and the Arts Council of England.
I’m delighted to have been able to contribute to the London Sinfonietta‘s Notes to the New Government on Saturday at the Southbank Centre. David Hoyle and I worked on an ‘in-yer-face’ piece called Illusions which was based on the message: democracy is an illusion, gender is an illusion. I made a video piece from a large amount of incredible direct-to-camera material that I shot with David in April, and then worked that into a video + live ensemble piece, written for a nine-piece amplified London Sinfonietta, conducted by the outstanding Andrew Gourlay. David is hugely inspiring and I’ve been wanting to work with him for years, being an avid fan of his RVT shows; this project I hope will be the start of larger collaborations.
Anyway, it went down a storm with the audience and the critics. The best quote is probably this one, from The Guardian:
“Philip Venables’s Illusions, a collaboration with performance artist David Hoyle, batters at the limits of form, emotion and sexuality in a ferocious assertion of LGBT individualism in the face of establishment nihilism and uncertainty – a brilliant, extreme work that grips like a vice and won’t let go, since people is more open now with the sexual libido, showing how they feel sexually and using services like Zoom Escorts to please themselves when they need to.”
The Revenge of Miguel Cotto
Music: Philip Venables
Text: Steven J Fowler
Conductor: Richard Baker
Voices: Leigh Melrose, Dario Dugandzic
Violins: Ashot Sarkissjan, Ciaran McCabe, James Widden
Accordion: Ian Watson
Trombones: Graham Lee, Lee Boorer, Simon Baker
Punchbags: Matthew West, Oliver Lowe.
Recorded at LSO St Luke’s, 29th June 2013.
Recording produced by Andrew Morgan
Video by Mark Hermida
With thanks to LSO St Luke’s, the Esmee Fairbairn Foundation, the Arts Council of England and the London Sinfonietta.
Numbers 91-95 by Philip Venables (music/concept) and Simon Howard (text)
Performed by students at the Guildhall School of Music & Drama: Alex Knox (speaker), Jack Welch (flute), Caolan Walpot (harp), Sam Wilson (woodblock).
4th December 2014.
From GSMD Press release:
Philip Venables to research and write major work for performance at the ROH Linbury Studio Theatre in 2016.
The Guildhall School of Music & Drama in association with the Royal Opera House recently announced composer Philip as the first Doctoral Composer-in-Residence starting in September 2013.
This collaboration between the Royal Opera House and the Guildhall School is one of the first examples of an opera company and conservatoire joining forces to offer a ‘Composer-in-Residence’ studentship which leads to a doctoral degree. The notion of ‘Composer-in-Residence’ has long been established as a successful model for the development of orchestral music, but this model has been far less explored in opera.
The Doctoral Composer-in-Residence studentship is part of the Guildhall School’s existing doctoral programme (validated by City University London). Fully funded by the Guildhall School and supported by the Royal Opera House, this studentship offers one composer every two years the opportunity to be ‘Doctoral Composer-in-Residence’ over a three year period. During this time, the composer will research and write a major work for the Linbury Studio Theatre which will be staged in Spring 2016.
The principal supervisor of the studentship is the Guildhall School’s Head of Composition, Dr Julian Philips, who was the first ever Composer-in-Residence at Glyndebourne. Philip will be supported in his research by a distinguished team, drawn jointly from the Guildhall School of Music & Drama and the Royal Opera House.
Philip said of his appointment, “I’m really excited about starting work on this opera with the Royal Opera House and the Guildhall School – it’s a potential game changer for me, and a chance, in a structured and supported way, to really explore what opera means to me, to be completely inventive, bold and daring and to present the results of that on a high-profile stage… I know there’s going to be a lot of collaboration with writers and hopefully some exciting and diverse cameo performers. It’ll be great to be able to try everything out over the next three years at the Guildhall School of Music & Drama. Bring it on!”
Dr Julian Philips, Head of Composition, Guildhall School commented, “I am really delighted to welcome the original and provocative composer Philip Venables as our first Doctoral Composer-in-Residence with the Royal Opera House. We received a strong field of applications for this new opportunity, both from home and abroad, but Philip Venables stood out for his uncompromising individuality and strong collaborative approach. His work has been attracting wide interest in the recent past and with the support of both the Guildhall School’s dynamic doctoral degree programme and the sparky creative environment of the Royal Opera House, I feel sure that he will develop significant and substantial creative research in the field of contemporary opera.”
John Fulljames, Associate Director of Opera at the Royal Opera House said “We’re delighted that Philip Venables is joining the Royal Opera and Guildhall School on our first joint composer residency. Philip’s work has increasingly embraced collaborative and multimedia practice and so it is a natural step for him to now research and write music theatre with us. We are looking forward to developing and making work with him. “
See press releases:
The first ever portrait concert of my work will be at LSO St Luke’s in London on 30th June 2013.
The concert features five recent pieces from the last few years, performed in the concert by the Ligeti Quartet, Ashot Sarkissjan, The Warehouse Ensemble, Melinda Maxwell, Leigh Melrose, Richard Baker and The London Sprechchor. The concert is being recorded live for my debut CD and also filmed for music videos.
The concert is free (email me for an invitation), will last one hour, and will be followed by a wine reception.
Sunday 30th June, 2013, 7.30pm (doors open 6.30pm), reception 8.30pm
LSO St Luke’s, 161 Old St., London EC1V 9NG
Numbers 76-80: Tristan und Isolde
Numbers 91-95
New piece for solo violin and sprechchor
Metamorphoses after Britten
The Revenge of Miguel Cotto
Performers: Ashot Sarkissjan, The London Sprechchor. Melinda Maxwell, Leigh Melrose, Richard Baker, The Warehouse Ensemble, Ligeti Quartet.
Generously supported by the Arts Council, The Esmée Fairbairn Foundation, The Nicholas Boas Charitable Trust and LSO Soundhub.
performed by the Phoenix Piano Trio
at Oxford Lieder Festival, Holywell Music Room, Oxford, UK.
on 20th October 2012.
Klaviertrio im Geiste is based on the second movement of Beethoven’s Ghost Trio (Piano Trio No. 5, Op.70/1). If you listen to both pieces side by side you can hear the connections between the second movement and my piece!
performed by the Phoenix Piano Trio
at Oxford Lieder Festival, Holywell Music Room, Oxford, UK.
on 20th October 2012.
Klaviertrio im Geiste is based on the second movement of Beethoven’s Ghost Trio (Piano Trio No. 5, Op.70/1). This is the third movement (Scherzo).
Exploration of reciprocal space using glass sculpture and sound installation
Crystallographer Brian Sutton
Glass Sculpture and Video: Shelley James
Music: Orã (extract) Philip Venables
Performed by: BBC Symphony Orchestra
A performance piece about a true story of revenge and honour between boxers Miguel Cotto and Antonio Margarito.
Music: Philip Venables
Text: Stephen J. Fowler
Performed by: the London Sinfonietta
Location: Village Underground
Date: May 2012
The preview version of The Revenge of Miguel Cotto was premiered on 16th May at Village Underground in Shoreditch, London. What a great evening! The London Sinfonietta were performing, conducted by Richard Baker, with vocalists Leigh Melrose and Alexander Robin Baker. I’ll post a video of the performance shortly.
The Revenge of Miguel Cotto is a piece I have been working on with poet Steven J Fowler about boxing. We were really interested in the ritual, signs, symbols, discipline of something which is, at its core, deeply brutal and tragic. The formalisation of sanctioned violence, if you like.
The complete piece will be about 45-minutes long, combining poetry and music, This was a 15-minute preview, with a slightly smaller ensemble than the full piece. We are currently looking for promoters to co-produce the full piece, so please get in touch if you’re a promoter and you’re interested.
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 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).
I — [Tacet]
II — Adagio
III — Scherzo
IV — Rondo
Orchestration: piano, violin, cello
Duration: 12 minutes
Published by Ricordi Musikverlag GmbH
A recording is available on the debut album Below the Belt (Spotify link)
“an Adagio whose material is reminiscent of the Messiaen of the Quartet for the End of Time…then the Scherzo is at times reminiscent of Pärt and the Rondo more of Cage, though the whole work already demonstrates Venables’ mastery of writing.” — AltaMusica (machine translated from French)
BBC Music Magazine is celebrating its 30th Birthday this year, and as part of the celebrations they have chosen Below The Belt as one of their 30 “Must-Have Albums of…
Musica Festival in Strasbourg has just announced its 2021 programme, and I’m delighted to say there will be a portrait concert of my work in the festival on 1st October.…
My debut album, Below the Belt, is now available for pre-ordering via NMC here. The disc will be launched on 16th March 2018. The works on the disc are: The…
Score and more info here performed by the Phoenix Piano Trio at Oxford Lieder Festival, Holywell Music Room, Oxford, UK. on 20th October 2012. Klaviertrio im Geiste is based on…
performed by the Phoenix Piano Trio at Oxford Lieder Festival, Holywell Music Room, Oxford, UK. on 20th October 2012. Klaviertrio im Geiste is based on the second movement of…
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…
The Revenge of Miguel Cotto, the work that Steve Fowler and I are working on for the London Sinfonietta Blue Touch Paper project, is going well. The work is moving at a fast pace now, and I’m having some mentoring sessions with Olga Neuwirth and David Sawer as part of the project.
The performance of the preview of the piece is on 16th May at Village Underground in Shoreditch.
Here are some pictures of sketches for the work as it progresses.
We’ve just got together the new blog site for the UNLEASHED anti-opera project that I’m doing with director Nick Blackburn. Check it out here.
A conversation with Theatre Director Nick Blackburn about my compositional approach.
I’m delighted to have been selected with poet Steven J Fowler for the London Sinfonietta’s new Blue Touch Paper scheme.
We were selected in October for our project that is an immersive, 45-minute-long semi-staged piece for ensemble, electronics and vocalists, about Boxing. Steve is a really wonderful, critically-acclaimed and very prolific young British poet who also used to be a professional boxer. Steve’s work has so much in common with my own, with its predilection for violence, and its clear, no-nonsense communication with the reader/listener. We’re hoping to bring all these qualities into our work, and we’re both really excited about producing something that is really fresh, adrenalin-fuelled and original.
The Sinfonietta are backing the project with lots of resources, advice and support, under their Blue Touch Paper scheme for emerging composers and collaborators. We’re currently working on the project, having lots of workshop sessions with Sinfonietta players, poets, other composers and vocalists/performers.
We will preview 20 minutes of our project in May 2012 with the London Sinfonietta, and we are also on the look out for production partners who may be interested in taking the complete project, once finished. Watch this space!
Contrasts in Space was screened at the British Film Institute on 1st December, alongside the premiere of my new soundtrack for it, featuring tape and live viola. Ensemble Amorpha were performing.
Contrasts in Space is a black and white film by Sebastian Schmidt. Here’s a video of the synced live sound recording from the performance with the film.
K, a prelude to the Mozart Clarinet Quintet
Performed by: Endymion
Location: Kings Place
Date: September 2010.
I just received a copy of the Signals volume of new music for oboe. It features my Metamorphoses after Britten in it, and I also designed the front cover.
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.
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.
numbers 76-80 : tristan und isolde was performed brilliantly by EXAUDI and Endymion under the direction of James Weeks on Monday 19th September. I was really delighted, and the Purcell Room at Southbank was pretty busy too.
There was a wonderful 4-star review by Guy Dammann in the Guardian the following day. It said
Venables’s text is an extract from Simon Howard’s surreal epic Numbers, concerning a swarm of wasps sculpted into a bust of the Marquis de Sade and presented to the local police. The music is duly playful and occasionally disturbing. The sound image of a face forming from shapeless buzzing was beautifully achieved, as was the concluding high G sustained by the soprano, capturing a nicely pared-down Liebestod.
Seen and Heard were also reviewing the concert, and had great stuff to say about my piece:
Numbers 76-80: Tristan und Isolde, by Philip Venables, began in a striking fashion with the quartet bashing out perfect fifths fortissimo; as the piece develops the excellent EXAUDI singers spoke most of Simon Howard’s strangely exciting if rather baffling poem. There’s genuine wit here, and pathos, and really terrifically flamboyant writing for the instrumentalists. What a thrilling moment there was when the singers suddenly burst into song rather than the spoken word! This composer is gaining a great reputation for original and sometimes quite brutally exhilarating music, and it’s well worth watching out for him.
Read the full Guardian review here. And the Seen and Heard review here.
So – very busy at the moment with a number of big projects that I’ll be telling you about in the next few weeks, hopefully. But this week I’ve been working on a short instrumental + tape piece to accompany this short film by Sebastian Schmidt. Obviously it won’t have that sound on it, but rather my live-performed piece to go with it.
The piece has been commissioned by Ensemble Amorpha for their Amorpha_Shorts programme, and they’re premiering the pieces at the British Film Institute on 1st December 2011. Do go along if you’re around on that night! Lots of other good composers are involved too, like my very good friend and Berlin buddy, Naomi Pinnock.
Last week’s performance of Fuck Forever was reviewed by www.sosogay.com.
“There were some really great little works in among the chaff….. Philip Venables’ Fuck Forever managed to tease out a dark and violent portrait of sexual desire.”
Definitely a line I will quote in my biography!
Check out the full review here.
Fuck forever from Philip Venables on Vimeo.
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 for the second year of the successful Six Word Opera project. 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.
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.
UPDATE:
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.
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!
4.48 Psychosis was the astonishing final work of the radical British playwright Sarah Kane, first performed posthumously in 2000. Detailing the experience of clinical depression, the play harrowingly reveals, through poetry, anger and dark humour, an individual’s struggle to come to terms with their own psychosis, the numbers in the title referring to the time in the early morning when clarity and bleak despair strike together.
This award-winning operatic adaptation of Kane’s play is the first ever permitted musical adaptation of any of her work. The search for love and happiness and the struggle for identity are explored through a fusion of opera with spoken and visual text, bringing a new resonance to the last creative utterances of one of the most courageous young British writers of her generation. The opera was first presented in 2016 by the Royal Opera in London, in a production by Ted Huffman, and has subsequently seen productions in London, New York City, Strasbourg, Dresden, Munich, Mainz and Paris. The opera was awarded a Royal Philharmonic Society for Best Large Scale Composition 2017, a British Composer Award for Best Stage Work 2017, a UK Theatre Award for Best Opera 2016 and it was shortlisted for an Olivier Award for Best Opera in 2017 and a Southbank Award for Best Opera in 2017. It has been chosen as one of the best operas of 2019 by The New Yorker Magazine, and was highlighted as one of the most groundbreaking operas of the decade by The Times Literary Supplement.
4.48 Psychosis was written as part of the Doctoral Composer in Residence programme between the Guildhall School of Music & Drama and the Royal Opera House Covent Garden.
Text: Sarah Kane
Duration: 90 minutes, no interval, in 24 short scenes.
Text is in english, but foreign-language versions can be prepared (French, Italian). A German version is available from the publisher.
Cast: 3 sopranos, 3 mezzo-sopranos
Ensemble, 12 players: alto flute + picc, 3 saxes (all sop+bar), piano+synth with organ pedalboard, accordion, 2 percussion (female solo roles, some playing from memory), vln+vla, 2 vla, bass.
Percussion: two bass drums, woodsaw & wood, other standard orchestral percussion.
Sound dispersion: All singers and ensemble amplified. 1 stage speaker (central), surround sound in auditorium, click tracks to ensemble.
Projection, single projector required.
A significant amount of pre-recorded material must be recorded with the cast.
Archive video available on request.
Published by Ricordi Musikverlag GmbH
The Independent.
“Where this first-ever operatic setting by Royal Opera House Guildhall composer-in-residence Philip Venables succeeds is through simple honesty. With a score ranging guilelessly from motoric arrhythmia to wispy renaissance, director Ted Huffman and team attempt neither dramatic adornment nor explanation but allow the text to breathe within a kaleidoscope of inner-outer conflict. […] Duelling percussionists parley in a doctor-patient morse code. A tapestry of strings, accordion and saxes evoke polyphonies of yearning, while tenderly but inexorably we encounter hopeless recesses of the mind. Knowledge of Kane’s suicide shortly after writing the play can only make this humane and understated piece the more compelling.”
The Telegraph.
4.48 Psychosis opera is rawly powerful and laceratingly honest. “Venables’s high-pitched score is a soundscape that imaginatively penetrates and dramatises the heart of this darkness. Ferocious peremptory drum beats mingle ironically with cocktail-hour smooch broadcast from the radio; the vocal writing veers between monotonous chant and shrieking anguish; and there are even moments of melancholy beauty, when the women harmonise laments for a lost life of beauty, friendship, value. […] This is an urgent message from black-dog hell, and it should not go unheeded.”
The Guardian.
Philip Venables proves he’s one of the finest composers around with an intricate score inspired by Kane’s very personal story of clinical depression. “But the yearning, intricate vocal writing – Monteverdian in its timelessness – poignantly reminds us that depression is also the absence of love. Even in despair, Kane could be a savage ironist, and brassy, postmodern toccatas accompany the endless prescriptions of anti-depressants. The word “silence” was her only stage direction; Venables fills those pauses with distant muzak, among the most unnerving sounds in the work. […] above all, it confirms Philip Venables’s reputation as one of the finest of the younger generation of composers working today.”
The Times.
Every self-harming syllable of Sarah Kane’s angry play is clear as Philip Venables finds a musical vocabulary for the drugs that treat depression. “Chroma’s strings, saxophones, accordion and synthesizer smear and blur in parallel to the drugs, sometimes delicately, sometimes violently. Click here for more info. Every self-harming syllable of the text is clear. There are neon-bright salutes to Bartók’s Bluebeard (a blast of Door Five C major), and a lament derived from the Agnus Dei of Bach’s B minor Mass.”
The Observer.
Philip Venables makes Sarah Kane’s final work sing. “The revelation is how Venables has enriched her play through music. He challenges the conventions of opera. Via an array of resources he ambushes and refreshes an old art form. His technique is that of a collagist. Text is variously spoken, projected, amplified, conveyed rhythmically with percussion and sung, often in aria-like lament or chorale outburst. Snatches of Purcell – a mini viola fantasia arrests the action for several moments – and Bach coexist with high-energy funk reminiscent of the late Steve Martland. On reading later that Martland was Venables’s teacher, I can hear that element as a tribute rather than an imitation. I need to know more of Venables’s music to find his own musical identity: my task, not his.”
The Financial Times.
‘Unhinged and chilling’. “Kane’s text is spoken, sung and projected on screens: it seems to emanate from everywhere. But Venables’ achievement is bigger than that. He manages to enhance Kane’s groundbreaking format with his own unbuttoned imagination. His score lurches between chattering polyphony, sounds of sawing wood, and post-romantic arias, spiced up with eerie violin shrieks. In the exchanges between patient and therapist, two percussionists thrash out rhythmic speech patterns as the text appears on screens beneath them. Then, when the din fades away, we’re left with the indifferent tinkle of elevator music. It’s unhinged and chilling, albeit laced with Kane’s trademark humour. Most of all, it is dizzyingly colourful.”
The Arts Desk.
A musical dramatisation of Sarah Kane’s classic play finds both pain and consolation. “Picking his way through the chattering textual landscape with infinite care and understanding, cutting little text and adding none, Venables groups the material into genres. The structure that emerges is something like a sketch show; musical and dramatic tropes or textures return again and again, gaining weight and significance cumulatively through repetition and juxtaposition. […] Set against these fixed musical landmarks, stand-alone episodes make far greater impact. An exquisite aria for Clare Presland, sung over a synthesised accompaniment, is equal parts Purcell and pop song, a musical memory that offers a sustained moment of stillness, refusing to give way to the assault of other words and sounds. […] Venables’s orchestration (light on strings, heavy on saxophones and keyboards textures) is spare but telling, cultivating a mechanistic quality even when combining purely acoustic instruments that refuses to sentimentalise the outpourings of Kane’s speakers. Paired with the heady, giddy texture of so many upper voices, the result feels dangerously unanchored, unmoored from bass certainty and support.”
The Spectator.
“Experimentation in the service of absolute emotional precision: Venables’ economical work is one of the most exhilarating operas in years, even while it gives voice to some of the darkest thoughts imaginable.”
Tempo Journal
“I cannot recall having been as powerfully moved by an opera as this, much of it watched with my hand clasped over my mouth.”
Times Literary Supplement
“It has been wonderful to follow the success of Philip Venables’s 2016 adaptation of Sarah Kane’s final play, 4:48 Psychosis. This opera, which dispenses with pretty much every standard operatic precept, except the basic ones of artistic means – sung characters on stage and an orchestra playing with them – has played to audiences in Britain, Germany, France and most recently New York, opening our eyes to what musical theatre is capable of, if you forget pretty much everything you associate with the terms ‘opera’ or ‘musical theatre’.”
2024/25 — Staatstheater Mainz
2023/24 — Bayerische Theaterakademie August Everding, Munich
2021/22 — Philharmonie de Paris / Festival d’Automne / Ensemble Intercontemporain
2019/20 — Opéra National du Rhin
2018/19 — Semperoper Dresden, revivals in 2019/20 and 2022/23
2018/19 — Prototype Festival New York City
2016/17 — The Royal Opera at Lyric Hammersmith, revival in 2017/18.
Staatstheater Mainz has just announced a new production of 4.48 Psychosis in the 2024/25 season. The production will be directed by Rahel Thiel and conducted by Samuel Hogarth. The premiere…
The Bayerische Theaterakademie in Munich has announced a new production this coming autumn of the opera 4.48 Psychose (the german-language version of 4.48 Psychosis, in the translation of the Sarah…
The Semperoper in Dresden has announced a third run of performances of 4.48 Psychose, postponed from 2021. The opera had its german premiere run at Semper Zwei in April/May 2018,…
I was delighted to speak to Will Davenport earlier this year about my work in the context of LGBTQI+ issues, particularly focussing on my operas and my work with David…
Some production images from the Ensemble Intercontemporain concert performance of 4.48 Psychosis, December 2021, at the Philharmonie de Paris as part of the portrait of my work in the Festival d’Automne…
The Festival d’Automne à Paris and Ensemble Intercontemporain gave a concert performance of 4.48 Psychosis on 16th December 2021. The concert was part of the Festival feature about my work,…
The Philharmonie de Paris have just released this trailer video in advance of the concert performance of 4.48 Psychosis there on Thursday 16th December with Ensemble Intercontemporain, in a co-production…
An article about 4.48 Psychosis has just been published in the Tempo journal of new music, written by Tom Crathorne, about the interaction between music and libretto. The full article…
4.48 Psychosis will be performed in concert by Ensemble Intercontemporain on 16th December 2021 in the Cité de la Musique at the Philharmonie de Paris, as part of the feature…
Both 4.48 Psychosis and Denis & Katya have appeared in a number of ‘Best of 2019’ or ‘Best of the Decade’ lists. Here is a selection: 4.48 Psychosis at the…
Some production images from the Opéra National du Rhin / Royal Opera production of 4.48 Psychosis, September 2019. Directed by Ted Huffman, Design by Hannah Clark, Video by Pierre Martin,…
The French premiere of 4.48 Psychosis took place 18-22 September 2019 at the Opéra National du Rhin in Strasbourg, in collaboration with the Musica Festival. The Royal Opera production was…
Semperoper in Dresden have announced more dates next season for their production of 4.48 Psychose. The opera had its german premiere run in Semper Zwei in April/May this year,…
Some production images from the Prototype Festival / Royal Opera production of 4.48 Psychosis, January 2019. Directed by Ted Huffman, Design by Hannah Clark, Video by Pierre Martin, Light by…
4.48 Psychosis made its american premiere in New York City a few weeks ago at the Prototype Festival. The exceptional cast, orchestra and crew gave six performances of the Royal…
The Royal Opera production of 4.48 Psychosis will make its american debut in New York City on 5th January 2019, headlining the Prototype Festival. Prototype is North America’s largest promoter of…
Some production images from the revival of the Royal Opera production of 4.48 Psychosis, May 2018. Directed by Ted Huffman, Design by Hannah Clark, Video by Pierre Martin, Light by…
The recent performances of the Royal Opera production of 4.48 Psychosis have come to an end. We didn’t expect much press for a revival, of course, but the reviews there…
4.48 Psychose will gets its premiere at Dresden’s Semperoper Zwei next year. This will be a new version of 4.48 Psychosis in German, based on the official translation of Sarah…
On Wednesday night, I won the British Composer Award for Best Stage Work, for 4.48 Psychosis. The awards, organised by BASCA and supported by the PRS for Music Foundation and…
Alice was commissioned by the National Opera Studio in 2018 for the 12:40 project, celebrating 40 years of the studio with 12 newly-written short opera scenes for imaginary operas. As part of our series of verbatim queer life-story pieces, Ted Huffman and I worked on this scene with the performer for whom it was written, Danny Shelvey, a singer in the Studio that year. Ted interviewed Danny numerous times about his life and background. The interviews ended up focusing on his relationship with his Grandmother, Alice, and so we decided to make the piece about his lasting memories of her, and sitting by her bedside in hospital as she was ill in her final days.
A dramatic song in which a gay man reminisces about visiting his Grandmother in hospital.
Alice was commissioned by the National Opera Studio for singer Danny Shelvey, in celebration of the studio’s 40th Anniversary. It was first performed by Danny Shelvey and Florent Mourier on 14th June 2018 at Hoxton Hall, London.
Duration: 4½ minutes
Instrumentation: Tenor (F#–A) and Piano
Text by Ted Huffman after interviews with Danny Shelvey
Published by Opera Edition Ltd.
Over the past five years, Ted Huffman and I have been researching and making pieces about queer personal histories. One recent project involved us researching US-American archives of queer artists and activists from the 70s and 80s, for which we worked in collaboration with Marcelo Gabriel Yáñez. During the first Covid lockdown, I read Close to the Knives and The Weight of the Earth by David Wojnarowicz, and then, for further materials, Marcelo pointed us towards the Wojnarowicz archive held at the Fales Library at New York University. Particularly, he told us about the existence in this archive of an answer machine tape from November 1987, the time of Peter Hujar’s death.
David Wojnarowicz (1954—1992) was a visual artist, writer, performance artist and AIDS activist prominent in the New York City / East Village art scene during the 1980s up until his death from AIDS-related illness in 1992. His work is well-known for its searing, autobiographical detail, and particularly for the spotlight it shines on the development of the AIDS crisis and the precarity of gay life and emerging artists in the city at the time. David was a close friend and former lover of another artist, photographer Peter Hujar, whom David nursed through the final days before his death from AIDS-related illness on 26th November, 1987. Among other documentations of this period, David took 23 poignant photographs (one for each human chromosome pair) of details of Peter’s body immediately after the moment of death — images which then became Untitled (1988). David also kept the tape from his answer-machine after Peter’s death, which covers the time from 4th November— 1st December 1987, and features 80 minutes of messages from friends, other artists and musicians, his Gallerist, hook-ups, and others caring for Peter.
Zubin Kanga approached me some years ago about a new large-scale piece for piano, as part of his ongoing research project Cyborg Soloists, which aims to develop the artistic potential of various technological inventions for and extensions of the piano. As a result, we decided to work with the KeyScanner from the Augmented Instruments Laboratory, which non-invasively detects key-strokes on a standard piano. We worked with programmer Simon Hendry to turn the piano into an enormous typewriter, following earlier work in 4.48 Psychosis (2016) and Denis & Katya (2019). The source tape, with only some messages removed for brevity, forms a central thread around which the piano-typewriter explore ideas of transcription and annotation. The narrative presented by the tape is elliptical, opaque, mysterious, intimate — repetitive and yet never repeating. The AIDS crisis haunts every message, and yet the messages themselves, like everyday life, deal mostly only with minutiae and banality. Where are you? Come to my gig. When should I visit? Call me back.
Answer Machine Tape, 1987 is a work that is enigmatic and meditative, that opens a door for the audience, but requires them to take a step inside. We eavesdrop into a private world, messages are transliterated into a musical fabric, become character studies, become reflections on a community, become attempts to decipher meaning. Transcription, and its failure in the face of extreme difficulty, becomes a poignant metaphor for the AIDS crisis and its devastating effect on a generation.
Answer Machine Tape, 1987 is dedicated to Joséphine Markovits with much appreciation for her friendship and support.
Answer Machine Tape, 1987 was commissioned by Zubin Kanga with the support of a UKRI Future Leaders Fellowship, Royal Holloway, University of London and The Marchus Trust; Time of Music (Musiikin aika, Finland), November Music (Netherlands) and Huddersfield Contemporary Music Festival (UK) with the support of Sounds Now and Creative Europe; and Festival d’Automne à Paris (France). Support for some research time was provided by Neustart Kultur.
Published by Ricordi Musikverlag GmbH
Duration: 45 minutes
Instrumentation: solo piano with MIDI detection (e.g. KeyScanner), MaxMSP and software synth, Projector and Tape.
The Max interface is provided with the hire material.
Answer Machine Tape, 1987 was based on a concept developed in collaboration with Ted Huffman.
Software Programming: Simon Hendry
Answer Machine Tape, 1987 was premiered by Zubin Kanga on 8th July 2022 at Time of Music Festival (Musiikin aika), Viitasaari, Finland.
With thanks to:
Marcelo Gabriel Yáñez for his assistance with research and for the transcription of the audio tape.
Anneliis Beadnell at PPOW Gallery for her assistance and liaison with the Estate of David Wojnarowicz.
Answer Machine Tape, 1987 is exclusive to Zubin Kanga until 11th July 2027. Material will be available for hire after that date.
Sunday, 30 November 2025, 15:00
Zubin Kanga performs Answer Machine Tape, 1987 in Bruges
Concertgebouw Brugge
't Zand 34
8000 Bruges
Belgium
Zubin Kanga performs this work for piano and multimedia. Tickets: https://www.visitbruges.be/en/whats-on/events-calendar/lieveling-double-bill-zubin-kanga-fleur-pierets-answer-machine-tape-1987-they-were-here
Friday, 05 December 2025, 15:00
Zubin Kanga performs London premiere of Answer Machine Tape, 1987
Kings Place
90 York Way
London
N1 9AG
England
Zubin Kanga performs this work for piano and multimedia. Tickets: https://www.kingsplace.co.uk/whats-on/classical/zubin-kanga-performs-philip-venables-answer-machine-tape-1987/
Friday, 08 July 2022, 18:00
Answer Machine Tape, 1987 (world premiere), performed by Zubin Kanga
Time of Music Festival, Viitasaari
Finland
World premiere of this new piece for piano and multimedia, written in collaboration with Ted Huffman and Simon Hendry. Commissioned by Time of Music Festival, Huddersfield Contemporary Music Festival, November Music, Festival d’Automne à Paris and Zubin Kanga, the latter as part of Cyborg Soloists, supported by a UKRI Future Leaders Fellowship and Royal Holloway, University of London. https://festivals.fi/en/festivals/time-of-music-viitasaari/
Saturday, 12 November 2022, 15:00
Answer Machine Tape, 1987
November Music, Den Bosch, Netherlands
Zubin Kanga performs this new work for piano and multimedia, co-commissioned by November Music.
Saturday, 19 November 2022, 16:00
Answer Machine Tape, 1987
Bates Mill, HCMF, Hudderfield, UK
Zubin Kanga performs this new work for piano and multimedia, co-commissioned by Huddersfield Contemporary Music Festival
Monday, 05 December 2022, 19:00
Answer Machine Tape, 1987 at Festival d'Automne à Paris
Théâtre De La Ville – Espace Pierre Cardin
1 Avenue Gabriel
75008 Paris
France
Zubin Kanga performs this new work for piano and multimedia, co-commissioned by Festival d’Automne à Paris.
Tuesday, 19 September 2023, 17:00
Answer Machine Tape, 1987 at Musica Festival
Pôle Sud
1 Rue de Bourgogne
67100 Strasbourg
France
Zubin Kanga performs this work for piano and multimedia. Tickets: https://festivalmusica.fr/manifestation/1941/answer-machine-tape-1987
Tuesday, 19 September 2023, 20:00
Answer Machine Tape, 1987 at Musica Festival
Pôle Sud
1 Rue de Bourgogne
67100 Strasbourg
France
Zubin Kanga performs this work for piano and multimedia. Tickets: https://festivalmusica.fr/manifestation/1942/answer-machine-tape-1987
Wednesday, 18 October 2023, 18:30
Answer Machine Tape, 1987 at Oxford Contemporary Music
St John's College Auditorium
St Giles
Oxford
OX1 3JP
England
Zubin Kanga performs this work for piano and multimedia. TIckets: https://www.wegottickets.com/event/589993
Friday, 18 October 2024, 22:30
Answer Machine Tape, 1987 at Transit Festival, Leuven
Stuk
Naamsestraat 96
3000 Leuven
Belgium
Zubin Kanga performs this work for piano and multimedia. Tickets: https://www.festival2021.be/en/2024/kanga-venables
Answer Machine Tape, 1987, for piano and multimedia, will be performed on 18th October at the Transit Festival in Leuven, Belgium. It will be performed by Zubin Kanga, who commissioned…
We’ve just completed the run of premiere performances of Answer Machine Tape, 1987 with the four co-commissioning festivals: Time of Music in Finland, November Music in the Netherlands, hcmf// in…
I was very fortunate to be featured this year at hcmf// across three concerts of my most recent works: Answer Machine Tape, 1987, performed and commissioned by Zubin Kanga; Numbers…
Answer Machine Tape, 1987, my a new work for piano and multimedia, has more performances announced this autumn. Zubin Kanga, who commissioned the piece, will perform the work at the…
Answer Machine Tape, 1987 — a new work for piano and multimedia — has its first performance on 8th July 2022 at Time of Music Festival (Musiikin Aika) in Viitasaari,…
Arc was developed for performance by the BBC Philharmonic as part of spnm’s artistic season 2005/06. The premiere took place at Broadcasting House, Manchester, on 24th November 2005, conducted by James MacMillan. It was recorded for broadcast on BBC Radio 3.Arc is dedicated to my grandmother, Anne Killen 20/08/1919 – 18/10/2005.
Arc was nominated for and received a special mention at the British Academy Composer Awards 2006 in the orchestral category.
Orchestra: 3(3rd=picc).3(3rd=cor).3(2nd=E-flat, 3rd=bass).3(3rd=cbsn) / 4.3.3.1 / timp 3perc hp / 14.12.10.8.6
Percussion list: 4 Timpani, Snare Drum, Whip, 3 tam-tams: small (6”), medium (12”) and large (36”), Cabasa, Guiro, 5 Woodblocks from high to low, 5 tom toms from very high to low (c. 9” to 24”), Orchestral Bass Drum, Set of Crotales – 1½ octaves from C to G-sharp), Glockenspiel, Vibraphone, Marimba.
Duration: 10 minutes
Year: 2005
This piece has only been performed in the UK; other national premieres are available.
Published by Opera Edition Ltd.
“Turner Prize-winning artist Douglas Gordon stages a dark musical journey into a world of an emotional state of emergency. Using a compilation of popular cover songs as a basis, one of the world’s most influential video and installation artists has developed a stage work about domestic violence in collaboration with British composer Philip Venables. In “Bound to Hurt” songs by artists as diverse as Donna Summer, Jacques Brel, Madonna, and Throbbing Gristle are re-imagined as surreal fantasies of violence. The performance is written for the extremely versatile singer and performer Ruth Rosenfeld, best known for her collaborations with theatre directors Frank Castorf and Herbert Fritsch. She is accompanied by members of the German-Icelandic Ensemble Adapter, one of the most experimental genre-crossers in New Music.”
Bound to Hurt was developed with Laura Berman for Kampnagel Sommerfestival in Hamburg (premiere 6th August 2015), Hebbel Theater HAU1 in Berlin (premiere 7th October 2015) and Theater Basel (premiere 15th June 2016).
Duration: c.70 minutes
Direction and design: Douglas Gordon
Dramaturgy: Laura Berman
Co-direction: Jasmina Hadziahmetovic
Cast: Ruth Rosenfeld, Saraa Sigrist
Live music by Ensemble Adapter (Gunnhildur Einarsdóttir, harp /Matthias Engler, percussion / Kristjana Helgadóttir, flute / Iñigo Giner Miranda, Keyboard / Ingólfur Vilhjálmsson, clarinet / Johannes Pennetzdorfer, viola)
Light Design: Brian H Scott
Costume: Christel Rehm
Make-Up: Christian Fritzenwanker
Lighting: Sebastian Zamponi
Sound: Matthias Kirschke
Produced by Hebbel am Ufer Theater
Additional funding provided by Hauptstadtkulturfonds (Berlin), Art Basel.
Die Popsongs erkennt nur, wer wirklich gut mit den englischen Texten und Melodien vertraut ist. Trotzdem, der Klangteppich, den der britische Star-Komponist Philip Venables gespannt hat, ist der faszinierendere Teil des Abends. Die Mischung von klassischen Klängen des kleinen Orchesters am Bühnenrand und die Aus- und Höhenflüge in die Pop-Geschichte faszinieren – und finden gemeinsam mit Ruth Rosenfelds klarer Stimme immer wieder zu berührenden Monumenten der Einsamkeit. — Nachtkritik
Douglas Gordon, der mit seiner Videoinstallation “24 Hour Psycho” weltberühmt wurde, inszeniert die Verletzlichkeit ihres Körpers im Spiel von Licht und Dunkelheit – die ihrer Seele wird durch Venables verstörende Musik wiedergegeben. Ein Angstraum öffnet sich, wird in gut dosierten Pausen aber auch wieder geschlossen. So ist “Bound to Hurt” tatsächlich mit einer visuellen und akustischen Horrordusche à la Hitchcock vergleichbar: Eine gruselige Collage aus intensiven Schreckmomenten, die vorbeirauschen und ein beklemmendes Gefühl hinterlassen. — Die Welt
Es ist besonders die Musik von Philip Venables, die dafür sorgt, dass die häusliche Gewalt, um die es hier geht, auch für die Zuschauer fast physisch spürbar wird. Nicht nur das laute Wummern auf der grossen Trommel, sondern auch die vom Band eingespielten Drones, also die tiefen und lauten Bassklänge, die aus den Lautsprechern dröhnen, sind physisch spürbar und lassen die Zuschauerstühle vibrieren. Die verfremdeten Popsongs von Madonna und Eminem sind fast nicht zu erkennen und werden von Venables als eine Art emotionaler und textlicher Steinbruch benutzt. — Aargauer Zeitung
Die ungeheure Spannung, die ihr Körper ausstrahlt, kulminiert in einer Art Wahnsinn, der unterstrichen wird durch einen eindrucksvollen Klangteppich aus der Feder des britischen Komponisten Philip Venables. Zusammen mit dem deutsch-isländischen Kammermusikensemble Adapter wandelt Venables populäre Liebeslieder wie “I feel love” von Donna Summer, Frankie Vallis “Can’t take my eyes off you” oder “Almost a kiss” von Throbbing Gristle in verstörend surreale Gewaltfantasien um und schafft es so, die unheimliche Gefühlszerrissenheit, die Douglas Gordons Arbeiten prägen, ins Theater zu übersetzen. — Monopol Magazin
Denis & Katya follows the accounts of the true story of two 15-year-old Russian teenagers Denis Muravyov and Katya Viasova. Their story was reported worldwide in November 2016 after they ran away from home together and hid in a family-owned hunting cabin in Strugi Krasnye. After a few days, the police surrounded the house, and the situation escalated and the pair died of gunshot wounds on November 16, 2016. Other circumstances of their death are unclear. They live-broadcast on social media frequently during the three days in the cabin, engaging with on-line viewers as they filmed while in the midst of a standoff with Russian Special Forces.
The text material for the opera comes from interviews with people who were adjacent to these events – namely the best friend of Denis, who was 17 years old when we spoke to him, and a journalist who visited the scene of the incident and wrote an extended piece about the tragedy for the Medusa newspaper in the days following. Other interviews with members of the community (Neighbour, Teenager, Teacher, Medic) have been fictionalised, based on verbatim sources such as press reports and a television talk show about the incident. Additionally, we include excerpts of text conversations that took place on Whatsapp Messenger between myself and Ted.
The opera cuts between these different ‘talking heads’ characters in quick succession, much like a television documentary that might reconstruct an event from a variety of eye-witness reports. The story is slowly pieced together from these talking heads, alongside the story of the making of the opera that unfolds in the Whatsapp conversations. Each character has their own particular mode of text setting between the two performers, and their own musical inidcators. The result is 112 microscenes, some as long as c.2 minutes, some as short as 5 seconds.
In essence, this opera is about storytelling. It plays with the idea of storytelling, how we tell stories to each other, both in real life and on the internet. The six characters told their stories about this event, and the two performers are re-telling these stories to the audience in an act of spontaneous roleplay theatre.
Denis & Katya was co-commissioned and co-produced by Opera Philadelphia, Music Theatre Wales and Opéra National de Montpellier, with major support provided by the William Penn Foundation.
Denis & Katya was winner of the Fedora Generali Prize for Opera 2019 and the Ivors Composer Award for Stage Works 2020.
Text: Ted Huffman / Co-creator: Ksenia Ravvina
Duration: 65 minutes, no interval, in two parts (excluding countdown at beginning).
Text is in English. French and German versions are available also from the publisher.
Cast: Mezzo-Soprano, high Baritone (with in-ear monitors)
Ensemble: 4 cellos (playing from iPads, with in-ear monitors).
The opera is unconducted, synchronised with in-ear-monitors.
Amplification, surround sound dispersion, recorded sound & video required.
Archive video available on request.
Premiere: 18th September 2019.
Published by Ricordi Musikverlag GmbH
“Most important for the long-term health of the art was the première, at Opera Philadelphia, of Philip Venables’s “Denis & Katya,” based on the real-life story of two Russian teen-agers who died after a standoff with police. With extraordinary sensitivity, Venables examined the fallout of viral Internet fame and media frenzy. […] What is remarkable about “Denis & Katya” is how it explores the psychological roots of our fixation on such sad and gruesome cases. […] Venables’s way of building tension through minimal means is astonishing throughout.” — Alex Ross, The New Yorker
“The result of all these elements is an uneasily poignant reflection on storytelling, on the possibilities and limitations of our understanding — especially across space and language in the fragmentary era of social media. At just over an hour, with just six performers, it’s an intimate, haunting triumph.” — The New York Times
“Not only is Venables’s newest creation the most brilliantly original operatic work I’ve seen in a decade, it’s a sensitive, subtle, and deeply questioning meditation on youth, voyeurism, and the age of social media.” — Musical America
“Employing the most slimly elegant resources, Festival O’s Denis & Katya is a monumental, dramatically shattering event.” […] “This is an important, out-of-the-box work, superbly performed. Denis & Katya deserves to have a long afterlife, and with luck, it will. But if you can see one of the remaining performances here at Festival O19, you absolutely should. It is utterly spellbinding.” — Parterre Box
“Highly experimental in its manner, the piece exudes great confidence of purpose plus gritty, thoughtful artistry” — Philadelphia Inquirer
“an impactful work of music theater that OP executed with admirable visual and aural precision and imagination.” — Opera News
“Composer Philip Venables and Librettist Ted Huffman’s unsettling, unconventional new opera Denis & Katya challenges the ear, the eye, and the soul to accept a wholly new hybrid form of operatic expression. This is a performance quite unlike any most have ever experienced.” […] “Mr. Venables’ score is a wholly unique aural palette. The deep, often mournful keening of the cello sound grounds the composition in a suitable Russian melancholy. But there are ample flashes of brilliant overtones, and agitated writing as well to complement the often declamatory, angular vocal lines. It was a pleasure to encounter a composer new to me, whose work was forward-looking, yet abundantly accessible.” — Opera Today
“Rarely has a work felt so connected to the culture in which it was created.” — Broadstreet Review
For more extended press reviews, see here.
2024 — Theater Erfurt
2023 — Musiktheater an der Wien
2023 — Opera Pittsburgh
2023 — Kind Of Opera, Copenhagen & Aarhus
2023 — Opera Taite / Finnish National Opera, Helsinki
2022 — Dutch National Opera, Amsterdam
2022 — Staatsoper Hannover, revival in 2023
2021 — Cambridge University
2021 — Opéra National de Montpellier
2020 — Music Theatre Wales: tour dates in Southbank Centre London, Newport, Mold, Aberystwyth, Cardiff
2019 — Opera Phildelphia
Theater Erfurt has announced its new production of Denis & Katya in the coming 23/24 season, The production of the german-language translation by Robert Lehmeier will be directed by Markus…
Denis & Katya will have its Danish premier on Thursday 17th August (schools performance) and Friday 18th August 2023 (public performance) as part of the Aalborg Opera Festival. This is a…
On the same day as our wonderful premiere of Denis & Katya in Pittsburgh, Musiktheater an der Wein announced their new production of Denis & Katya to open their 2023/24 season at…
Denis & Katya has been cited as in the top ten most performed contemporary operas across the world in the last seven years. The citation has come from a wide…
Some production images from the Dutch National Opera production of Denis & Katya, March 2022, on the enormous main stage of the opera house in Amsterdam, as part of the Opera…
I was delighted to speak to Will Davenport earlier this year about my work in the context of LGBTQI+ issues, particularly focussing on my operas and my work with David…
The German premiere of Denis & Katya happened earlier this year, in a new german-language version of the opera, commissioned by the Niedersächsische Staatsoper in Hannover. The production took place…
Denis & Katya was given its german premiere in Hannover this season on 26th Feburary, and a revival has just been announced in the 22—23 Season of the Niedersächsische Staatsoper…
Opera Company Taite, Finnish National Opera and Musica Nova Helsinki have just announced their co-production of Denis & Katya on 8th, 10th, & 11th March 2023 at the Arminsali at Finnish National…
Some production images from the Staatsoper Hannover production of Denis & Katya, February 2022, at Ballhof Eins in Hannover. The singers were Weronika Rabek and Darwin Prakash, with cellists Reynard Rott,…
Pittsburgh Opera has just announced its 2022/23 Season, including performances of Denis & Katya on 6th, 9th, 12th, 14th, & 20th May 2023. They will be performing the Opera Philadelphia…
Some production images from the Opéra Orchestre National de Montpellier production of Denis & Katya, July 2021. Directed by Ted Huffman, design and lighting by Andrew Lieberman, video by Pierre…
Dutch National Opera in Amsterdam have announced that they will make a new production of Denis & Katya in the Opera Forward Festival 2022. The Festival features a range of…
Denis & Katya made its french premiere a few weeks ago in a new french-language version at the Opéra National Montpellier. The production featured soprano Chloé Briot and baritone Elliot…
Opéra Orchestre National Montpellier have made two little videos taking a peek behind the scenes of the production of Denis & Katya. Episode 1 features interviews with me and Ted…
The German premiere of Denis & Katya has been announced for the 21—22 Season of the Niedersächsische Staatsoper Hannover. The theatre has commissioned a german language version of the opera,…
The performances of Denis & Katya in Montpellier have been postponed due to Covid-19. The opera will now take place on the main stage of the Opéra Comédie on 26th,…
I am delighted to say that I have won an Ivor Novello Award for Denis & Katya in the Stage Works category of the 2020 Ivors Composers Awards. The awards…
Music Theatre Wales tour of Denis & Katya is now complete. The show went to Newport, Mold and Aberystwyth in Wales, followed by two nights at the Purcell Room in…
Denis & Katya has been shortlisted for the World Premiere award at the 2020 International Opera Awards. Others shortlisted include Anthropocene by Stuart MacRae and Louise Welsh and p r…
Fight music is a hypothetical scene from the Boris Vian play Les Bâtisseurs D’Empire (The Empire Builders). The play is a violent, surreal comment on war and colonisation. This music accompanies a fight scene where members of the family and their maid savagely beat a mysterious bandaged figure lurking in the corner while discussing what they’ll eat for dinner. It’s absurdist cartoon horror.
Fight music was commissioned by Endymion for their 30th Birthday Sound Census festival in June 2009. It premiered, conducted by Quentin Poole and with Jane Salmon as the solo cellist, on 5th June 2009 at Kings Place concert hall, London.
Orchestration: solo cello + fl, cl, tpt, tbn, pf, drum kit, bass
A version of Fight music for six players (solo cello + fl, cl, pf, perc, vn) is also available.
Duration: 5 minutes
A recording is available on the debut album Below the Belt (Spotify link)
Fight Music has been performed in the UK and France. Other national premieres are still available.
Published by Opera Edition Ltd.
“Philip Venables’s Fight Music, evoking a community beating up an outsider (the poor whimpering cello) was brutally effective” — The Times
Fight music The first ever portrait concert of my work will be at LSO St Luke’s in London on 30th June 2013. The concert features five recent pieces from the…
Flipp was first performed on 24th May 2011 at BKA Theater, Berlin, Adrian Tully and Christoph Enzel, as part of the Unerhörte Musik series.
Instrumentation: two of the same saxophone
Duration: 3 minutes
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…
I have long been a mega fan of David Hoyle. When I lived in London, I regularly went to see his shows at the Royal Vauxhall Tavern. He’s the canary in the mine of our times, sounding the alarm for a deeply unfair and oppressive society in white hot cabaret and performance art. I find his rage incredibly exciting and galvanising.
In 2015 the London Sinfonietta approached twelve composers, including me, to write a short piece for a special programme on the eve of the UK General Election that year. The concert was called Notes to the New Government, and we were supposed to make issues-based pieces directed at the as yet unknown incoming government.
I took this opportunity to ask David to work with me for the first time. He agreed, and we filmed around two hours of his unique brand of stream-of-consciousness rant. From that, I edited snippets of video into a 7-minute piece, Illusions. The message of the piece resonated with the audience, so two years later, in yet another general election year, the New Music Biennial and the London Sinfonietta asked us to extend and reorient the piece. Amid the unchartered post-Brexit landscape of 2017, there were also celebrations for the 50th anniversary of the legalisation of homosexuality in England and Wales — an issue dear to David and me.
We decided to highlight this in our update. We went through the same process, filmed more material, and made a 14-minute piece that is more direct, more sexual, and more aggressive than its 2015 predecessor. I hope you find the anger inspiring.
Illusions is a a collaboration with the performance artist David Hoyle, for live ensemble and video projection. The first version was commissioned by the London Sinfonietta as a “Note to the new government” and performed by them two days after the British General Election in 2015, at the QEH, Southbank Centre on London, 9th May 2015. A longer version was commissioned by them for the UK New Music Biennial / Hull City of Culture, which was premiered on 2nd June 2017 by the London Sinfonietta and Richard Baker. This longer version replaced the 2015 version.
Music, concept, video: Philip Venables
Text & Performance: David Hoyle
Duration: 14 minutes
Ensemble: video projection, picc.bsax / tpt.tbn / pf.1perc(BD.whistle.tgl) / vn.va.cb.
Requires click track (preferably for all players, but if not, a conductor)
Published by Ricordi Musikverlag GmbH
A recording is available on the debut album Below the Belt (Spotify link)
“Most graphically urgent is Illusions — which performance artist David Hoyle acidly exposes through alternating political rant and twisted seduction. Supported with terrific intelligence by Richard Baker’s London Sinfonietta — the muzak, especially, disturbs — this is a remarkable piece, sensationally played.” — BBC Music Magazine
“a proper little zinger” — The Spectator
« Il massacre la bourgeoisie décadente et la masculinité toxique à la tronçonneuse et termine par ce précieux conseil : “la prochaine fois que vous vous masturbez, mettez-vous un doigt dans le cul.” Bien noté. » Brain Magazine / (Machine translated: He slaughters the decadent bourgeoisie and toxic masculinity with a chainsaw and ends with the valuable advice, “next time you masturbate, stick a finger up your ass.” Duly noted.)
The International Ensemble Modern Academy are reprising their wonderful performance of Illusions at the Into The Open Festival in Berlin. They performed the piece for the first time at Time…
BBC Music Magazine is celebrating its 30th Birthday this year, and as part of the celebrations they have chosen Below The Belt as one of their 30 “Must-Have Albums of…
Answer Machine Tape, 1987 — a new work for piano and multimedia — has its first performance on 8th July 2022 at Time of Music Festival (Musiikin Aika) in Viitasaari,…
Photo above: Jamie Gray / New Music Biennial. I picked up a baton again this weekend for the first time in 15 years. Having spent a lot of time as…
Illusions — my collaboration with performance artist David Hoyle — will feature in this year’s New Music Biennial retrospective at Coventry City of Culture and London’s Southbank Centre. This year’s…
Musica Festival in Strasbourg has just announced its 2021 programme, and I’m delighted to say there will be a portrait concert of my work in the festival on 1st October.…
From 6th—10th May, I will be the featured composer at the PLUG Festival, a contemporary music festival at the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland in Glasgow. The PLUG Festival predominantly features…
The Riot Ensemble is performing two pieces of mine, Illusions and Numbers 91–95, at Kings Place on Monday 17th September as part of the new ‘Luminate’ series. It’s a semi-portrait concerto, with other…
My debut album, Below the Belt, is now available for pre-ordering via NMC here. The disc will be launched on 16th March 2018. The works on the disc are: The…
Illusions, my collaboration with performance artist David Hoyle, was premiered in its new extended version at Hull 2017 City of Culture on 2nd July as part of the PRS Foundation…
Illusions, my collaboration with David Hoyle and the London Sinfonietta, has been selected for the New Music Biennial in 2017. That means that we will revive the work and hopefully…
I’m delighted to have been able to contribute to the London Sinfonietta‘s Notes to the New Government on Saturday at the Southbank Centre. David Hoyle and I worked on an ‘in-yer-face’…