Philip Venables

Author: phil

  • K (prelude to Mozart’s Clarinet Quintet)

    Programme Note

    K takes the first two bars of the Clarinet Quintet in A major, Kv. 581, by W. A. Mozart (1756 – 1791) and pulls them apart, exposing, reworking, fragmenting, reflecting and elaborating their harmony and gesture. The resulting short piece is almost catatonically restful, instructed ‘tranquilizing’ at the top of the score. The original two bars of Mozart’s are only heard at the very end, almost in echo.

    Details

    K was written for the Sounds New MozartNOW Festival in Canterbury in 2006, the 250th Anniversary of Mozart’s birth. It was first performed on 4th December 2006 in St Peter’s Church, Canterbury by David Campbell, Kathy Shave, Lizzie Umpleby, Rachel Dyker and Julia Vohralik. It has since been revised in 2010 and performed in the revised version by the Windrush Chamber Players and Endymion.

    The performance in this video was at Kings Place Hall 2, London, by Endymion: Krysia Osostowicz, Clara Biss, Asdis Valdimarsdottir and Jane Salmon with Mark van de Wiel on clarinet.

    Ideally K is performed immediately before Mozart’s Clarinet Quintet in A major, K581.

    Instrumentation: string quartet and clarinet in A (clarinet appears in the last five bars only)

    Duration: 7’30”

    Published by Opera Edition Ltd.

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  • Metamorphoses after Britten

    Programme Note

    I – A mountain
    II – Fixation
    III – Flowers
    IV – Fountains

    Metamorphoses after Britten are just that: four miniatures, each inspired by one of Benjamin Britten’s Six Metamorphoses after Ovid for solo oboe. Each movement, over its short course, transforms gradually from one thing to another, ending, with the exception of Fountains, in a short, cathartic coda. Some of the movements also take specific musical elements from Britten’s pieces.  I very much viewed these pieces as musical Haiku, and in that sense I hope they embody a sense of peace, brevity and simplicity.

    Details

    The oboe version of Metamorphoses after Britten is dedicated to Melinda Maxwell.

    Metamorphoses after Britten was written for Melinda Maxwell for UYMP’s Signals volume of new music for oboe. It was first performed by Melinda at York University on 24th November 2010.

    Versions are available for clarinet, saxophone and bassoon.

    Duration: 8 minutes

    Published by Opera Edition Ltd.

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  • My Favourite Piece is the Goldberg Variations

    My Favourite Piece is the Goldberg Variations

    Video of the world premiere (live performance), KLANG Festival, Konzertkirken, Copenhagen, 30th May 2021. Video by Klavs Kehlet Hansen, sound by Mikael Tobias.

    Programme Note

    My Favourite Piece is the Goldberg Variations is based on interviews with Susanne Borregaard (mother of accordionist Andreas Borregaard) conducted during the summer lockdown of 2020. 

    Andreas approached me about writing a piece involving extended performativity beyond simply playing the accordion. I was drawn to the idea of the accordionist as storyteller, almost in the troubadour sense. We met with writer Ted Huffman in Berlin to speak about Andreas’ own life and work, which in turn led to interviews with his mother over Skype. 

    My work with Ted often uses verbatim text and this piece continues our exploration of queer histories. From this interview material, we formed twelve snapshots of a life over seven decades. 

    The piece is dedicated to Susanne Borregaard with great appreciation for her contribution. 

    Music Video, released online by Borealis Festival, Bergen, Norway, on 20th March 2021 (in lieu of the live premiere, due to Covid-19). Video by Pierre Martin, sound by Tommy Vestergaard. (Music Video Supported by Borealis Festival and Augustinus Fonden)

    Details

    My Favourite Piece is the Goldberg Variations was commissioned by Andreas Borregaard as part of his research project Just Do It, with funds provided by the Norwegian Academy of Music.

    My Favourite Piece is the Goldberg Variations is dedicated to Susanne Borregaard with great appreciation for her contribution. 

    Published by Ricordi Musikverlag GmbH

    Duration: 23 minutes

    Set-up: Solo accordion who also speaks and sings. Amplification of the accordion and the voice is usually required.

    Text: Ted Huffman, after interviews with Susanne Borregaard.

    Text is in English, with French and German versions also given in the score.

    The first performance of My Favourite Piece is the Goldberg Variations was scheduled to be given at Borealis Festival, Bergen, Norway, on 20th March 2021.  However, the live concert was cancelled due to Covid, and instead the piece was recorded (audio) by Andreas Borregaard and Tommy Kamp Vestergaard (sound engineer / producer), set to a film made by Pierre Martin, and released online in lieu of the concert.  

    The first live performance of the piece was at KLANG Festival, Copenhagen, Denmark, on 30th May 2021, given by Andreas Borregaard.  

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    Press

    In Philip Venables and Ted Huffman’s My Favourite Piece is the Goldberg Variations, Borregaard tells his mother’s life story, while faded home videos flicker in the background and his dramatic accordion playing at the same time counteracts and supports the narrative. It is the accordion that makes a banality like “I felt better with him around / he was always holding my hand” sound like a hard-earned life experience, and which highlights the crushing melancholy in the children’s song “The mountain in the forest”. With few, well-chosen means, Borregaard conveys in the most beautiful way a tale of love and loss, of duality and loneliness. It is an exquisite sensitization of everyday life.” — Seismograf.org (machine translated from Danish)

    “My Favourite Piece is the Goldberg Variations, an intimate and moving work in which accordionist Andreas Borregaard accompanies the story of his mother, which he declaims, full of emotion: in 12 stations that are so many snapshots of existence, he takes us into the life of this woman within a touching, humanist and queer parable, which seems to focus the composer’s intention to explore certain pathologies from which our societies suffer.” — DNA Magazine, France (machine translated from French)

    “Created on a text by Ted Huffman around the story of the accordionist’s parents, told during the twenty minutes he plays the piece, My Favorite Piece is the Goldberg Variations finds in Andreas Borregaard an exceptional artist, capable of drawing tears in a Shostakovich-like lamento, and then at the appearance of the theme of the Bach variations.” — AltaMusica (machine translated from French)


    Performances of My Favourite Piece is the Goldberg Variations

    • Monday, 01 September 2025, 20:00
      My Favourite Piece is the Goldberg Variations (semi-staged with Kind Of Opera)
      Hotel Cecil Niels Hemmingsens Gade 10 1153 Copenhagen K Denmark

      Performed by Andreas Borregaard. Text by Ted Huffman. Directed by Trine Heide. Tickets: https://www.billetlugen.dk/noapp/event/20187902/?affiliate=HC9

    • Saturday, 20 March 2021, 19:00
      My Favourite Piece is the Goldberg Variations (world premiere, film version)
      Borealis Festival, Bergen, Norway

      performed and commissioned by Andreas Borregaard.
      Film by Pierre Martin
      Text by Ted Huffman

    • Sunday, 30 May 2021, 18:00
      My Favourite Piece is the Goldberg Variations (world premiere, live performance)
      Klang Festival, Esromgade 15, 2200 København N Denmark

      Performed by Andreas Borregaard. Text by Ted Huffman

    • Wednesday, 08 September 2021, 18:00
      My Favourite Piece is the Goldberg Variations
      SPOR Festival, Aarhus, Denmark

      Performed by Andreas Borregaard. Text by Ted Huffman.

    • Friday, 01 October 2021, 18:00
      Talking Music: a portrait of Philip Venables, at Musica Festival
      Cité de la Musique et de la Danse, 1 Place Dauphine, 67000 Strasbourg, France.

      A concert mixed with a talk show, about the music of Philip Venables. Conceived and performed by Collective Lovemusic, featuring guest artists Andreas Borregaard, Grace Durham and Romain Pageard.
      Venables: Klaviertrio im Geiste; My Favourite Piece is the Goldberg Variations; Numbers 81–85, Numbers 91–95, Numbers 96–100; Illusions. Rzewski: Coming Together. A co-production with Festival d’Automne à Paris, Musica Festival and Lovemusic.

    • Tuesday, 26 October 2021, 18:00
      Talking Music: a portrait of Philip Venables in the Festival d'Automne à Paris
      Espace Pierre Cardin 1 Avenue Gabriel, 75008 Paris, France

      A concert mixed with a talk show, about the music of Philip Venables. Conceived and performed by Collective Lovemusic, featuring guest artists Andreas Borregaard, Grace Durham and Romain Pageard.
      Venables: Klaviertrio im Geiste; My Favourite Piece is the Goldberg Variations; Numbers 81–85, Numbers 91–95, Numbers 96–100; Illusions. Rzewski: Coming Together. A co-production with Festival d’Automne à Paris, Musica Festival and Lovemusic.

    • Saturday, 30 April 2022, 18:00
      My Favourite Piece is the Goldberg Variations, in the Only Connect Festival
      Munch Museum Tøyengata 53 0578 Oslo Norway

      performed by Andreas Borregaard. Text by Ted Huffman. http://onlyconnect.no/

    • Sunday, 20 November 2022, 22:30
      My Favourite Piece is the Goldberg Variations, at HCMF
      Huddersfield Contemporary Music Festival

      performed by Andreas Borregaard. Text by Ted Huffman.

    • Friday, 02 December 2022, 18:30
      My Favourite Piece is the Goldberg Variations, Norwegian Academy of Music, Oslo.
      Norwegian Academy of Music, Slemdalsveien 11, 0369 Oslo, Norway

      performed by Andreas Borregaard. Text by Ted Huffman.

    • Tuesday, 02 July 2024, 19:30
      My Favourite Piece is the Goldberg Variations, at Aarhus Academy
      Institut for (X) Skovgaardsgade 5C 8000 Aarhus C Danmark

      performed by Andreas Borregaard. Text by Ted Huffman.

    • Friday, 04 April 2025, 13:00
      My Favourite Piece is the Goldberg Variations, at New Music Dublin
      National Concert Hall, Earlsfort Terrace, Saint Kevin's, Dublin, D02 N527, Ireland

      performed by Andreas Borregaard. Text by Ted Huffman. Tickets: https://www.newmusicdublin.ie


    News about My Favourite Piece is the Goldberg Variations

  • Naomo Pinnetuo

    Naomo Pinnetuo

    Naomi Pinnock, photo: Rui Camilo

    Programme Note

    Naomi Pinnock and I met on our first day of study at the Royal Academy of Music in 2002, both us composition students on the Masters course.  We became close friends, and this dear friendship continues 20 years later.  When my former teacher at the Academy, Philip Cashian, asked Naomi and I to write short solo pieces  to celebrate the 200th Birthday of the Academy, we both thought it would be lovely to pay a tribute to each other.  I have taken the opening figure of Naomi’s string trio, Janus, which she wrote while she was at the Academy, and I have turned it into a little moto perpetuo encore piece for solo violin.  Naomi in turn has taken the opening of my String Quartet, also written while I was a student at the Academy, and also made a solo violin piece out of it.  With this little piece, i want to say thank you to Naomi for many years of love, support and friendship, and a dear thanks to Philip Cashian and the Royal Academy of Music for nurturing us.  They were wonderful years.

    Details

    Naomo Pinnetuo was written for the Royal Academy of Music. as a gift on their 200th Birthday. It is dedicated to Naomi Pinnock and the Royal Academy of Music.

    The first performance will be given by Ezo Sarici, a violin student at the Royal Academy, on 25th November 2022 in the Duke’s Hall, Royal Academy of Music.

    Duration: 1’50”

    Instrumentation: Solo Violin

    Published by Opera Edition Ltd.

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  • numbers 76-80 : tristan and isolde

    Programme Note

    numbers 76–80 : tristan und isolde is the second of several ‘settings’ of the poems of Simon Howard, whose work I find incredibly inspiring. To me they are unfussy, evocative, violent and visceral. Absolutely the qualities I look for in music.

    This piece continues my preoccupation with mixing spoken text with chamber music, and for concentrating melodrama and meaning into simple but vivid music images. For example, in this piece, references to wasps, death, Wagner and Beethoven. The poem tells a story, which I have kept intact and immediate in the musical setting of it.

    Just like Simon’s poem, the piece is in 5 parts, numbers 76, 77, 78, 79 and 80. Parts of the poem are narrated in chorus in between musical tableaux. The central movement is for the vocal quartet only. The rest are dominated by the string quartet. Each section of string movement is less active than the preceding.

    The strings play only on a 6-note scale (G, A flat, B flat, C flat, D flat, E double flat) and the voices sing only the remaining six pitches. This leaves the voices with the ‘Tristan’ chord, transposed up a semitone, of A, E, F sharp and C, plus an additional E flat and F natural. The only exception is the soprano’s G in the final section: strings rotate slowly around four pitches, setting up a condensed tragic Liebestod in the final bars – the only time when singing is accompanied by strings.

    Details

    numbers 76–80 : tristan und isolde was commissioned by Endymion and EXAUDI, with funds generously provided by the RVW Trust, Marina Kleinwort Charitable Trust, the Leche Trust, the Golden Bottle Trust, the Golsoncott Foundation, the Ernest Cooke Trust, the Esmee Fairbairn Foundation and the Holst Foundation.  The piece was first performed at the Southbank Centre on 19th September 2011 by Endymion and EXAUDI, conducted by James Weeks.

    Year: 2011
    Duration: 13’
    Text: Simon Howard
    Ensemble: Four voices (SATB) and string quartet

    Published by Ricordi Musikverlag GmbH

    A recording is available on the debut album Below the Belt (Spotify link)

    This piece has only ever been performed in the UK. Other national premieres are available.

    In this video:

    Ligeti String Quartet, and voices: Natalie Raybould, Lewis Bretherton, George Chambers, Ashley Mercer
    Conducted by Richard Baker.
    Recorded at LSO St Lukes, 29th June 2013.

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    Press

    “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.” — The Guardian


    News about numbers 76–80 : tristan und isolde

  • numbers 81–85; numbers 96–100

    numbers 81–85; numbers 96–100

    Programme Note

    My relationship with Numbers by Simon Howard began in 2011 when I worked with two poems from the book: numbers 76–80 and numbers 91–95.   Ever since, I had the intention to set more poems from the book, to gradually form a kind of loose ‘meta-piece’ of all 100 stanzas.  The 2011 settings mark the beginning of my explorations of spoken text within my work, and were pivotal pieces for me in that respect.  Ten years later, when the circumstances arose to be able to return to the book, I found that, having spent a decade working primarily with spoken text, I wanted to focus back on musical settings of text.  To remember, if you like, how to compose.  So these two pieces from numbers are just that — my attempt to get back to a more music-led setting of text, while retaining a strong relationship to the structures and ideas in Simon’s work, but hopefully refracted through a musical lens. 

    numbers 81–85 is a series of five episodes, each quite different from the other.  In each episode I’ve tried to distill a feeling or action from the narrative of each stanza, and illustrate it in music.  In numbers 96–100 the fives stanzas are taken as a single form.  The form of text is mirrored through the fractured pronunciation of the words, the overall idea is of a collective meditation.

    Details

    numbers 81–85 and numbers 96–100  were commissioned by the Festival d’Automne à Paris, Musica, festival international des musiques d’aujourd’hui de Strasbourg and Lovemusic.

    The first performance was given by Lovemusic with Grace Durham (mezzo-soprano) on 1st October 2021 at the Cité de la Musique et de la Danse in Strasbourg, as part of Musica, festival international des musiques d’aujourd’hui de Strasbourg. The video above is from a concert by the same performers at Arsenal in Metz in November 2022.

    These pieces may be performed alongside numbers 76–80 and/or numbers 91–95 (both published by Ricordi), in which case they should be performed in sequential order.

    Duration: numbers 81–85: 12 minutes; numbers 96–100: 8 minutes

    Instrumentation: Mezzo-Soprano (F3 to A5), Alto Flute, Clarinet in A, Violin, Viola, Cello
    Projection (optional but recommended)

    Text: Simon Howard, from his long-form poem, Numbers (Knives Forks and Spoons Press, 2010).
    The text is in English, but projection files in English and French are available with the hire materials.

    Published by Ricordi Musikverlag GmbH

    Press

    ...which seems to focus the composer’s intention to explore certain pathologies from which our societies suffer. He goes even further with Numbers 91-95, framed by Numbers 81-95 and Numbers 96-100. His music resonates/differs with the words of the poet Simon Howard, clattering forcefully in semantic explosions charged with meaning.” — DNA Magazine (machine translated from French)

    “Grace Durham’s voice is invocative, mysterious, rebellious or nonchalant in the first block [Numbers 81–85], supported by highly refined instrumental textures. The block 96-100 is more homogeneous, inscribed in the very stretched temporality of a collective meditation. From cry to murmur, the powerful yet velvety voice of the English mezzo-soprano proceeds in snatches of phrases and silent spacing over the circular and bewitching movement of the instruments.” — Hémisphèreson (machine translated from French)

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    News about numbers 81–85; 96–100

  • numbers 91–95

    Programme Note

    numbers 91–95 is the first of several ‘settings’ of the poems of Simon Howard, whose work I find incredibly inspiring. To me they are unfussy, evocative, violent and visceral. Absolutely the qualities I look for in music.

    However, this setting is more of an accompaniment: it doesn’t try to mess with the immediacy of the poem. The themes of nostalgia and forgetting in the poem are echoed by the feint, crackly recordings of the two tape players. The calmness of the poem is reflected in the quiet meditativeness of the music.

    Details

    numbers 91–95 was commissioned by Ensemble Adapter, Berlin, to be premiered by them at the 2011 Wien Modern Festival and then in several concerts in Prague, Oxford and Berlin. Funds for the commission were generously provided by the Bliss Trust.

    Year: 2011
    Duration: 9’
    Text: Simon Howard
    Ensemble: speaker and two tape recorders, harp, flute and woodblock
    (speaker need not be a trained vocalist.  This could be performed by an instrumentalist.)
    (harp part can be substituted for piano or guitar)

    Published by Ricordi Musikverlag GmbH

    In this video and on the debut album Below the Belt (Spotify link):
    Speaker: Nick Blackburn
    Players: Katie Bicknell, Olivia Jaguers, Matthew West
    Recorded at LSO St Luke’s, 29th June 2013.
    Recording produced by Andrew Morgan, Video by Mark Hermida

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    News about numbers 91–95

  • Piano Studies

    Programme Note

    I. – For chords: weight, legato and stretching
    II. – For staccato chords
    III. – For tremoli
    IV. – Scherzo (for tremolo)
    V – Rondo (for use of pedals)

    These studies have grown out of ‘The girl with the sun in her head’, a very short study piece written for the pianist Sarah Nicolls in 2003. This piece took Debussy’s Étude pour les notes répétées as its starting point (and in the current set an adapted version of it is called ‘For repeated notes’). Debussy’s inclination to make piano studies more than just exercises but musically intelligent and expressive pieces continued to influence me during the composition of the three later studies written for Daniel Browell. Most of the studies are descriptively named in the same vein as Debussy’s Études. (In the end, I deleted the original study for repeated notes from the set.)

    The first three studies in this set were written for Daniel Browell for performance at the 2007 Park Lane Group Series, 8th January 2007, at the Purcell Room, Southbank Centre, London. Two more studies were added in 2011, written for Alissa Firsova, which are re-workings of two movements from Klaviertrio im Geiste.

    Details

    Instrumentation: Piano solo

    Duration: c. 17 minutes

    These studies can be performed in any order deemed musically sound by the performer.

    Published by Ricordi Musikverlag GmbH

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  • The Faggots and their Friends Between Revolutions

    “It’s been a long time since the last revolutions and the faggots and their friends are still not free.” Published in 1977, this passage from Larry Mitchell and Ned Asta‘s The Faggots and Their Friends Between Revolutions sets the scene for a radically reimagined history of the world told through a queer lens where fantasy meets liberation. Having become unavailable and reissued on the occasion of the fiftieth anniversary of the Stonewall riots because of its enduring relevance, this cult book of fables and myths serves as the starting point for a new music theatre adaptation from composer Philip Venables and director Ted Huffman.

    Together they conjure up a world that takes the original text on a kaleidoscopic journey that ignores boundaries just like the characters on stage do, drawing on theater, dance, and song from the Baroque to Broadway and beyond. The performers serve as actors, storytellers, and musicians all rolled into one, continually swapping roles while doing away with gender and genre norms and replacing them with unapologetic individuality and a lust for life. Their deeply personal stories prove both comforting and healing when shared through community in a colorful, madcap, and profound patchwork. The resulting cabaret-like spectacle is both vulnerable and daring, a fantastic parable hiding a political manifesto for survival that gives voice to the marginalized and oppressed everywhere.

    Guardian Preview >
    New York Times Preview >
    Introductory Essay by Patrick O’Connell >

    Synopsis

    A long time before the first revolutions, the faggots and their friends lived in harmony with one another. There was no such thing as a man. But one day some faggots had a change of heart. They started destroying nature and stopped touching the other faggots. They became men. Then the first revolutions broke out, destroying the great cultures of women. The faggots tried to heal the men, but the men didn’t want to be cured. Instead, they enslaved others, murdered many of the faggots, and began attacking anyone who wasn’t like them. The second revolutions, more than a thousand years later, made many men less poor, but some men even richer and more powerful.

    The faggots and their friends lived in the city of Ramrod, the largest city of men and an empire in decline. While the men dreamed of papers and acted like machines, the faggots refused to celebrate the men’s actions. They did work for the men without recognition. They cultivated beauty, harmony and peace — things which the men knew nothing about.

    The fairies left Ramrod and instead lived in the mountains and forests. When the faggots from Ramrod visited the fairies, they felt like they were living in a dream. The faggots also sought proximity to women from whom they learned wisdom and magic. With them they were able to make plans to overthrow the men. But one night the men appeared armed at the faggots and their friends, who immediately fled. Only the Queens took to the streets and revolted.

    But the men had another trick: they gradually allowed the faggots to live as if they were men. So the faggots became more and more like men until one day they were no longer distinguishable from them. But the faggots gradually saw through the men’s trick. They realized that the men’s deathly system depends on them, but they themselves do not depend on men. This is how the third revolutions began.

    Their fight was bloody but successful: the world of men collapsed and men ceased to be men — and the faggots and their friends ceased to be what the men had made them to be. They began to heal.

    Lea Fussenegger

    Details

    The Faggots and their Friends Between Revolutions was co-commissioned and co-produced by Factory International, Festival d’Aix-en-Provence, Bregenzer Festspiele, Southbank Centre London, the Holland Festival, the Ruhrtriennale and NYU Skirball Theater.

    Year: 2023
    Duration: c.90 minutes, no interval, in two parts.
    Text: Ted Huffman, based on the book of the same name by Larry Mitchell and Ned Asta, courtesy of Nightboat Books.
    Text in English.

    Published by Ricordi Musikverlag GmbH

    Cast
    The cast is flexible in both skill set and number. Casting choices will depend on the staging one wants to make and the amount of instrumental doubling available in the people you have.
    It is crucial that everyone sings, speaks, moves and plays instruments, in a non-hierarchical staging.
    There are no character roles, and therefore none of the casting or vocal requirements imply any gender requirements.
    Everyone is a story-teller; everyone is an equal soloist; everyone is on stage and participating; everyone is performing the show from memory.

    The first production used 15 performers, including S.MS.A.T.T.Bar, and instruments: Violin, Viola da Gamba, Saxophone (Sop.Alto.Bari), Flute (+Picc+Alto), Piano, Harpsichord, Accordion, Theorbo / Archlute, Lever Harp, Hammond Organ, various percussion, learner violins for the cast, penny whistles, harmonica, etc.

    Original Production
    Cast: Kerry Bursey, Jacob Garside, Katherine Goforth / Danny Shelvey, Kit Green, Conor Gricmanis, Deepa Johnny / Tamara Banjesevic / Lauren Young, Mariamielle Lamagat, Eric Lamb, Themba Mvula, Yandass Ndlovo, Yshani Perinpanayagam, Meriel Price, Collin Shay, Joy Smith, Sally Swanson / Valerie Barr.

    World Premiere: 29th June 2023, HOME Theatre, Manchester UK.

    Director: Ted Huffman
    Music Direction: Yshani Perinpanayagam
    Choreography & Costume Design: Theo Clinkard
    Set Design: Rosie Elnile
    Lighting Designer: Bertrand Couderc
    Sound Design: Simon Hendry
    Dramaturg: Scottee
    Costume Collaborator: Sophie Donaldson
    Stage Manager: Bonnie Poole
    Deputy Stage Manager: Sorcha Roise

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    Press

    Venables’s score is a delirious stylistic fantasia, with elements of folk, jazzy turns of phrase and Baroque instrumentation. He exercises a restraint similar to Benjamin’s, and is explicit, to comic effect, only when he is at his most prurient: An episode near the beginning recounts “the ritual” of cruising, building toward a climax of “ecstatic communion” and the exchange of something vulgar that can’t be repeated here, before the music quickly subsides to a piano. The Richard Strauss of “Der Rosenkavalier” and “Symphonia Domestica” would be proud.” — Josh Barone, New York Times (Aix Festival)

    “For their third collaboration, Venables, a British composer, and Huffman, an American librettist and director, have created a joyous and affirmative musical theater work. Like its source material, the show lays out an alterative world history defined by the endless struggle between queer people and their allies on the one hand, and the guardians of the patriarchy, known simply as “The Men,” on the other. In celebrating the heterodox, the radical, the fringe and even the deviant, the show’s form matches its content, with a bold mixture of musical styles — baroque, folk, pop — and theatrical devices. As exuberant as it is slippery, its unconventional brand of beauty felt right at home at the Ruhrtriennale.” — A.J. Goldmann, New York Time (Ruhrtriennale)

    “its meld of music, dance, and opera transcends the form into something magical.” — Lost in Theatreland (5 stars)

    “This masterpiece does not rewrite history, it radically retells it… Prepare for passion, poignancy and pithiness… this show is bursting with joy throughout.” — Manchester Evening News (5 stars)

    “An exquisite, revolutionary riot with a cavalcade of queer talent calling out the need to fight for queer joy and not to assimilate… The Faggots and Their Friends is a powerful reminder to keep fighting for queer joy and resist living the status quo in a heavenly punk opera for all.” — To Do List (5 stars)

    “At times chaotic but never less than virtuosic, Philip Venables’ take on Larry Mitchell’s 70s manifesto is gritty but sensual and extravagant… served up with such raw energy and panache, it’s also irresistibly, unforgettably compelling.” — The Guardian (4 stars)

    “Larry Mitchell’s 1977 cult book The Faggots and Their Friends Between Revolutions – part queer manifesto, part fable – explodes into life in Philip Venables and Ted Huffman’s exhilarating stage version. It’s as resistant to easy classification as its source material, blending theatre, opera, movement and music… Venables’ distinct, original music is also key to the narrative momentum: dramatic strings convey the violence of the men; soaring arias capture the community’s sorrow or yearning; a solo on the cello or violin distils a mood. There’s a baroque vibe, with a theorbo and a harpsichord alongside flutes and harps, but the music can be anarchic, audacious and a lot of fun, too. One song about how much the men love paperwork shifts from the cast rhythmically scrunching sheets of paper to a flurry of salsa and into an accordion-led music-hall-style knees-up… a genuinely fresh and distinctive new work that gladdens the heart.” — The Stage (4 stars)

    “this piece has a directness and a lyrical memorability that is compelling. Sometimes it might be a single instrument — a harp, a cello, a fiddle — hauntingly underscoring the voice. Elsewhere he ramps up all available resources in rambunctious, stamping dances that evoke one of those wild Balkan bands in full cry.” — The Times (4 stars)

    “The Faggots and Their Friends Between Revolutions is unlike anything else being shown today… One moment, it is eerie and heartbreaking, the next it is joyous and stirring… Radical and playful, The Faggots and Their Friends Between Revolutions brings together theatre, dance and song for the ultimate anarchic bedtime story.” — I love Manchester.


    Productions of The Faggots and their Friends

    2025 — Park Avenue Armory, New York City

    2024 — Ruhrtriennale

    2024 — Holland Festival

    2024 — Southbank Centre, London

    2023 — Bregenzer Festspiele

    2023 — Festival d’Aix-en-Provence

    2023 — Manchester International Festival


    News about The Faggots and their Friends

  • The Revenge of Miguel Cotto

    Programme Note

    The Revenge of Miguel Cotto is a piece about a true story of two boxers, Miguel Cotto and Antonio Margarito.  Steven Fowler’s poetry, whilst not telling the story, reflects on aspects of it such as love, betrayal, their knockout fight, physical and mental injury.  It was commissioned by the London Sinfonietta as part of their Blue Touch Paper scheme.

    Details

    Ensemble: 2 male voices, 3tbn / acc.2perc(punchbags) / 3vln + amplification.
    Duration: 14 mins
    Text: Steven J Fowler

    Published by Ricordi Musikverlag GmbH

    In this video and on the debut album Below the Belt (Spotify link):
    Conductor: Richard Baker
    Voices: Leigh Melrose, Dario Dugandzic
    Players: Ashot Sarkissjan, Ciaran McCabe, James Widden, Ian Watson, Graham Lee, Lee Boorer, Simon Baker, 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.

    This piece has only ever been performed in the UK. Other national premieres are available.

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  • Venables plays Bach

    Venables plays Bach

    Venables plays Bach is a 42-channel looping sound installation with optional live organ performance (c.30 minutes), commissioned by Festival d’Automne à Paris for their 2021 Festival, installed in l’Église de Saint Eustache. The demo track in stereo above gives a rough sense of walking through the installation, using material from just 14 individual tracks, and is best listened to on headphones.

    My Introduction

    Twenty-five years ago, I learnt to play J.S. Bach’s Prelude in D minor BWV940, and ever since then, almost without exception, I play it every time I sit down at the piano to compose. It is the only piece that I can play from memory, with my poor piano skills, and playing this Prelude is a ritual that I go through every time I sit down to write. Improvisation often grows out of this prelude, from mistakes I make, or repetitions and variations. New music is catalysed from old music. This ritual for me is a way of focusing, shutting out other thoughts, clearing the mind, sparking ideas.  Indeed, versions of Bach’s Prelude have appeared in a number of my pieces (Scene 19 in 4.48 Psychosis; the male chorus in The Schmürz).

    I was asked by Festival d’Automne to make a sound installation for Saint Eustache, and so I decided to try to capture some of this compositional process. For around 50 days I recorded my daily ritual of playing Bach’s Prelude on the digital piano in my studio, complete with my improvisations, my mistakes, my singing, my tangents, my thoughts, improvisations and repetitions, as I sketched out a new piece (also for the Festival d’Automne) for mezzo-soprano and quintet, based on text by the late British poet Simon Howard. Using excerpts from these recordings, I have moulded a kind of ‘meta-composition session’ across 42 speakers in the church. Wander around and you will find small details of different days, but I hope that the whole effect it creates is an honest and reflective meditation on the act of composing, and my personal relationship to this Bach prelude.

    The resulting installation has a very strong relation to the chamber piece numbers 96–100, also commissioned by Festival d’Automne, Festival Musica Strasbourg and Collectif Lovemusic.

    Introduction from the Festival d’Automne

    Philip Venables got into the habit of starting his composition work by playing Bach’s Little Prelude in D minor BWV 940, which he has known since the age of fourteen and which he plays by heart, sometimes deviating from of the text following an oblique movement which takes in other directions.

    For his installation at the Saint-Eustache Church, the composer recorded himself every day and for several weeks on his electronic keyboard, creating a sort of “audio diary” of the work in progress. The idea of ​​the “making” of the work and the “thinking presence” of the composer are at the center of the process, the playing and the voice of Venables letting “the wanderings of a mind and its music” filter. Thus we can discern in Venables Plays Bach this divergent path which leads to the composition of Numbers 81-85 and 96-100, parts under construction at the time of registration. Around fifty small speakers are distributed in the space of the church, broadcasting the daily recordings in a loop and at low voltage, in a soothing atmosphere conducive to listening and reflection. “Besides the sound experience,” the composer tells us, “the piece explores the depths of my intimate relationship with Bach’s prelude and constitutes a meditation on the act of composing”.

    Details

    The installation is a 22-minute loop that can loop indefinitely, depending on technical constraints of the speakers used. In Paris it was installed on 42 small battery-powered speakers (Zealot S36), each running a single wave file off a micro SD card, and only roughly synchronised by technical staff. There was no unified system to synchronise the speakers. In Paris it ran in 3-hour blocks. Charging, setup, and starting the installation required two staff, as the church was very large. The installation can also be run off 42 wired speakers controlled from one laptop, or from three separate laptops with 14 speakers each.

    There is an accompanying “conceptual organ performance” that can be performed admist the sound installation. More details about this live organ component can be found here. The performance lasts around 30-40 minutes, is based on a very slow unfolding of the Bach Prelude, and should be played while the installation is running, in the same space. It is recommended to let the installation play for at least 15 minutes before starting the organ performance, and allow it to continue for a while afterwards.

    The installation lends itself particularly well to very resonant acoustics, like churches. It is also connected closely to the chamber piece numbers 96–100, and would work very well as an accompanying project to a performance of that piece.

    Press

    “Everywhere, the sound is there, it becomes natural, it enters… Then the melody comes as a surprise when it is no longer expected, when the whispers, breaths and voice were taking over. The loudspeakers disappear completely into the vastness of the church… You will not be left unmoved by this intoxicating thirty-minute loop!” — Toute la Culture (machine translated from French)


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  • Venables plays Bartók

    Programme Note

    In November 1993 I was 14 years old and practising for my Grade 6 violin. My teacher, Marilyn Shearn, took me and three other pupils to play for her old teacher, Rudolf Botta. I played Bartók’s Evening in the Village — a perennial favourite on the ABRSM Exam Syllabus. Marilyn videotaped the masterclass, and nearly 25 years later, I found this tape in a shoebox while my parents were moving out of our family home. This discovery started the process of researching and writing this concerto-of-sorts — a ‘radio music drama’ that celebrates the confluence of musical lives that led to and followed on from that moment in November 1993.

    Rudolf Botta had a remarkable life. He was born in 1918 and, as a teenager, pursued two passions: violin playing and fencing. During WWII he was prominent in the Hungarian Army, and then later in the anti-Soviet resistance between 1946 and 1956. As a result, in 1952 the Soviets sent him to a labour camp and, knowing he was a professional violinist, tortured him to the extent that he was never able to play again. He was released in 1953 in the amnesty following Stalin’s death and proceeded to set up a music school in his hometown of Bonyhád, only three years later to find himself a regional leader of the 1956 revolution. Following a tip-off about his imminent arrest, he fled Hungary with his wife Leonka and their two daughters, Alexandra (Emöke) and Genevieve. They found a warm welcome in the UK and, after a short stint as a window cleaner, Rudolf became a teacher at what is now the Royal Northern College of Music. Rudolf’s gift was teaching, and over a 30-year career he touched the lives of hundreds of violinists and future music teachers; Marilyn Shearn was one of them, and Botta’s rigorous, pragmatic and inspiring teaching she, in turn, passed onto me. 

    Venables plays Bartók,written in 2018, is a series of musical postcards built around six of Bartók’s arrangements of Hungarian or Romanian Folk Dances and two of his own miniatures (The Night’s Music and The Chase):

    1. Evening in the Village
    2. Romanian Polka / Fast Dance — 1944, Bonyhád, Hungary
    3. The Night’s Music — 1946, Griffen, Austria
    4. Stick Dance — 1956, Bonyhád, Hungary
    5. The Chase — 1956, A refugee camp in Vienna
    6. Dance from Bucsum — 1957, Burnley
    7. Bear Dance — 1952, An unknown location in Hungary
    8. Evening in the Village (reprise) — 1938, Bonyhád, Hungary
    9. Standing Still

    These postcards are paraphrased ‘diary entries’ that alternate between two timelines: the first is my own journey of working with Pekka, interviewing Botta’s family members and ex-pupils and reading his extensive memoirs; the second is Botta’s journey through WWII, imprisonment, fleeing Hungary and arriving in the UK. Those two histories meet at that moment when I played Bartók to Botta, 25 years ago. The hope is that I have created a piece that reflects on the ‘violin genealogy’ that connects me to Marilyn to Rudolf, and which ultimately allowed me to become a musician and to write this concerto.

    Guardian article about the concerto >

    Details

    Text: Philip Venables / Rudolph Botta (in English)
    Commissioners: BBC Symphony Orchestra / BBC Radio 3
    Premiere: 17th August 2018, BBC Proms, BBC Symphony Orchestra, Pekka Kuusisto (violin), Sakari Oramo.
    Duration: 34′
    Ensemble: solo violin, tape (stereo) and orchestra (2.2.2.2 / 4.2.2.1 / piano.timp.3perc.soundcue operator / min:12.10.8.6.4).

    Published by Ricordi Musikverlag GmbH

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    Press

    “It could have all been so self-indulgent or pretentious, especially as the piece culminates in the audio from that childhood masterclass video, with the young Venables playing the piece with which the soloist, Pekka Kuusisto, had started the work’s journey. But there was something intensely moving, profound even, in the way the work unfolded, the mundaneness of creativity as narrated by the composer contrasting with Botta’s often searing reminiscences (spoken by actor Jot Davies), and with the music of Bartók and Venables illuminating each other, the Hungarian’s folk dance arrangements giving familiar touchstones to the musical flow. Indeed, such was the interplay between soloist, orchestra and voice-over (the latter not always ideally balanced in the hall for ultimate clarity, it must be said, and with a handful of technical glitches) that the focus at any one time was surprisingly clear-cut and connected directly to ear and brain.”Bachtrack

    “The interaction of Bartok’s music with Venables’s, and of recorded spoken text, both the excerpts and bits of the actual coaching with Botta, with one aspect prominent and then receding as the focus shifts to another (at one point I found myself remembering Stravinsky’s comment about the first time he heard Pierrot Lunaire–that he wished the singer would shut up so he could hear the music–and then at another regretted the music’s making it hard to understand the speaking), the clarity of the time shifts in the stories, and the control and balancing of density of textures, is always engaging and interesting, but the unfolding of aspects of one person’s life and how it and he then go on to impact other lives in various ways is completely compelling and very moving. It was impressive in its conception and its masterly realization, and completely satisfying as a total experience.” Sequenza 21

    The half-hour work mixed Botta’s taped reminiscences, eight little folk-based pieces by Bartók, the tape of Venables playing to Botta and Venables’s own cluster-rich, atmospheric music. Brilliantly played by Pekka Kuususto in an otherwise unremarkable BBC Symphony Orchestra concert conducted by Sakari Oramo, the concerto was strongest when evoking the horrors of Soviet occupation, and weirdest when incorporating Venables’s commentary on how he wrote it.”The Times


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  • We Are The Lucky Ones

    We Are The Lucky Ones tells the story of a generation. It is based on interviews with more than seventy people in Western Europe who were born between 1940 and 1949. It is the story of people who started out with little, who experienced ever-improving living standards and are now leaving behind a world where such growth is no longer sustainable. Their memories form a collective time capsule of the past eighty years, told as one continuous life story in music theatre form. Following individual experiences and societal changes over the decades, the opera raises crucial questions about the relationship between the private and the political, the impact of our choices and what truly matters in the end.

    Preview in NRC (in Dutch) >
    Preview in Trouw (in Dutch) >
    Preview in de Volkskrant (in Dutch) >

    Details

    We Are The Lucky Ones was commissioned by Dutch National Opera & Ballet and the Ruhrtriennale 2025.

    The composer is extremely grateful to Yaddo in New York and the MacDowell Colony in New Hampshire, where large parts of this score were written during residencies in 2023/2024, and to the Berliner Senatsverwaltung für Kultur und Gesellschaftlichen Zusammenhalt for for the Arbeitsstipendium in 2024 that supported aspects of the development of this work.

    We Are The Lucky Ones is dedicated to Chris & Geoff Venables, Mary Jane & Randy Huffman and Hayati & Jeff Segal, with love.

    Year: 2025
    Duration: c.100 mins without interval
    Text: Nina Segal and Ted Huffman, based on interviews with 80 people born in Europe in the 1940s
    Text in English.

    Cast
    ONE — soprano
    TWO — soprano
    THREE — mezzosoprano
    FOUR — contralto
    FIVE — tenor
    SIX — tenor
    SEVEN — baritone
    EIGHT — bass

    Instrumentation: 2(+2picc, +alto).2(+cor).2(+2b.cl).2sax(2sop+2bari).2(+cbsn) / 4.2.3.1 / Perc(4).Hp.Pno.Acc / 12.10.8.6.4

    Published by Opera Edition Ltd.

    Original Production

    The world premiere was given on 14th March 2025 at Dutch National Opera in Amsterdam.

    Cast: Claron McFadden, Jacquelyn Stucker, Nina van Essen, Helena Rasker, Miles Mykkanen, Frederick Ballentine, Germán Olvera, Alex Rosen

    Residentie Orkest

    Musical direction — Bassem Akiki
    Stage direction and set design — Ted Huffman
    Costume design — Ted Huffman, Sonoko Kamimura
    Lighting design — Bertrand Couderc
    Movement — Pim Veulings
    Video design — Nadja Sofie Eller, Tobias Staab
    Dramaturgy — Nina Segal, Laura Roling

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    Press

    Critic’s Pick: ‘We Are the Lucky Ones’ gives voice to a generation. This new opera assembles a compassionate, haunting portrait of the middle class that emerged from World War II and considers what they leave behind. […] What emerges, in an opera as compact and overwhelming as “Wozzeck,” is a portrait of a generation told with compassion, wisdom and artfulness. […] the creators of “We Are the Lucky Ones” push the boundaries of opera […] Like the best of opera, “We Are the Lucky Ones” often says two things at once, between the libretto and the score. — New York Times

    ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ “Octet singers astound in amazing opera ‘We Are The Lucky Ones’. […] a thunderous opening of the Opera Forward Festival. Bassem Akiki conducts the complex and attractive score with preponderance and swing.” — Trouw

    ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ In the overwhelming opera ‘We Are The Lucky Ones’, an entire lifetime flashes before you. Everything about this brand-new performance about the baby-boomer generation is a bullseye. Venables glues the fragments of life together with contrasting and often sliding orchestral music, with brass and percussion at the base and colourful shots of piano, accordion and saxophone. The atmosphere is clearly the Hollywood, jazz and ballroom scene of the mid-twentieth century, but nowhere does it become cheap imitation. Meanwhile, the rhythmic tapping of woodblocks warns that time is moving irrevocably forward. A whole lifetime flashes before your eyes in this overwhelming festival opener that penetrates both heart and mind. — NRC

    ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ We Are the Lucky Ones is marvellous in scope and achievement. …a harrowing, tender, funny, non-judgmental living portrait of a generation widely regarded as the winners, and a profound reflection on the human condition. Taking his inspiration from the 20th century’s culturally polyphonic second half, Venables has created a huge-hearted score bursting with nostalgic references to Hollywood, jazz and dance and popular classics, with sublime vocal writing in which the soloists are their own chorus, all in a musical language that is entirely his own. — Bachtrack

    Heartwarming portrait of a generation of ‘boomers’— Theaterkrant

    We Are The Lucky Ones has become a performance of great eloquence. The fragments of text brought together in the libretto are conveyed by eight soloists in a constellation that is both musically and visually virtuosic. […] Philip Venables’ music fits that scheme with an easy-to-hear patchwork full of deliberately chosen quotations and references. The result is a clearly instrumented and homogeneous orchestral backdrop for the soloists that perfectly matches the mood of their lyrics. […] We Are The Lucky Ones is a successful example of a new path. And that applies to both the work and the performance. Not insignificantly, moreover, Venables and Huffman were able to build on three centuries of musical theatre without rigorously jettisoning all traditions and achievements. In short: a surprising and above all hopeful opening of the Opera Forward Festival 2025! — Opus Klassiek

    Holding up a mirror to the audience, moving them, provoking thought and painting a picture of our possible future — these are just some of the possibilities that the performing arts can provide for us. All this and more is currently on offer in De Nationale Opera’s Opera Forward Festival, We Are The Lucky Ones.— De Nieuwe Muze

    Venables’ “We are the Lucky Ones” causes a sensation in Amsterdam. A sumptuous cast of singers, led by Bassem Akiki’s sharp musical direction, magnify this unclassifiable and seductive music. […] Venables offers a highly effective score, joyfully inviting echoes of Hollywood, big band, swing and jive. Moving pedal tones form the background for the interviews; tight imitations sketch out the dialogue; a few symbols can be heard, here a perpetuum mobile represents work, there aggressive syncopations illustrate a hunting scene, while the final regrets will see the gradual crumbling of the material. The whole is delightful for its diversity and enchanting for the balance between voices and instruments— Diapason

    Venables’ score responds perfectly to the kaleidoscope of scenes and situations, for the first time composing an opera for symphony orchestra, from which he draws brilliant fruit. The British composer’s music unambiguously embraces an eclecticism that should not be confused with a lack of personality; passages of a density somewhere between post-modern and post-minimalist coexist with the evocation of rhythms typical of the decades evoked with a clear component of Hollywood sumptuousness, for music that never falls (nor does the libretto) into easy sentimentality. Not least, Venables also knows how to write for the voices without sacrificing the clear enunciation of the text. — Opéra Actual

    Der Zukunft der Oper... a sound that alternates between music of memory, wild outbursts and lyrical moments. Their vital parlando forms the core of the whole. — TAZ

    A polyphonic tale made up not by eight characters but by the eight intertwined voices of the formidable and versatile performers of this brilliant work. […] If the bitter aftertaste of that hyper-realistic 90-minute synthesis of a life is inevitable, it is sweetened with a generous dose of irony, distributed copiously by the stylistically heterogeneous and theatrically intelligent score by Venables, who for the first time writes for a large orchestra. — Giornale della Musica

    When opera tells our real story. The instrumental score, intended for a traditional symphony orchestra with additional percussion, accordion and piano, is rich in a variety of writing styles, all fairly accessible, and nicely supports or complements the voices, which are left to express a whole range of feelings and emotions, either solo or in ensembles. — La Libre


    Productions of We Are The Lucky Ones

    2026 — Tiroler Festspiele Erl

    2025 — Ruhrtriennale, Bochum

    2025 — Dutch National Opera


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