A composer of ferocious dramatic instincts
— Alex Ross
News about awards.
The Faggots and their Friends Between Revolutions has been shortlisted for the Stage Works category of the 2024 Ivors Classical Awards. The awards ceremony will take place at the British Film Institute on the South Bank in London on 12th November 2024. The other shortlisted composers are Matthew Grouse, Jonathan Dove, George Benjamin and Bushra El-Turk.
Answer Machine Tape, 1987 has been shortlisted for the Small Chamber Composition category of the 2023 Ivors Classical Awards. The awards ceremony will take place at the British Film Institute on the South Bank in London on 14th November 2023. The other shortlisted composers are Newton Armstrong, Matthew Grouse, Josephine Stephenson and Larry Goves.
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 ceremony was not a public event this year, due to Covid-19, but instead the announcement was made live on BBC Radio 3 on 1st December 2020 in a special programme.
A huge thanks must be said to my collaborator Ted Huffman, Ksenia Ravinna, the commissioners Opera Philadelphia, Music Theatre Wales and Opéra Orchestre National Montpellier, the cast and crews in USA and UK, the hosting venues and the creative team, as mentioned in the “acceptance video” above.
Denis & Katya is my second opera, which was premiered in Philadelphia in September 2019, and was performed in Wales and London in March 2020 — one of the last performances to take place in London before Covid-19 hit.
The opera also won the Fedora Generali Prize for Opera in 2019, and was picked by the Telegraph as the best opera of 2020, and the 9th best cultural event/TV show/film. The opera is shortlisted in the World Premiere category of the International Opera Awards, and was shortlisted in the Opernwelt Jahrbuch Awards 2020.
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 i s m by Ellen Reid and Roxie Perkins. The awards ceremony was due to take place on 4th May at Sadler’s Wells Theatre in London, but it has now been postponed to 21st September. Fingers crossed!
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.
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.
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…!
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!
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’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.
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.