Philip Venables

A composer of ferocious dramatic instincts
— Alex Ross

Tag: London Sinfonietta

  • Below the Belt one of BBC Music Magazine’s ’30 must-have albums’

    Below the Belt one of BBC Music Magazine’s ’30 must-have albums’

    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 our Lifetime”.

    In the week when the UK’s financial and political stability is balancing on a knife-edge, Steph Power’s writing is incredibly prescient:

    Over the past 30 years, the UK has experienced seismic cultural and socio-political shifts. In his superb 2018 debut recording Below the Belt, composer Phillip Venables speaks to the resulting – and ongoing — turmoil with a lacerating eloquence that addresses social fallout and the awakening of new generations to matters of individual freedom and identity. Visceral yet tender and forensically clear, the six vocal and instrumental works encompass fractured states, super-real abstraction and graphic, ferociously satirical directness, brilliantly performed by an array of soloists and ensembles including performance artist David Hoyle and the London Sinfonietta under conductor Richard Baker.

  • Conducting debut with London Sinfonietta in the New Music Biennial

    Conducting debut with London Sinfonietta in the New Music Biennial

    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 a student conducting my own ensembles or youth orchestras around West London, it wasn’t something I continued to pursue whilst I was focussed on composition. It was a joy to come back to conducting in these performances of Illusions with the London Sinfonietta for the PRS Foundation and Southbank Centre’s New Music Biennial, also part of the Coventry City of Culture.

    Illusions (my video+ensemble piece with David Hoyle) was selected as part of the celebration of the 10 year anniversary of the New Music Biennial, among ten pieces from previous years, forming a retrospective alongside the ten new pieces this year. I’m delighted about this selection, and also that the Sinfonietta generously allowed me to onto the podium. We did performances on 22nd April at the HMV Coventry Empire and on 3rd July at London’s Southbank Centre, including a lovely interview on stage with Gillian Moore. Illusions was also broadcast again on BBC Radio 3 and featured in NMC’s re-release bundle, as part of the NMB celebrations.

    The photos on this post can be used for press purposes with the appropriate credits.

    Photos below: Garry Jones / New Music Biennial.

  • Illusions at New Music Biennial 2022

    Illusions at New Music Biennial 2022

    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 Biennial not only features ten new works as usual, but also celebrates its first ten years with performances of ten works selected from previous Biennials.

    The performances will be given by the London Sinfonietta, for whom Illusions was written, conducted by me. They will take place on Friday 22nd April at 8pm in Coventry as part of the City of Culture celebrations and during the Biennial Weekend 1st to 3rd July at the Southbank Centre in London. The Biennial is an initiative from and supported by the PRS Foundation in partnership with Coventry City of Culture, Southbank Centre, BBC Radio 3 and NMC Recordings.

    More information about the Biennial is here.

  • Below The Belt

    Below The Belt

    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.

  • Dutch Courage released on NMC

    Dutch Courage released on NMC

    Coma_cover_lightweightDutch 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.

  • New Music Biennial 2017

    New Music Biennial 2017

    New Music Biennial 2017Illusions, 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!

  • Illusions – collaboration with David Hoyle

    Illusions – collaboration with David Hoyle

    Illusions in performance
    Illusions in performance at QEH

    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.”

    You can read the full reviews here: Guardian and Telegraph.

  • The Revenge of Miguel Cotto (video)

    The Revenge of Miguel Cotto (video)

    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 Revenge of Miguel Cotto preview

    The Revenge of Miguel Cotto preview

    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.

  • Sketches for The Revenge of Miguel Cotto

    Sketches for The Revenge of Miguel Cotto

    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.

     

  • Music, Text and Violence (an interview)

    Music, Text and Violence (an interview)

    A conversation with Theatre Director Nick Blackburn about my compositional approach.

     

  • Selected for Blue Touch Paper

    Selected for Blue Touch Paper

    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!