Philip Venables

A composer of ferocious dramatic instincts
— Alex Ross

Tag: Vocal

  • A Photograph released on Hermes Experiment Album

    A Photograph released on Hermes Experiment Album

    A Photograph — a little piece I wrote last year for the Hermes Experiment with playwright Cordelia Lynn — will be appear on the group’s forthcoming album, SONG. The album is on Delphian Records, and will be released on 22nd October. It is available to pre-order here.

    A Photograph was commissioned by the Oxford Lieder Festival for their 2020 Festival, specifically for The Hermes Experiment. It was my first collaboration with playwright Cordelia Lynn, and was based on a photograph that was found in my parents’ attic while our old family home was being cleared out — a photo of my mum in her early 20s with two friends, on holiday. Cordelia (who didn’t know of what or whom the photo was) wrote a text based on her invented back-story of the photo.

  • Portrait concerts at Musica Festival and Festival d’Automne announced

    Portrait concerts at Musica Festival and Festival d’Automne announced

    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. The concert will be performed by Lovemusic, with guest artists Grace Durham (mezzo-soprano), Andreas Borregaard (accordion) and Romain Pageard as the host of the evening. The show is called Talking Music, and will feature Klaviertrio im Geiste, Illusions, My Favourite Piece is the Goldberg Variations and Numbers 91—95 alongside the world premiere of two new settings of Simon Howard’s Numbers: Numbers 81—85 and Numbers 96—100. These new pieces have been commissioned by Musica Festival, Festival d’Automne in Paris, and Lovemusic. Oscar Lozano Pérez will be making video projections and mise-en-espace for the show. Talking Music will be repeated in Paris on 26th October in Theatre de la Ville / Espace Cardin, as part of a larger feature on my work in the Festival d’Automne.

    More information about the concert in Strasbourg is here.

    More information about the concert in Paris is here.

  • ‘A Photograph’ premieres at Oxford Lieder Festival

    ‘A Photograph’ premieres at Oxford Lieder Festival

    The outstanding contemporary music specialists, The Hermes Experiment, recently gave the world premiere of A Photograph, a new song that I wrote for them over the summer in collaboration with playwright Cordelia Lynn. The song was commissioned by Oxford Lieder Festival with support from The Nicholas John Trust, and was given its first performance last week during the festival, which has been entirely online, completely live. Hats off to artistic director Sholto Kynoch and his team for managing to pull off a great festival in such challenging conditions.

    In our early discussions about this song, Cordelia and I decided to collect old photographs to start a process of collaboration.  We asked friends for family photos, we asked Héloïse Werner (the singer of The Hermes Experiment), and I collected some from my own family.  In the end, Cordelia chose one of my family photos as the starting point for this fictional song.  I didn’t tell Cordelia who was in the photo, nor when or what the event was.  The photograph was taken in 1967.

    A Photograph can still be watched online at the Oxford Lieder Festival website until the end of the month, alongside a range of other concerts and talks.

  • Fuck Forever, video from Tete-a-Tete festival

    Fuck Forever, video from Tete-a-Tete festival

    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.