Summer Round Up

Another year swiftly flies by as these COVID years seem to have a habit of doing (they somehow manage to be simultaneously long and short) and I realised I hadn’t updated much since January. Now, that is mainly that I don’t have much to update with, but I’ll try and bring together what I’ve been busy with in the past eight months. Performances have been a little thin on the ground, but it was lovely to hear of performances in Holland, at the LFCCM and an unexpected premiere of the SATB version of Judas Mercator Pessimus in Ely in April. I haven’t felt particularly inspired as a composer, but I did finish some Robert Burns arrangements, As the Mirk Night, in March and a larger work for cello and choir, Coronach in June. I also put the finishing touches to a set of folksong ‘transfigurations’ (which were initially the smaller Three Folksongs) cunningly entitled Folksongs, which is my most substantial piece for piano to date and will be premiered in October. I finished my three-year tenure as Head of Music at the University of Aberdeen in June and will go on sabbatical in January 2022. I need to get my head back into being a composer, with more time and less COVID, it is my hope that 2022 will be a really fruitful year.

PAC