Keep up to date with recent news about my work
On Cecilia McDowall’s ‘There is no rose’…
It’s that time of year where I try to gather my thoughts towards all things Christmas and to try and think positively about the forthcoming celebrations and festivities and not dwell too much on the continuing gloom and the desperate game of Russian roulette we play as to whether we will be able to visit family or not. I guess I managed it last year in equally difficult circumstances, so I should be able to do it again amidst the wafer-thin gaieties of Christmas 2021! And in any case, my Christmas offering this year is a little more special than usual (of course, every blog I write is special…) as for the first time, I get to preview a brand-new carol before it has even been performed! It is quite the honour!
On Giving My Music Away for Free…
One of the more difficult conversations I have regularly with other composers is regarding how performers, conductors and promoters access my music – how can an intrepid high-school choir from Iowa or an adventurous choral society from Ipswich get a copy of my latest offering into their delicate and nuanced hands? This is as question as old as time, well not really, but certainly a pertinent question since the advent of music publishing or maybe even a concern of composers from an even earlier epoch as well.
The Month Ahead
Maybe I’m being overly optimistic, but just recently I have felt the green shoots of some sort of post-COVID recovery taking place in music-making. This could of course be a false dawn, or blind optimism on my part, but I’m going to take it as a positive thing in any case. I’ve written some music, am writing some music, and people are paying me to write more music - all of which is good.
On ‘Not Being a Conductor, or Organist, or Singer…’
I had a very nice online conversation with a senior composer recently which helped me feel better about myself and my work and it was all very jolly – its always nice to get some form of validation, whatever stage you are in your career, particularly from someone you admire. However, during the conversation a rather innocuous question arose – ‘do you conduct as well as compose?’. Nothing unusual about that, many composers are also conductors even if they mainly conductor their own music. I of course answered, ‘no’. But I guess what was a little more surprising was the silence that greeted my answer to the follow up question…
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.
On ‘Not Writing to Commission’…
As we settle into another protracted period of lockdown in the UK (and in many other parts of the world as well) I thought it might be a good time to have another look at the strange circumstances that currently surround the profession in which I work and how this is effecting me as a creative artist. When I wrote about isolation and creativity in April 2020 there was a certain amount of novelty and optimism about the lockdown, a rare opportunity to take some time and to concentrate on one’s art or to learn a new skill and to return to the creative world with renewed vigour and purpose in the autumn.
Review of 2020
Every New Year I write a brief review of what I have been up to in the previous year: all the concerts, commissions, broadcasts etc - it is an entirely positive and rose-tinted appraisal of the previous 12 months. However, this year I’m finding that process just a little bit more difficult, and it is genuinely quite hard to paint a totally optimistic picture of 2020: as an academic and musician it has been a bleak and barren year, and one of the most challenging in my life.
On ‘In the Bleak Midwinter’…
Due to the wonders of COVID-19, it has been a long time since I have met another composer in the flesh, a long time since we welcomed another creator of original music to the university to give a talk, a seminar or to give tutorials. It has been a long time since we entertained another creative musician in the wonderful hostelries of Old Aberdeen Town, and all that entails. Now, you may be wondering why I am badgering on about this, whether I’m being nostalgic, sad or hankering for the on-campus experience denied to many academics.
On ‘What are you currently writing?’
Due to the wonders of COVID-19, it has been a long time since I have met another composer in the flesh, a long time since we welcomed another creator of original music to the university to give a talk, a seminar or to give tutorials. It has been a long time since we entertained another creative musician in the wonderful hostelries of Old Aberdeen Town, and all that entails. Now, you may be wondering why I am badgering on about this, whether I’m being nostalgic, sad or hankering for the on-campus experience denied to many academics.
Summer Round Up
I haven’t updated my website for quite a while (five months in fact), this being for two reasons: firstly, as I am in the process of transferring all this information to a new, all-singing-all-dancing website and secondly that not an awful lot has happened in these joyous months of 2020. However, some things have happened since April, so I guess I should do a sort of round up.
On Artists and Isolation (or Composers and the Coronavirus)
In the UK we are entering the end of our fourth week of ‘lockdown’ in which families and individuals are asked to stay in the their houses, to try to work from home and to avoid contact with other people at all times – you don’t need me to tell you about how unprecedented, challenging and destablising the whole situation is. But it is what it is, and it is for the safety and health of the nation, if not the world, that we isolate ourselves.
American Premiere of 'Ave Maria, mater Dei'
I was very pleased to find out recently that my motet Ave Maria, mater Dei (2017) was one of the winners of the ORTUS competition run by the Khorikos choir in New York.