Winter isn't forever

On Saturday 27 February York's Late Music Series put on a day of events devoted to British Song in collaboration with York's Literature Festival. The events at St Saviourgate Unitarian Chapel near to the Shambles included a talk by myself on British song over the last hundred years or so and in the evening concert soprano Ana Beard Fernández and pianist Kate Ledger (see below) gave a fabulous premiere of my Three Winter Haiku, which set words by poet Francesca Kay. You can find more details of the day here and read a review of the concert here. Many thanks to Steve Crowther for arranging things.

The three haiku settings also have a short postlude for piano alone and make up a kind of micro-song cycle lasting about five minutes or so. They were inspired by Francesca's precise and very evocative words, taken from her collection of poems Garden Seasons. They are collected together, not in a book, but very strikingly in a seed packet with, in her words, "poetry seeds for the imagination inside". You can buy them by going to Francesca's website 

I have recently revised and produced a new copy of the score which can be obtained by contacting me through my website. 

Footsteps in the can

I’ve just had a fantastic day down at Tŷ Cerdd’s recording studio at Wales Millennium Centre with the Mavron String Quartet and Francesca Kay recording my quartet, footsteps quiet in the shadows, for a CD.

Although the quartet is only just over twelve minutes, we had four hours of recording time booked so that we could get every aspect of it right. And we still have the editing session yet to come … We had Ty Cerdd’s engineer, James Clark at the control desk guiding us smoothly through the day.

The Mavrons have given eight public performances of the quartet and really have it under their belts. Last week I spent a very long day finishing a final copy of the score and it was useful to copy it out again to familiarise myself with all its details. Here’s a photo of pages from the last movement – although I can use music software, I dislike it and prefer to make my scores by hand.

It was great to have Francesca Kay in the recording studio with us. The piece takes its title from a poem called Unicorn by Francesca from her collection Mythical Beasts. She’s been able to read it at most of the performances, and the transition from her reading into the opening bars is a magical moment which we all now regard as an integral part of the piece. Here she is today reading it in the studio.

Look out for news of the CD itself.

Many thanks to Chrissie, Katie, Niamh, Bea, Francesca, James and Jim for all their work today. 

www.mavronquartet.co.uk

www.francescakay.co.uk

www.tycerdd.org

footsteps in the Dora

Live Music Now selects young, professional musicians and sends them out into the community to perform for older people and children with special educational needs across the UK. On Saturday night, in the Dora Stoutzker Hall at the Royal Welsh College of Music & Drama, Live Music Now Wales gave a Gala concert featuring some of the extraordinary musicians who have taken part in the scheme over the years, including Llŷr Williams, Hannah Stone, Only Boys Aloud and the Mavron Quartet.

The Mavrons gave their seventh performance of my quartet, footsteps quiet in the shadows preceded by Francesca Kay reading her poem, Unicorn, from which the title comes. It is one of a collection of poems, Mythical Beasts, that can be purchased from Francesca’s Etsy shop www.etsy.com/uk/shop/quarto17

The quartet have been giving some wonderful performances of the piece over the last month in Ystrad Mynach, Lampeter and Reading and it’s been a great honour to work with them on it. We’re making a CD of it in March. Here they are rehearsing during the afternoon, just prior to the concert.  

Many thanks to all the performers and Gillian Green at Live Music Now Wales for a great evening.

Quartet amongst the books

Fantastic performance of my quartet, footsteps quiet in the shadows by the Mavron Quartet last Wednesday night.

 

 

They gave a concert the beautifully refurbished Booth’s Bookshop in Hay-on-Wye.

Here’s photo of them on the stage after the performance together with me and Francesca Kay who read her lovely poem, Unicorn, before the performance.

We were all wonderfully looked after following the performance at John Stark’s house with delicious veggie snacks.

There's another performance on Sunday 15 December at 11.30am in the Reardon Smith Lecture Theatre at the National Museum of Wales.

 

 

More performances of footsteps quiet in the shadows

The Mavron Quartet give two performances of my recent quartet, footsteps quiet in the shadows next week. It’s based both on a poem by Francesca Kay (from which the title is taken) and on the mysterious second movement of Bach’s Third Brandenburg Concerto – just two simple chords of A minor and B major. No one knows what Bach meant – he may have intended it as the basis for a cadenza or improvisation.


The Mavron Quartet are including an arrangement of Bach’s Concerto in the concerts, but the arranger has left the chords out! I had the leviathan task of writing out parts for the whole second movement (see below) – it must have taken all of ten minutes …

I’m thrilled that Francesca will also read her poem before both performances – if you fancy buying a copy of the collection from which it is taken, you can find her at Wales Millennium Centre this weekend selling it along with lots of other Christmas goodies (see Francesca’s blog - ).



The performances are on Wednesday 11 December at Booth’s Bookshop in Hay-on-Wye at 7.30pm (tickets from 01497 820322) and Sunday 15 December in the Reardon Smith Lecture Theatre at the National Museum of Wales at 11.30am.

http://www.museumwales.ac.uk/en/whatson/?event_id=6895

www.mavronquartet.co.uk

Dino Commission

I’m just starting work on a new commission from Tŷ Cerdd, the National Music Centre for Wales. It’s for narrator and the Welsh Brass Trio for young children, from age four upwards. The words are being written and narrated by Francesca Kay whose work I have admired for ages. Francesca has already written some fantastic children’s pieces with Mervyn Burtch and Gareth Wood. We used to work together on the educational projects for the Lower Machen Festival and last year I set her three winter haiku for soprano and piano.

The text for this is very different though: it’s all about dinosaurs and the problems that come up when a stegosaurus falls asleep on the road, blocking the traffic. Expect something very different from my most recent scores…

At a recent meeting Charlotte Griffin from Tŷ Cerdd gave me three of her young son’s miniature dinosaurs – they are now sitting on my piano willing me to write the music.

www.tycerdd.com 

Follow Francesca Kay’s blog at www.francescakay.blogspot.co.uk  and see her website at www.francescakay.co.uk