Cherry Blossom arrives in Tongyeong

Yesterday, overnight all the trees in Tongyeong, South Korea, suddenly exploded in a riot of cherry blossom - by the time I arrive back in Cardiff on Friday evening, it will have gone.

Here is a short haiku by Issa from 1804

cherry blossoms
tree after tree
of good karma

And here is the view from Tongyeong's concert hall

To read other blogs on the ISCM Music Days in Tongyeong see here and here.

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.