I'm busy writing concertos at the moment.  If you take a look at the recently-announced 2016-17 seasons from the SCO and the RSNO you'll see why.  It's a special pleasure to be writing for two dear friends I have known for many years: Tom Poster (piano, with the SCO) and Katherine Bryan (flute, with the RSNO). 

Also announced this week: a second run of performances of Visiones, premiered at last year's Aldeburgh Festival.  The fantastic young ensemble Dark Inventions are presenting the piece as part of their 'From Score to Sound' project on 9th, 17th and 24th April in York, Huddersfield and London.

After the premiere of Psalm at the Royal Academy of Arts, Edmund and I had a chat about the piece and his work and my work and white and Celan and the creative process and took questions from the audience and things like that.  It was recorded, and now it's a podcast.  It's super-rambly.  The discussion begins four minutes in.  Enjoy!

Fresh from their tour of Scotland, High Heels and Horse Hair have produced a short video taken from their Nocturnal concert in the beautiful Cottiers Theatre.  Gives you a small sense of the atmosphere created by their playing and Kai Fischer's lighting design in this fantastic space.  The opening sounds in this clip are from my Nocturne; other music heard is by Biber, Bach, Beamish, Weir and Schnittke.

There are also some still images from their performance on Alice and Sonia's website.

This Friday's episode of Artsnight (11pm, BBC2, 20 November) is presented by Edmund de Waal, with whom I had the great pleasure of working on Psalm.  Before the premiere last week I was interviewed for the programme, relating my work to Edmund's practice, and white (of course), and Celan, and memory, and the wonderful Aurora Orchestra, who performed my piece.  I may have been cut from the final edit, but perhaps I'm still there. . . tune in and find out!

High Heels and Horse Hair aka Alice and Sonia keep a blog for their various projects.  I've written a short post for their upcoming Nocturnal tour, looking at my piece, Nocturne, and the joys(?) of working at night.  

What is the sound of white?

Edmund de Waal, the ceramic artist whose eloquent porcelain installations are inextricably bound up with this colour, asks the question early in The White Road, but offers no answer.

I am no synaesthete; I am no more able to respond than de Waal.  In any case, the question is, strictly speaking, nonsensical.  But it is an intriguing proposition.  If we could hear the colour of milk and snow and clouds and sunlight, what music would it make?

Over strong coffee on a grey London morning in early January, Edmund asks me to do just that.

image credit: Fran Pickering

Music should be theatrical. No, scratch that: music is theatrical, and I'm always excited by concerts that exploit this.  Aurora Orchestra are a great example, and so are High Heels and Horse Hair, who have developed a programme of new music and old united by nocturnal themes, combined with lighting design by Kai Fischer. My Nocturne is featured, alongside a commission from Judith Weir, and music by Sally Beamish, Schnittke, Bach and Biber. I'm really looking forward to taking a trip back home to see it.

I've spent the past few months in a porcelain world, on the trail of Edmund de Waal's 'kind of pilgrimage', The White Road.  His art and writing, alongside his passion for the poetry of Paul Celan, formed the backdrop for my new piece, Psalm.  It's been commissioned for the Aurora Orchestra's On White festival, a fantastic series of concerts they're producing with de Waal, which also includes Zender's arrangement of Winterreise, a particular favourite of mine.