A much commissioned and frequently performed composer, a highly creative teacher and an original programmer, John Woolrich is an important figure in British musical life.  His successful collaborations with the Birmingham Contemporary Music Group led to his appointment in the 2002-03 season as their Artistic Associate, and from 2004 he has been the Associate Artistic Director of the Aldeburgh Festival. In 1991 he founded the Composers Ensemble, of which he continues to be the driving force.

A number of preoccupations thread through his varied output: the art of creative transcription (Ulysses Awakes, for instance, is a recomposition of a Monteverdi aria, and The Theatre Represents a Garden: Night – a work for the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment – is based on fragments of Mozart), a fascination with machinery and mechanical processes (heard in many pieces including The Ghost in the Machine and The Barber’s Timepiece), a love of song and a passionate interest in literature.

The Dartington Hall Trust has just appointed John as the new Artistic Director of its world-renowned international music festival, the Dartington International Summer School. 

'His music whispers, whirrs, rustles, creaks, and shines with a gentle light, often elegiacal. It is not music of long line, full-throated song, bright hard clarity, physical exuberance. Its characteristic movement is shy, blinking in the sun, attuned better to half lights.'

Robin Holloway

 

Tansy Davies rose to prominence on the British scene with a sequence of ensemble works for the Composers Ensemble (Patterning), the London Sinfonietta (Torsion) and The Brunel Ensemble (The Void in this Colour), all of which bear the hallmarks of her apprenticeship under Simon Bainbridge and Simon Holt. In her recent work, Davies has found an accommodation between the worlds of the avant-garde and experimental rock, between - in the words of one critic - Xenakis and Prince. Filled with sounds of cracking, slapping, whipping and scraping, it is music that is utterly contemporary, inhabiting the same urban landscape as industrial techno and electronica, and while Davies is similarly fascinated by the potential of 'looping' as a structural device (as in neon), there is none of the formal predictability of much commercial dance music. Rather, the skewed proportions of works such as her recent LSO commission Tilting attest to her keen interest in applying structural principles found in the natural world, or the work of architect Zaha Hadid.

 In February 2007, the Birmingham Contemporary Music Group and Thomas Adès gave the premiere of a 20-minute work for large ensemble, Falling Angel, in Birmingham and at the Présences Festival in Paris. Other recent commissions include works for the Britten Sinfonia, the CBSO Youth Orchestra, the City of London Sinfonia, the Norwegian ensemble BIT 20, the Cheltenham Festival, the BBC Concert Orchestra, and the London Sinfonietta. Current projects include a work for the BBC Symphony Orchestra for the Proms in 2010.

 

Richard Dubugnon was born in Lausanne (Switzerland) in 1968. After studying History, he dedicated himself to music at the age of 20, starting the double bass as well as  harmony and counterpoint. After only two years of harmony and four years of double bass, he  was accepted at the Paris Conservatoire CNSMDP where he graduated with 1st Prizes in Counterpoint (1993) and Double Bass (1995) and 2nd Prize in Fugue (1993). He went to London to follow a postgraduate course of composition at the Royal Academy of Music, where he obtained a DipRAM and a Master degree of Composition from the University of London (1997). He stayed in the UK and taught music theory at the RAM alongside teaching composition at the Purcell School. He came back to France in 2003, where he obtained several prizes and distinctions, including awards from The Nadia & Lili Boulanger’s Foundation, the Académie des Beaux Arts,  the Groupe de Banque Populaire and the SACEM.

His works have been performed in many countries throughout the world and his first commercial CD with Naxos was unanimously praised by the international press. A recording of his symphonic works is soon to be released by Universal.

He is currently completing a violin concerto for Janine Jansen, to be premièred in December 2008 at Salle Pleyel in Paris, with the Orchestre de Paris conducted by Esa-Pekka Salonen.

Conductors who have championed his music include Emmanuel Krivine, Alain Altinoglu, Jesus Lopez-Cobos, Enrique Diemecke, Mikko Franck, Ed Gardner, Daniel Kawka, Friedmann Layer, Laurent Petitgirard and Peter Rundel. The orchestras include the Orchestre National de France, Orchestre Philharmonique de Radio France, Dallas Symphony Orchestra, Orchestre de Chambre de Lausanne, Orchestre National de Lille, Orchestre Colonne, Orchestre Philharmonique de Nice and the London Mozart Players.

He has received many commissions, most notably from Radio France, Musique Nouvelle en Liberté and the Long-Thibaud Piano International Competition and the City of Paris International Organ Competition.

As a double bass player, he has performed many recitals in Europe, Russia and the U.S. and has commissioned and premièred several works to promote his instrument. He played the solo part of his Mikroncerto in London, Birmingham and Paris at the Festival Présences 2002 with the Birmingham Contemporary Music Group. He also premièred his string quintet Ellébores in Radio France in 2006. He plays occasionally as an extra with the Paris Opera Orchestra.

He was the composer in residence with the Orchestre National de Montpellier in 2006-08 where he completed his Arcanes Symphoniques for large orchestra (80 mn), as well as a song cycle for soprano and orchestra. His future projects include the composition of an operette for the Montpellier Opera, which will be premièred next season.

Growing up in London, Bulgarian-born Dobrinka Tabakova (b. 1980) attended Alleyn’s School and the Royal Academy of Music Junior Department, specialising in composition and piano. She graduated with distinction BMus and MMus in composition at the Guildhall School of Music & Drama (GSMD) and was then appointed composition fellow there. Currently, Dobrinka is completing her PhD in composition at King’s College, London (KCL). Her composition teachers have included Simon Bainbridge, Diana Burrell, Robert Keeley and Andrew Schultz as well as masterclasses with John Adams, Louis Andriessen, Alexander Goehr, Marek Kopelent, Philip Manoury, Alessandro Solbiati, Olav-Anton Thommassen and Iannis Xenakis.

 

Dobrinka has won a number of prizes for her work, including the Jean-Frederic Perrenoud Prize and Medal at the 4th Vienna International Music Competition (1995), the GSMD Lutoslawski Composition Prize (1999), the prize for an anthem for the Queen’s Golden Jubilee in 2002 (performed at St. Paul’s Cathedral) and the 2007 KCL Adam Prize for the song cycle Sonnets to Sundry Notes of Music. Her works feature on a number of record labels - the anthem Praise on Hyperion (‘startlingly original - immediately appealing’, BBC Music Magazine) and Whispered Lullaby on the Avie label (Gramophone Magazine Editor’s Choice, June 2007).

 

Performances of Dobrinka’s works have been heard around the UK and Europe. Concerts in the UK include performance of her orchestral work Thrace at the Barbican, performances at the Cheltenham International Festival of Music, Bath Festival and The South Bank Centre. In October 2001 she was chosen to represent British young composers at the Paris Conservatoire’s International Composition Festival. In 2005 her Concerto for Viola and Strings (written for Maxim Rysanov) was presented at the International Rostrum of Composers in Vienna and subsequently broadcast in Europe and North America. In the same year, she presented her work at the Royal Philharmonic Society’s Music of Today series at the Royal Festival Hall and received performances at the Lockenhaus Festival, Austria.

 

Commissions include two chamber operas - Midsummer Magic for the Guildhall School of Music and The Custard Tart Opera performed at the international ‘Profile Intermedia’ design conference in Bremen; the finalé piece for Moscow’s ‘Homecoming’ Festival 2003; and the Concerto for Viola and Strings The Song of the Enchanting Viola. After the success of her commission for the Orchestra of the Swan as part of Sir Michael Tippett's centenary celebrations in 2005, they premiered her settings of four Shakespearean sonnets for soprano and orchestra in 2006, with Claire Booth as soloist.

 

During 2007, Dobrinka will be working on a Suite in Old Style for viola and ensemble, to be performed around Europe, a work for the Dutch Ricciotti Ensemble, a chamber work for the Leicester Festival to be performed in Bulgaria and the UK and a violin, cello and string orchestra triptych for Gidon Kremer’s 60th birthday and Kremerata Baltica’s 10th anniversary.

 

For more information and to listen to MP3 sound bites, visit www.dobrinka.com

Nigel Osborne studied composition with Egon Wellesz and Kenneth Leighton at Oxford and with Witold Rudzinski in Poland, where he also worked at the Polish Radio Experimental Studio. He is a composer with a long association with the stage.

His operas have inlcuded Seven Words for Radio Suisse Romande, Hell’s Angels for Opera Factory at the Royal Court, The Electrification of the Soviet Union for Glyndebourne, BBC2, Wuppertal and the Hebbel Theatre Berlin, Terrible Mouth for English National Opera at the Almeida, Sarajevo for Opera Factory at the South Bank and Evropa for the National Theatre Sarajevo and Bill TV; he has also been Master of Music at the Shakespeare Globe and is currently musical director of the extraordinary Ulysses Theatre, Istria.

He has worked with Richard Alston on the acclaimed series of works for Rambert Dance Company, including Apollo Distraught, Wildlife, Zansa and Mythologies and has had long-standing theatrical collaborations with choreographer Robert Cohan, directors David Freeman, David Poutney, Lenka Udovicki and Peter Sellars, and writers Craig Raine, Tom Paulin, D.M. Thomas, Howard Barker and Goran Simic.

As a composer of instrumental music, he has worked closely with ensembles such as the City of London Sinfonia, the Scottish Chamber Orchestra, Ensemble 20jh Vienna, the London Sinfonietta and Ensemble Intercontemporain Paris; his scores have been performed by orchestras around the world, ranging from the Moscow Radio Symphony to the Vienna Radio Symphony Orchestras, from the Los Angeles Philharmonic to the Philharmonia of London. Distinctions have included the Opera Prize of the Ville de Geneve, the Netherlands Gaudeamus Prize, the Radcliffe Prize, and the Koussevitzky Award of the Library of Congress, Washington.

He is Reid Professor of Music at the University of Edinburgh, and is founder and consultant for a programme of creative arts and therapy and rehabilitation for war-traumatised children in the Balkans, the Caucasus and areas of the former Soviet Union.

Photo: Clive Barda

 

 

A towering performance by the BBC Philharmonic under the composer James MacMillan. He is proving a conductor of daunting ability. The Sunday Times, May 2003

 

Born in Ayrshire, Scotland in 1959, James MacMillan is one of today’s most successful living composers. His music is notable for its extraordinary directness, energy and emotional power. References to Scottish folk music imbue MacMillan’s work with a strong sense of the vernacular, while strongly-held religious and political beliefs coupled with community concerns inform both the spirit and subject matter of his music. MacMillan is internationally active as a conductor and in 2000 was appointed Composer/Conductor with the BBC Philharmonic. He was awarded a CBE in January 2004. The successful premiere of Tryst at the 1990 St Magnus Festival led to his appointment as Affiliate Composer of the Scottish Chamber Orchestra. Between 1992 and 2002 he was Artistic Director of the Philharmonia Orchestra's Music of Today series of contemporary music concerts. His works are now performed throughout the world by most major orchestras.

 

Among MacMillan’s major works are The Confession of Isobel Gowdie, premiered at the BBC Proms in 1990, Veni, Veni, Emmanuel, the percussion concerto written for Evelyn Glennie which has received more than 300 performances, a cello concerto for Mstislav Rostropovich, a major choral orchestral work Quickening, and three symphonies.

 

Alongside his work as a composer, James MacMillan is greatly in demand as a conductor, for many years having directed his own scores and more recently conducting a range of repertoire and special projects with major orchestras and ensembles around the world. Now in his 5th season as Composer/Conductor of the BBC Philharmonic, MacMillan conducts many of the Orchestra’s contemporary projects including new commissions, recordings and performances at the Bridgewater Hall, BBC Proms, Concertgebouw Amsterdam and Huddersfield Festival.

 

In addition to this role, recent guest conducting activities include the London Symphony Orchestra’s world premiere of A Deep but Dazzling Darkness, as well as concerts with Rotterdam Philharmonic, Sydney Symphony, NHK Symphony, Melbourne Symphony, Orquesta de la RTVE Madrid, Netherlands Radio Symphony, Residentie Orkest and many others. In the USA, he was Composer-in- Residence at the Aspen Festival in 2004 and in May conducted the New York City Ballet’s world premiere of his latest ballet commission. He recently conducted in the Los Angeles Philharmonic’s Green Umbrella season and the Phildelphia Orchestra musicians at the Saratoga Festival.

Thea Musgrave was born in Barnton, Midlothian in 1928. After studies at Edinburgh University she spent four years at the Paris Conservatoire as a student of the great teacher Nadia Boulanger, winning the Conservatoire’s Lili Boulanger Memorial Prize in 1954. The same year she wrote one of her first works to attract widespread attention, Cantata for a Summer’s Day for narrator, chorus and small orchestra, commissioned by BBC Scotland. She became involved in education work, at Dartington Summer School, and in extra-mural classes for London University, one outcome of which was Excursions for piano duet (11th June).

 

In 1970, she was appointed Guest Professor at the University of California, Santa Barbara, and the following year married the American conductor and viola player Peter Mark, for whom she wrote her Viola Concerto in 1973. She settled in the USA in 1972; three years later Peter Mark was appointed conductor of Virginia Opera.

 

She has written several operas, including The Voice of Ariadne (1973), based on a story by Henry James, A Christmas Carol, from the Dickens novel (1979), Harriet, the Woman called Moses (1984) and Simón Bolívar (1992). A dramatic principle can also be heard at work in a number of her concert pieces, often combined with an exploration of the possibilities opened up by using the available space. An early example of this approach is the Chamber Concerto no 2 of 1966, in which the role of leader is shared between different instruments, with players cueing each other, and with solo cadenzas for individual players. In 1967, she described to friends a vivid dream of an orchestral piece in which the clarinet “went crazy”. The following day a commission for an orchestral work arrived from the BBC. In response she wrote her Concerto for Orchestra in which the clarinet leads other solo wind instruments in a rebellion against the conductor’s dominance. The soloist in her Clarinet Concerto (1968) moves around the orchestra, interacting with different groups of instruments. Night Music, from 1969, has prominent roles for two horns, whose music becomes increasingly dramatic the further apart they stand, ending with one staying on the platform while the other slowly moves offstage. In the Horn Concerto (1971), the orchestral horns are placed around the auditorium, their entries cued by the soloist. More recent works exploring the relationship between soloist and orchestra include Helios (oboe and small orchestra), for Nicholas Daniel, and Journey through a Japanese Landscape (percussion and wind band) for Evelyn Glennie.

 

Following a number of experiments in the late ‘60s, she has used taped and electronically-generated sounds in a number of instrumental works, including Niobe, for oboe and tape, and Narcissus, for flute and digital delay (16th June).

 

Her continued interest in what she calls ‘dramatic-abstract musical forms’ has produced a distinguished body of work which has not really enjoyed the high public profile it deserves. It is to be hoped that the performances featured at this year’s Festival will help to put that right.