sun 08/12/2024

composers

Ennio review - sprawling biog of the maestro of movie music

Ennio Morricone’s collaboration with director Giuseppe Tornatore on 1988’s Cinema Paradiso was one of the countless highlights of his career, and it’s Tornatore who has masterminded this sprawling documentary tribute to the composer, who died in...

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‘Let me be your main course’: composer Jimmy López on why new music needs time and space

No, not your aperitif – and certainly not your digestif; your bona fide main dish, the one your audience yearns for, dresses up for, and looks forward to.It’s 2022; time for arts leaders to show the way into the future and to not underestimate the...

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Album: Bed Wetter - A Life in the Day

A Life in the Day is the second album from Bed Wetter, nom de plume of DJ, producer and experimental artist Geoff Kirkwood. Perhaps best known for his dancefloor-centred productions under the Man Power moniker, Kirkwood’s thoughtful and committed...

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First Person: theartsdesk writer Bernard Hughes on composing for the BBC Proms

For many years, first as a punter then latterly as a reviewer, I have sat in the section of the Royal Albert Hall stalls near stage right, under the BBC Radio broadcast box, knowing that that is where they sit the composers being premiered at the...

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Royal Northern Sinfonia, Sage Gateshead online review – a grab bag of players’ favourites

The Royal Northern Sinfonia handed its players artistic control of the programme for this livestream from the Sage, Gateshead and if the result lacked coherence it certainly had the variety and diversity missing from the Wigmore Hall Nash Ensemble...

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First Person: composer and Renaissance man Tunde Jegede on transcending genres

In this era when there is so much talk and discussion around crossing musical boundaries, diversity in music and inter-disciplinary work it seems strange that there is still so little knowledge of how, why and when it works. Ironically, much of this...

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Gillam, Manchester Camerata, Kuusisto, Stoller Hall online review - calm and exhilaration

Manchester Camerata’s performance with Jess Gillam at Chetham’s School of Music was filmed in private on 9 January (and the sound was broadcast on BBC Radio 3 on the 19th), but to see it in its full visual glory we had to wait until a one-off...

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Albums of the Year 2020: Marius Neset – Tributes

This year of all years – surely – we need music which takes us to better, happier places. And the new album from Norwegian-born saxophonist/composer Marius Neset does that. It also gives us a bit more hindsight and context as to what his two...

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Classical CDs Weekly: Osvaldo Golijov, Mendelssohn, Vaughan Williams

 Osvaldo Golijov: Falling Out of Time Silkroad Ensemble (In a Circle Records)Along with many others, I was beguiled by DG’s recording of Osvaldo Golijov's Pasión Según San Marcos a decade ago, an exuberant Latin American take on Bach. After...

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Gigantic Cinema: A Weather Anthology review - wild writing to stimulate the senses

Among the French composer Claude Debussy’s greatest and characteristically subtle innovations was to put the titles at the end of his pieces. He did this in his piano collection Preludes: the titles, trailed by ellipses and clothed in brackets...

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Max Richter's Sleep review - refreshing as a good night's rest

If there was ever a balm for these confusing times, then it’s Max Richter’s Sleep, a lullaby of a documentary that explores the composer’s eight-hour-plus experimental 2015 composition based on sleep cycles. Richter is a remarkable...

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Remembering Krzysztof Penderecki (1933-2020)

No composer since Stravinsky has defined his age as comprehensively as Krzysztof Penderecki, who died on Sunday aged 86. Initially an uncompromising modernist, Penderecki was one of the composers who put Poland at the forefront of the musical avant-...

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