One of the (more than a few) gaps in my knowledge of English literature is the poetry of George Gordon, Lord Byron. It felt even more cavernous when Professor Adrian Poole invited me to choose and set a Byron poem to music as part of a major celebration and survey of his work currently happening at Trinity College, Cambridge, where Byron was an undergraduate.   Eventually, in a suspiciously unopened Penguin Poets volume I uncovered "on my shelves" (in fact a poetic heap) I found the wonderfully atmospheric lyric, Bright be the Place of thy Soul!  Thanks to its beautiful lilting met ..read more

I feel I must flag up a BBC Singers recording currently on BBC Sounds. When I arrived at King's Place for this live concert in February, I knew my piece Missa del Cid was on the menu, but had not grasped that this was going to be a 70th birthday tribute to - myself. I spent the rest of the evening feeling surprised.   As can be expected, it was a boon to have this BBC Radio 3 recording to "recollect in tranquility". Especially about Missa del Cid, in a most imaginative recreation by conductor Owain Park (not yet born when this music was written, may I say as an almost-70 year old.) The ..read more

  I've just completed an unusual 7-day tour of Britain, from Saffron Walden to Glasgow, in the company of my 1992 orchestra piece Heroic Strokes of the Bow. Britten Sinfonia, and then the Scottish Chamber Orchestra, gave it two performances each, following another pair last month by the Augsburg Philharmonic. Next month, Southbank Sinfonia will play it again in London.   I wish I knew how to write more orchestra pieces that get regular performances. I believe one big factor in favour of Heroic Strokes of the Bow is its interesting-sounding title. It's not mine, I borrowed it from P ..read more

I don't know what my avant-garde teenage self would think of this, but I'm glad to announce that I have a piece included in Friday Night is Music Night, for 70 years a Radio 2 staple, which is making the leap to BBC Radio 3 tonight. I guess no-one yet knows how the programme will fare there; in recent times Music Night moved to Sunday, and seemed to have retired completely late last year.   I went up to Alexandra Palace to hear the BBC Concert Orchestra rehearsing tonight's broadcast programme, which as ever is an idiosyncratic mix of 'light music', mini classical favourites and show tu ..read more

I was actually awestruck by a recent LSO performance I heard at the Barbican, in front of a big audience who were nearly all aged 7 and under. I was there to hear my piece Music Spread Thy Voice somehow included in a 50-minute event called Musical Mechanics. (In the foyer beforehand, crowded with people three feet tall, I easily spotted my fellow composer Jonathan Dove, whose exciting and pacey piece Run to the Edge was also on the programme.)   Conductor Timothy Redmond is someone I know from very different contexts - I recently worked with him on both an opera production and an orches ..read more

Scotland Unwrapped is a great series running all through this year at King's Place in London. Quite rightly, it includes many folk musicians and a lot of spoken word events. People in Scotland might take a view on which contemporary composers are being played, but I am enjoying the programming as an unusually thorough English view of Scotland. I can't remember anything like this before, on this scale, happening down here in the south.   ORA Singers' programme about the 1603 Union of the Scottish and English Crowns was certainly an event that belonged here. It was fascinating to hear dar ..read more

I've been a patron of the Martin Read Foundation for quite a few years now, and find it an inspiration in the music education landscape. Martin was an outstanding composer-educator, Head of Music at Alton College for 23 years, and a great many people remember him warmly, not least his successful students. The Foundation created in his memory supports teenage composers from the area (on a shoestring, inevitably) in ingenious ways. Some MRF graduates have gone on to study composition at music college; others have simply enjoyed the creative buzz and interaction with professional performers ..read more

Amongst the many famous London landmarks I should have visited well before now is Alexandra Palace. It's not exactly hidden away. But at last, thanks to a summons from the BBC Concert Orchestra, I boarded an overground train, starting out deep within Moorgate tube station, and soon found myself on a bracing hill walk, way above north London.   Outdoing our south London equivalent, Crystal Palace, "Ally Pally" burned down twice in its 150-year history, but in recent years has been well-used for its frequent pop spectaculars and year-round ice rink. Breathtakingly, its Theatre has been b ..read more

The Big Picture is a cantata posing the question "does music actually have colours ? " which I originally wrote for the 2019 reopening of Aberdeen Art Gallery.  It has just received its North American premiere, by Harvard University Choir under Edward Elwyn Jones, which you can hear here (beginning at 54'50".)   This excellent performance sounds, to me, very different from the Aberdeen premiere, and also from the Delphian recording by Bristol Choral Society - in the sense of being alternative, rather than better. The scoring of the piece is for two choirs, including in the origina ..read more

The Royal College of Music's wind day (see previous post) ended with an evening concert of music by British composers. The RCM, naturally, organised a composer panel to preface this event. Afterwards, RCM's Head of Composition, Jonathan Cole, kindly sent us this souvenir photo; I feel it's a classic of the "Composers on a Panel" genre. For extra marks.... ...ok, from left to right: Jonathan Cole, Sally Beamish, Julian Anderson, Grace-Evangeline Mason, myself, Robin Haigh. It was a true pleasure to catch up with the whole lot of them ..read more