New Music Brighton (NMB) are to be congratulated on their outstanding July concert at the Friends' Meeting House. The concert reflected an unfailing creative energy in a wide variety of styles and influences, but no mere imitations. The sixty-strong audience showed their appreciation with enthusiasm.
Praise is due to the brilliant performances by Anne Hodgson (flute) and Adam Swayne (piano), for their unfailing commitment, skill and musicality in interpreting often difficult pieces.
Terence Albright's substantial Partita for flute and piano was characterised by a pensive lyricism and energy, while Peter Owen's Chaconne was based on a simple, powerful bell-like figure, which gradually acquired internal flesh and complexity, as it mounted to a climax and then, like a palindrome, slowly moved back into silence.
Joanna Flackfield's Seaside Revels will be required on many future occasions where a transparent and wholly happy conspiracy between flute and piano is called for, giving summery enjoyment equally to players and audience. It would be good if the drive and inventiveness of Jessica Curry's one-minute Unstoppable force meets immovable object for solo piano could be further developed in a more substantial piece. Gregers Brinch's Anforta's Dream for solo flute, provided a splendid opportunity for monologue and dialogue-within-monologue, as the flute moved through a whole range of lyrical or passionate tropes ideally reflecting its spirit.
Phil Baker's Study for piano - Roulette Boogie began amusingly at either end of the piano's range, then gradually filled in the middle bits with energy and bravado. As well as being musically challenging, this was a tremendously fun piece.
Jonathan Clarke's Prelude and fugue for flute and piano was another very substantial offering, shot through with the energy which characterised this whole concert, and providing the flute some very rich, dark pianistic harmonies to play against, with a result that was most exciting.
After the interval, Peter Copely's Secret sonata for flute and piano was the very last thing to keep secret about, as the strong mid-European influence of Copley's time in Poland was reflected in a concatenation of urgent rhythmic and melodic figures, whose fragmentation nevertheless added up to an overall and satisfying unity.
This fascinating and ambitious concert ended with two bold audio-visual pieces. Resurge, with music by Ric Graebner and poetry by Argyros Ioannis, skilfully read by Andrew Branch, combined richly chromatic projected images and pre-recorded music. The theme of literature and its habit of haunting our lives was matched on the screen by Roger Pinnington's vivid semi-abstract explorations of Italian church interiors. Roger Harmar's no less ambitious +/-.pattern.time.memory used a wider range of imagery but no text apart from screened phases. Unlike Resurge, the visuals here were possibly a little too diverse and, although brilliant and insistent, their point, and relation to the music, were not always obvious.
(c) Martin Ward (full review in Shoreham Herald)
As most of Brighton shopped its way through last Saturday afternoon, the packed audience at The Friends' Meeting House in The Lanes were privileged to hear a programme of piano music written by living Sussex composers associated through New Music Brighton.
The highly distinguished locally based pianist Adam Swayne brilliantly served a rich menu for St Valentine's Day starting with Julian Broughton's Sonata Across Four Elements inspired by the natural world as depicted in the rhythm of flowing water combined with the "bobbing and darting of the bird"; and, in another movement, with the desolation of the desert and, in another, the hauntingly contemporary image of "wildfire". Broughton's work and Swayne's pianism clearly captivated the whole audience.
The occasional allusions to French Impressionism in Broughton's Sonata were echoed in Barry Mills' Three Pieces for Piano with their overt references to Ravel and Debussy reworked in Mills' own individual manner. As in the Broughton, water was an image in The River at Val di Mello. Mills seduced the audience with exquisite harmonies hanging in the air with their evocative resonances and the final trill of The Moon and the Stars seemed to resonate far into outer space.
John Alexander's enigmatically entitled is will be was, drew away from Mills' reveries into the angst of introspection; into a world of disconnection and inner psychological conflicts. Purposefully disconnected as the music was, it culminated in a long held chord from which emerged a slow cantilena of fragile beauty closing on an empty chord like the silence of the grave. The work was harmonically rich and had passages of poignant delicacy rubbing shoulders with jazz references.
Jonathan Clark's Sonatina for Piano provided a stark contrast to the previous works with severe harmonic dissonances and rhythmic angularity as it were sculpted from stone rather than painted in wash.
The psychological references of Alexander's work informed Guy Richardson's Releasing, featuring a distorted expression of a waltz at the beginning, and its return harmonised in a more traditional style, the whole piece working as an analogue of tension and release.
References to past styles were concisely expressed in Patrick Harrex's Piano Pie. It would not have been out of place had four and twenty black-birds flown free out of the piano for this was a work which drew together half-remembered fragments of earlier piano music (mainly by Chopin) into a surreal and original combination formed by the fertile imagination of its composer.
In similar vein, Ric Graebner's 12 Variations on a cadence by Francisco Tarrega (or, alternatively, the Nokia ringtone) took as its starting point pre-existing music in a kind of twenty-first century Diabelli Variations. Graebner wove some extraordinary music from an even less promising theme than Diabelli's.
The atmosphere at this New Music Brighton event was lively and the audience was clearly captivated not only by the sound of this truly contemporary piano music but also by the pianist's enthusiasm for it. Not for some time has an NMB concert run out of programmes!
Not for some time has an NMB concert featured an encore which, on this occasion, was a delightful performance by Adam Swayne of the Chopin Nocturne in E-flat which had been so wittily used in Harrex's Piano Pie - surely the food of love.
Play on Dr Swayne and play on New Music!
(C) Phil Baker 2009 (abridged versions in Worthing Herald, Chichester Observer)
New Music Brighton (NMB) joined forces with Talkestra, under Steve Dummer, to present a concert of new music at St Mary's Church, Shoreham, on Thursday.
Phil Baker, Jonathan Clark, James Bull and Ric Graebner, along with other members of the audience, were treated to expert performances of their music by Steve Dummer, on clarinets of various pitches, Evgeny Chebykin, on horn, and Alison Holford on cello.
J. S. Bach, whose spirit permeated the concert, had been co-opted by NMB for an arrangement by the versatile Steve Dummer of four of his three-part inventions, normally performed on the keyboard, for the three available instruments. The pieces appeared in a new and vivid light when shared in this way, brilliantly revealing the dialogue between the parts, and giving an opportunity for the colours of the three instruments to highlight Bach's skilful musical logic.
There is nothing to fear from NMB's own music. Far from being a mere exercise in the unusual or the arbitrary, each piece had a musical and emotional character of its own.
Phil Baker's sonata-like Sequentia for solo cello continued the idea of dialogue, as bowed passages of considerable force and passion were contrasted with an exploitation of some of the cello's less conventional musical possibilities, from pizzicato onwards. In Alison's capable hands, the piece's long, sustained phrases were as completely absorbing as the more percussive elements
Jonathan Clark's Prelude and Fugue, adopting a Bach-like model, was introduced by Steve in the usual Talkestra fashion, with the help of musical examples to highlight its key aspects.
James Bull was unable to be present for Steve Dummer's solo performance of his Of a Spring Afternoon, where the pervasive idea of musical dialogue took the form of a conversation between elements of a folky melody and figures which might have been emulating bird-song. The result was a truly charming piece, a credit to the very young composer.
Ric Graebner's four Three-part inventions sustained the influence of Bach, with a highly integrated and sustained coming together of all three instruments around an interplay of melodic phrases, which combined in arresting, and sometimes playful, sometimes evocative, momentary harmonies
(C) Martin Ward (Shoreham Herald June 19 2008)
Sydney Vale’s three sonatas for piano were performed in a captivating recital by Michael Finnissy in the resonant acoustic of St Michael and All Angels, Brighton last night. In each of the sonatas, the acoustic proved to be perfect for Vale’s characteristic piano writing which frequently required pedalled chords but did not smudge the clarity of contrapuntal lines.
The first sonata (1968) seemed, from a single hearing, tightly organised in terms of Vale’s serialist technique which produced both non-tonal and a-tonal moments within the same fabric. Whatever the technique, the music projected a freshness which seemed at time improvisatory. At no point did the serialism seem more important than the music itself which was inventive and richly contrasting.
In the second sonata (2002) the same level of invention and elaboration of simple elements were equally well-expressed. Finnissy’s allusion to Schubert in his programme note proved particularly relevant when a disguised theme from that composer seemed to have emerged out of nowhere. Characteristically, dissonant harmonies then obfuscated the melody exemplifying Vale’s treatment of essentially diatonic material subjected to an iconoclastic harmonic envelopment. Although written in a more clearly tonal style, the second sonata also retains some of the melodic angularity of the first with glimpses of delightful contrapuntal humour within an overall dark statement.
The third sonata (2007) seemed to follow as though in a natural progression and the emotional intensity was captured masterfully. The allusion to a powerful chordal passage from the second sonata brought the two works close together such that it might almost be imagined that they could be performed in an uninterrupted sequence creating the sense of an ‘arch-form’ across both sonatas.
Fortunately, the recital was recorded and, fortunately again, we can look forward to a projected fourth sonata.
(C) Phil Baker 26 May 2008
Doubly different from the usual music concert, not only do the musicians discuss the
pieces before playing them, but the composers are sat in the audience – alive, without
the need for exhumation. Clarinettist Steve Dummer gives a down-to-earth analysis of
each piece complete with short snippets that give you an understanding and a taste
for what is to come. It's very welcome, as knowing the inspirations and devices of
these imaginative modern composers adds immensely to the appreciation of their music.
It begins with the beating pulse of the beginning of time and ends with a piano
quintet involving wind instruments playing into the piano and a new fourth movement
that moves all along the keyboard. Five musicians, five composers, fantastic musical
diversity and innovation.
tw rating 4/5 (now, this is what we are talking about, a fine example of this genre).
Reviewed by Seth Ewin (Three Weeks Daily)
This was a surprisingly experimental concert that juggled a range of concepts and styles with mixed success, as it showcased the work of local composers [Michael Stephenson, Barry Mills, Patrick Harrex, Guy Hall and Phil Baker]. The initial performances shared an inventively abstract, though somewhat limiting, technique of using disjoined sounds and snatched melody – before the show was completely stolen by the final two pieces, the first [Harrex's Canzona] by bassist Beverley Jones, who performed an enchanting solo. Her powerful performance was equalled, if not surpassed, by the medieval spirit of the last work [Baker's The Murals at Albi]; alternating between sombre, rousing and ceremonious, the concentrated precision of Paul Gregory on guitar and Richard Horne on an array of percussion evoked a bygone era, while even jovial director Steve Dummer's clarinet rang out.
Reviewed by CS (Three Weeks Daily)
The Jubilee Library is Brighton's latest civic amenities building. Designed as a large open cube three stories high, in between the ground and the upper floor can be found a modernist suspended walkway and a series of galleries at mezzanine level which look down to the main floor below. It was in these spaces that CoMA Sussex, with guests from The Hola, CoMA South and others, performed, with conductor Steve Dummer and more players - keyboard, accordion, tuba, double bass and cello - on the ground floor. The event was part of Brighton Live, an annual celebration of Brighton & Hove's diverse live music scene and included four works by members of New Music Brighton, the Sussex composers' collective.
The performance started shortly after closure of the normal facilities but this well-supported event could have been mistaken for a busy library afternoon with lots of people milling around. Phil Baker's Library Hollers was a good opener and attention grabber: sudden sounds of book titles being read out aloud, books being slammed shut, lines from pages being sung out aloud. Baker's starting point was that on entering a library he felt compelled to break the silence by reading a title out aloud or singing / reciting a line. I suspect this is something that many of us might harbour as a secret desire. A group improvisation followed with musicians moving from one gallery to another, moving sound in space.
Howard Skempton's Sirens - the only work not by a Sussex composer - came across as a meditative, tonal ambience with great economy of orchestration. In this setting this piece works very well, as did Ken Edward's Four Simultaneous Movements. Michael Finnissy's Post-Christian Survival Kit provided a needed contrast to the meditative tonality of the other two. A further group improvisation followed before the final work by Patrick Harrex, Objects in Space, a work which had performers initially quite isolated both physically and tonally. Gradually the musicians moved closer to each other before filing out of the building into the square outside, taking the audience with them and drawing from the latter resounding applause.
This concert worked well due to the selection of music which exploited the venue perfectly, complimenting the architecture, and wonderful musicianship which really made the event come alive.
Stuart Russell, Firewire/ CoMA East
Avant garde percussion pieces played on drums, kitchen hardware and car parts to an audience ranging
from shabby student beards to twin set and pearls - delightful, alternative, potty and utterly fringe.
This is challenging music at its 'rummage in a pot of marbles, push over a pile of cans' best. If you
took it too seriously you'd probably shatter, but fortunately Brake Drum Assembly have got it about
spot on. Four musicians having fun, playing technically challenging music very well, producing
throbbing as well as jarring beats, and shouting occasionally.
A new piece Rhythm of black lines [by New Music Brighton member Patrick Harrex] was worth the
admission fee on its own - wonderful.
Reviewed By: Parks (latest 7 magazine)