The Birmingham Contemporary Music Group has released the concert programme for their birthday concert for Harrison Birtwistle. The concert takes place on Saturday, 10 May at the CBSO Centre.
Find the full programme here.
This Saturday, BBC Radio 3 broadcasts the complete recording of Luke Bedford’s opera Seven Angels (video intro here). Nicholas Collon conducts the BCMG in a production by the Opera Group directed by John Fulljames last summer.
Listen online this Saturday 14 April at 22:00 London time (23:00 Paris, Berlin, Vienna) on BBC Radio 3.
To celebrate the first broadcast, we’ve uploaded the full piano reduction of the opera. Click below for a full screen view (also available on ISSUU.com).
David Sawer is in New York, where he is presenting his ballet
Rumpelstiltskin
at the 2012 Congress of the International Society for the Performing Arts.
Together with Stephen Newbould from the Birmingham Contemporary Music Group, David is participating in the “Pitch New Works Now” session of the conference.
Fingers crossed for the first US performance of Rumpelstiltskin, a work that the Times called “a tour de force of mostly ominous effects and gradually mounting frenzy”.
Clarification
I was a little unclear in this post. The work was not itself performed, but presented to the delegates of the congress. Our crossed fingers refer to the hope that one of the delegates was so overwhelmed as to plan a new production of the ballet.
Apologies for any confusion.
Luke Bedford is in
Birmingham for tonight’s world première of his new opera Seven Angels, based on
Milton’s Paradise Lost. The libretto is by Glyn Maxwell. Read his article in
the Guardian about the work.
Andrew Clements chose Seven Angels as one of his picks of live music this week, also in the Guardian.
Director John Fulljames and Luke Bedford spoke to the BBC’s In Tune programme yesterday. Listen again here (about 1:06 in).
Seven Angels is an Opera Group and Birmingham Contemporary Music Group production, co-produced with ROH2 and Tramway. Nicholas Collon conducts.