David Sawer’s orchestral piece the greatest happiness principle is featured on a new CD included with the October issue of the BBC Music Magazine, titled “Best of British: Modern masterworks commissioned by Radio 3”.
The work was inspired by the utopian ideas of the English philosopher Jeremy Bentham and by his application of the panoptic principle to prison design.
It was recorded by Mark Wigglesworth and the BBC National Orchestra of Wales.
I’d buy a small West End theatre, give it great acoustics and initiate a contemporary music festival curated by composers.
The Guardian asked David Sawer about first record, his favourite piece of music, whether he had ever considered a career outside of music and whether he had any musical guilty pleasures.
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Vive La Difference: David Sawer’s Cat’s Eye will be performed tonight together with Luciano Berio’s Différences and a new work by Taner Kemirtlek at the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland in Glasgow. Find out more about the event on the website of the Red Note Ensemble. |
David Sawer’s Coachman Chronos […] weaves allusions to Thomas de Quincey and Goethe into his wonderfully concise ride towards the abyss (Andrew Clements, The Guardian, 5 October 2015)
The US première of David Sawer’s Coachman Chronos for 9 players will be performed this Saturday by the Oberlin Sinfonietta under Timothy Weiss.
The whole event will be streamed live at the time of the event, which is on Saturday, 13 February, from 8pm to 10pm EST.
View the full score online:
David Sawer: Coachman Chronos
for 9 players
national prem. 13.2.2016, Finney Chapel, Oberlin; Oberlin Sinfonietta, cond. Timothy Weiss
“In a world which increasingly emphasises speed, clarity can perhaps be best achieved when time stands still.” (David Sawer)
David Sawer’s Coachman Chronos will be premièred this Saturday by Nicholas Collon and the Aurora Orchestra at the Science Museum in London.
If you want to find out more about the composer, we’ve prepared an interview with David Sawer on our MusikSalon.
Happy Birthday David Sawer!
Coachman Chronos – Sawer’s latest work – will be premièred on 3 October at the Science Museum London by the Aurora Orchestra.
Watch an interview in which David Sawer, conductor Nicholas Collon and others talk about “Objects at an Exhibition”, a project by the Science Museum London and the Aurora Orchestra:
David Sawer, Nicholas Collon and others talk about “Objects at an Exhibition”, a project by the Science Museum London and the Aurora Orchestra.
A live concert will take place on 3 October at 7:45pm at the Science Museum. Among the six world premières – all of them commissioned by NMC Recordings – that will be performed is David Sawer’s Coachman Chronos.
The accompanying album “Objects at an Exhibition“ will be released on NMC Recordings on 18 September.
The BCMG’s concert on Saturday, 9 May, at the CBSO Centre in Birmingham has received a five-star review by The Times.
Three works by David Sawer were performed by Martin Brabbins and the BCMG at the “brilliantly programmed” concert, which was “a celebration of the brilliance of David Sawer”: Cat’s-Eye, Between and Good Night.
Read the full review on The Times.
Watch the Trailer for Onyx Brass’ Tour de Brass, a series of free, outdoor concerts across the UK. On the programme: David Sawer’s Bronze and Iron for brass quintet with bandstand.
View the full study score of Bronze and Iron:
David Sawer talks about Flesh and Blood for mezzo-soprano, baritone and orchestra:
Flesh and Blood has been shortlisted for the 2013 British Composer Awards in the “vocal” category. It received its world première on 15 February 2013 at the Barbican Hall, London, where it was performed by mezzo-soprano Christine Rice, baritone Marcus Farnsworth, and the BBC Symphony Orchestra under Ilan Volkov.
View the full vocal score and find our more about David Sawer’s Flesh and Blood.
Amazing news from the British
Academy of Songwriters, Composers and Authors (BASCA): David Sawer’s Flesh and Blood has been shortlisted
for the 2013 British Composer Awards in the “vocal” category. The 11th British
Composer Awards will take place on 3 December 2013 at Goldsmiths' Hall, London,
BBC Radio 3 will provide exclusive broadcast coverage of the Awards on 7
December.
More about the awards.
View the full vocal score and find our more on David Sawer’s Flesh and Blood.
Paul Conway reviewed this spring’s world première of David Sawer’s Flesh and Blood in the latest issue of the Tempo journal. Ilan Volkov conducted the BBC Symphony Orchestra, with mezzo-soprano Christina Rica and baritone Marcus Farnsworth.
Sawer’s vocal writing was assured and character-driven […] It is a measure of his achievement that the eloquent and vivid treatment of certain key words such as ‘clung’ and ‘fret’ were reminiscent of Britten at his most inspired. […] Flesh and Blood was a darkly dramatic work in which David Sawer impressed by his innate sense of drama and his refreshingly unhackneyed approach to instrumentation. I hope this passionate and directly communicative score will soon be set down in a recording studio so that its many felicities may be more readily appreciated on CD.
Tempo, vol. 67/265, July 2013, Paul Conway
View the full vocal score of Flesh and Blood.
Happy Birthday David Sawer!
Read more about David Sawer, listen to excerpts from his works and find background information and reviews of his works.
From the reviews of this year’s The Lighthouse Keepers, which premièred on 4 July in Cheltenham:
It is a superbly atmospheric piece with sympathetic portrayals of father
and son by William Oxborrow and Thomas Howes. The 11-strong ensemble under
Martyn Brabbins’ fine direction demonstrated that you don’t need a huge
symphony orchestra to conjure up a storm.
Roger Jones, Seen
and Heard International, 5 July 2013
Sawer’s music is often brilliantly inventive, evoking the gathering
emotional and physical storm, and mingling live sounds with their distorted
echoes. The two actors Thomas Howes and William Oxborrow did all they could to
loosen the work’s joints and make it speak.
Ivan Hewett, The
Telegraph, 5 July 2013
Here are two excerpts
from reviews of David
Sawer’s The
Lighthouse Keepers, which
premièred on 04.07.2013 in Cheltenham. Martyn Brabbins conducted the
BCMG. Click on the respective links for the full reviews:
It is a superbly atmospheric piece with sympathetic portrayals of father and son by William Oxborrow and Thomas Howes. The 11-strong ensemble under Martyn Brabbins’ fine direction demonstrated that you don’t need a huge symphony orchestra to conjure up a storm.
Roger Jones, Seen and Heard International, 5 July 2013
Sawer’s music is often brilliantly inventive, evoking the gathering emotional and physical storm, and mingling live sounds with their distorted echoes. The two actors Thomas Howes and William Oxborrow did all they could to loosen the work’s joints and make it speak.
Ivan Hewett, The Telegraph, 5 July 2013
David Sawer on The Lighthouse Keepers:
%20Sawer.jpg "David Sawer (c) David Sawer")
The PRS for Music Foundation has announced the twenty UK based composers who were chosen to write
12-minute works for the New
Music Biennial 2014, the successor of New Music
20x12. The commissions, ranging from
contemporary classical, folk and jazz to world, electronic and urban music,
will be performed at London’s Southbank Centre and in Glasgow in July and
August 2014.
David Sawer was commissioned by Onyx Brass to write a piece for brass quintet that will be presented in informal and free outdoor performances across Britain’s historic bandstands, outdoor festivals, and public spaces, intending to bring contemporary music out of the concert hall and on to the village green.
Performances of all
works will be broadcast by BBC Radio 3 and made available via digital download
by NMC Recordings.