Autumn 2023 – Spring 2024 News & Events

It’s somehow been over a year since the last News post.

The reason for that is simple: after a hefty beginning to 2023—several international trips, some really wonderful conducting projects, finishing and premiering my Piano Concerto, officially starting the new Professorship in Hannover—it was a pretty quiet second half of the year. I spent the summer months in an eight-week-long intensive, immersive German course (at the wonderful GLS in Berlin, which I can recommend without hesitation to anyone needing a German language school—in fact I liked it so much that I’m going back for five weeks in February and March!), and then the autumn was mostly focused on some projects at HMTMH, including working on some big updates to the composition curriculum and leading a major refurbishment and modernization of the electronic music studios … plus wading through German institutional bureaucracy with not-quite-B2 German, which is exactly as challenging and time consuming as you might expect.

I also did some quite significant revisions to the Piano Concerto this summer and autumn, tightening up the form, revising the electronics, adding quite a lot more solo piano material, and tidying up some things that didn’t go quite to plan in the original version.

There were a few performances scattered across the autumn—most notably Carl Rosman’s long-awaited premiere of 27. Juni 2009, the E-flat clarinet solo I wrote for his 50th birthday a few years ago, which was also filmed for (I think?) a future release on the excellent Ensemble Musikfabrik YouTube channel—and, now that the holiday period is over, I’m just about to start preparing for some really exciting conducting projects spread across the first half of 2024, including several projects in Germany and Australia with my old friends from ELISION. We start in April with a recording of a new piece by Turgut Erçetin at Deutschlandfunk for his Deutscher Musikrat portrait disc on Wergo (for which I also recorded a track with Ensemble Musikfabrik a few years ago), and then two concerts at the Klangbrücken Festival in Hannover, with five premieres, including the piece by Turgut, a new piece by my former Huddersfield colleague Mary Bellamy, and pieces by three postgraduate students from Hannover. These concerts will be my official ‘Antrittskonzerte’ for my new role, and I’m really pleased to be able to use the opportunity to introduce ELISION to the Hannover community! And then we’re getting the band back together in an expanded lineup for two exciting projects in the middle of the year in Melbourne, first a collaborative workshop on Liza Lim’s Extinction Events and Dawn Chorus with the students of the Australian National Academy of Music (ANAM), then a concert in the gorgeous Elisabeth Murdoch Hall of the Melbourne Recital Centre with premieres by Richard Barrett and Mary Bellamy, the Australian premiere of Liza’s Speak, Be Silent, once again with the wonderful Harry Ward as violin soloist, and, at long last, after several Covid cancellations, the first Australian performance of my Self-Portrait, Three Times, Standing (15.3.1991–20.3.1991).

Performances

Ensemble Musikfabrik (Carl Rosman, E-flat clarinet). Musikfabrik Montagskonzert, Köln, 2 October 2023. 27. Juni 2009 (world premiere)

weird aftertaste music, Aliwal Arts Centre, Singapore, 27 October 2023. The wreck of former boundaries (saxophone & live electronics)

Das Neue Ensemble (Christof Hahn, piano). Music 21 Festival, Hannover, 9 November 2023. l.d._ p.c. (t.c.h.)

Joshua Hyde, saxophone. XIX World Saxophone Congress, Fundación CICCA, Las Palmas de Gran Canaria, 9 December 2023. The wreck of former boundaries (solo alto saxophone)

Das Neue Ensemble (Jessica Kuhn, cello; Christof Hahn, piano). Hannover, 14 April 2024. The Crutch of Memory and l.d._ p.c. (t.c.h.)

ELISION. Klangbrücken Festival, Kammermusiksaal Plathnerstraße, Hannover, 28 April 2024. Because they mark the zone where the force is in the process of striking, The wreck of former boundaries (saxophone), The wreck of former boundaries (contrabass), and 27. Juni 2009

ELISION (Aaron Cassidy, cond.). Klangbrücken Festival, Richard Jakoby Saal, Hannover, 30 April 2024. Self-Portrait, Three Times, Standing (15.3.1991–20.3.1991)

ELISION (Aaron Cassidy, cond.). Melbourne Recital Centre, Elisabeth Murdoch Hall, Australia, 5 July 2024. Self-Portrait, Three Times, Standing (15.3.1991–20.3.1991)

Conducting

ELISION. Recording Das Phonem zwischen zwei Wörtern (c) by Turgut Erçetin for Wergo, Deutschlandfunk-Funkhaus, Köln, 8 April 2024 

ELISION. Self-Portrait, Three Times, Standing (15.3.1991–20.3.1991) and world premieres of works by Turgut Erçetin, Mary Bellamy, Tom Bañados, Thanos Sakellaridis, and Farhad Ilaghi Hosseini. Klangbrücken Festival, Richard Jakoby Saal, Hannover, 30 April 2024

Australian National Academy of Music (ANAM) workshop with ELISION. Liza Lim Extinction Events and Dawn Chorus. Melbourne, June 2024

ELISION. Works by Richard Barrett (tomorrow, wp—Paula Rae, solo flute), Mary Bellamy (Radial Lines, wp), and Liza Lim (Speak, Be Silent, Australian premiere—Harry Ward, solo violin), plus Self-Portrait, Three Times, Standing (15.3.1991–20.3.1991). Melbourne Recital Centre, Elisabeth Murdoch Hall, 5 July 2024

Guest Lectures/Residencies

Guest residency (Erasmus+), Conservatorio Superior de Música de Málaga, Spain, 18–22 March 2024

Guest lecture, Hochschule für Musik und Theater “Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy” Leipzig, 26 March 2024

Guest lecture, Robert Schumann Hochschule Düsseldorf, 6 June 2024

Other events will be added as details are confirmed.