Copenhagen in late January: minus temperatures but brilliant sunshine; tourists milling about the brightly coloured waterside buildings at Nyhavn; the Royal Life Guards, in bearskins and blue uniforms, marching along Bredgade at midday; a heavy frost on the lawns of The King’s Garden, with Rosenborg Castle in the distance; and nestling among traditional Danish cafes, […]
Singing in Big Sky
I experienced something extraordinary last week. I was Composer in Residence for the first ever Big Sky Conservatory Choral Initiative, hosted in Big Sky, Montana by the Philadelphia-based chamber choir The Crossing. I first fell in love with The Crossing four years ago when they commissioned According to Seneca from me. They are a remarkable […]
Truro Cathedral Choir
In May, Truro Cathedral Choir will record a CD of my work for Regent Records. This is an exciting prospect for a number of reasons: having been lucky enough to have done discs with a mixed-treble cathedral choir (St Mary’s Cathedral, Edinburgh), with adult professionals (the BBC Singers, the State Choir Latvija and Polyphony) and […]
Kamēr… in London
I have written about Kamēr… before but this is important. Last weekend, in their 25th anniversary year, under the auspices of Latvia’s EU Presidency, these fantastic young singers from Riga visited the UK for the first time. And what a debut it was! On Saturday, in the musicians’ church St Sepulchre’s in London, they gave […]
In 40 parts
Last Tuesday, Stephen Cleobury and the BBC Singers gave a sumptuous concert at Milton Court Concert Hall. As well as a gorgeous new piece by Ivan Moody, which also featured cellist Nicolas Altstaedt, there were four 40-part pieces on the programme: Alessandro Striggio’s Ecce beatem lucem, I have thee by the hand, O Man by […]
Nona Hendryx at 70
Nona Hendryx is 70! Not that you’d guess – she was on amazing form at the Jazz Cafe a couple of years ago, looking at least twenty years younger and still supremely funky! Nona Hendryx first found fame in the cute girl group Patti LaBelle & the Bluebelles back in the 1960s. When, in the […]
A Thursday evening in Riga
Emerging from the fetid gloom of the KGB building into the brilliant Riga sunshine is something of a liberation. And what a long way Latvia has come – in a very short time – since its own liberation from the Soviet Union. Just a stone’s throw away from the horrors of Stūra māja are some […]
A Thursday morning in Riga
I spent more time than usual hanging out in Riga this summer. A couple of blocks from where I always stay is ‘Stūra māja’ (‘the corner house’), as the KGB building was colloquially known. This year it was opened up to the public for the first time since independence in 1991. On the corner of […]
