A fabulous concert at Kings Place last night by Riot Ensemble, crowned by a coda in memory of composer, singer and guitarist Alastair Putt. Putt’s Quincunx was commissioned by Riot in 2019 but because of the pandemic was only getting its premiere tonight, two months after Putt’s death. It is a really beautiful piece: intricate ..read more

It is remarkable that Rebecca Saunders – by any measure one of the UK’s leading and most admired composers – has not yet been recorded by this country’s primary new music label, NMC (although her music has appeared on three discs by HCR, which are distributed through NMC). So the announcement of a first release this ..read more

The third and last post in my short series of offcuts from The Music of Liza Lim, comes from the final chapter, ‘Music for the stage’. Lim’s second opera, Yuè Lìng Jié (Moon Spirit Feasting) is very high on my fantasy list of revivals. Its complexity makes that unlikely, and the particulars of its staging ..read more

The second piece in my short series of bonus Liza Lim content is Burning House for singing koto player. This is a good example of Lim’s practice of working with the histories and ergonomics of individual instruments in her practice, and of her way of working with non-Western instruments. It’s a particularly interesting example, because ..read more

For reasons of space, a small number of work analyses had to be cut from the printed version of The Music of Liza Lim. I’m very happy, however, to be able to publish these online as sort of DVD extras. First up is The Weaver’s Knot. Although this is a short piece, I wanted to ..read more

In April 2020, I received an email from Brian Howard, director of the Australian publisher Wildbird Music. Wildbird wanted to produce a monograph on Liza Lim’s music to add to their Australian Composers series. Liza had recommended my name to him; would I like to write it? This was just three weeks into the first ..read more

Anthony Braxton: Composition 255, Composition 358, Composition 193, Composition 264 Kobe Van Cauwenberghe, guitars, synths, voice; Frederik Sakham, bass, voice; Elisa Medinilla, piano; Niels Van Heertum, euphonium, trumpet; Steven Delannoye, tenor saxophone, bass clarinet; Anna Jalving, violin; and Teun Verbruggen, drums, percussion. El Negocito Records ENR105 Beginning with this playlist, compiled deep in locked-down 2020 ..read more

What a joyful thing it is to encounter (while writing a short concert biog) Wild Up’s recording of Julius Eastman’s Femenine, released only three weeks ago on New Amsterdam Records. For a work that was almost entirely forgotten, by a composer barely emerging from myth, it seems remarkable that there are now at least four ..read more

Last July I swam in the sea for the first time after five months of Covid-19 shielding and it felt like a benediction. The ending of Georg Friedrich Haas’s Solstices last night – as the lights rose on the Riot Ensemble sounding an immense, reverberating, crashing chord after more than an hour of total darkness ..read more

News of two returns/relaunches caught my attention this week. First, Neuma Records has announced the rare release of a new album by Pamela Z, only her third ever (a fact I always found surprising for such a media-oriented artist), and her first since A Delay is Better in 2004. A Secret Code features studies and ..read more