News

23 Oct 2020

'Meditation' world premiere for Sadie Harrison

The violinist Glen Sheldon has been doing a series of informal Zoom concerts of solo violin repertoire during the various lockdowns. He is delighted to have re-established contact with Sadie Harrison, with whom he studied and performed at Surrey University, and in his next programme he will include a short selection from her Gallery (Room 1) and Gallery (Room 2) pieces, including a world premiere of Meditation, written especially for Glen during the lockdown period
22 Oct 2020

Thomas Simaku’s CD in Top Ten

Thomas Simaku’s CD, Solos & Duos, released on Naxos Records in 2019, has been chosen among the ten best CDs of the year by the critic James H. North in the prestigious magazine Fanfare in the USA. The list includes recordings of works by Beethoven and Bartok, as well as two 21st century composers from the Netherlands and USA.
22 Oct 2020

Sadie Harrison contributes chapter to Music and Heritage (Routledge)

We are delighted that house composer Sadie Harrison has contributed a chapter to Music and Heritage New Perspectives on Place-making and Sonic Identity, a forthcoming title from Routledge, in which she writes about the relationship between her twin careers of composition and archaeology. Entitled Composing archaeology: The problems of recreating heritage in music, the chapter considers the resonances between compositional and archaeological practises focussing on works written prior to and after her work as an archaeologist specialising in the Bronze Age prestige ware of the Carpathian Basin.
21 Oct 2020

‘On Music and Political Concerns’: an interview with Hilda Paredes, in Vortex

Vortex Music Journal has published a very interesting interview with UYMP composer Hilda Paredes. In a conversation with Luis Velasco-Pufleau of the Universität Bern in Switzerland Paredes talks about the political and ethical concerns which influence her music, the relationship between her music and contemporary Mexican indigenous poetry, the link between gender issues and social justice, the burden of racism, the embodied experience of violence, the destruction of language and the relationship between her creative process and environmental concerns.
16 Oct 2020

NEW RECORDING FOR SADIE HARRISON AND GEMINI

We are delighted that Sadie Harrison’s Fire in Song for clarinet, viola, clapsticks and reciters has just been recorded for Divine Art/Metier to be released early in 2021. The recording took place on 6 October through an enterprising virtual process set up by sound engineer David Lefeber. This enabled Sadie in Dorset to watch the recording taking place in London via Youtube, with comments via her phone directly into the venue in real time!
15 Oct 2020

Classic FM features Viner’s ‘white-keyed wizardy in a 200 year pianistic journey, all in the same key’

Classic FM has featured UYMP composer Frederick Viner playing through a ‘perfectly executed’ potted chronology of piano music in C major on YouTube! - https://www.classicfm.com/discover-music/instruments/piano/history-of-music-in-c-major/. Viner whizzes through the C major extracts with absolute precision, starting in 1722 with Bach’s Prelude No.1 in C major.
6 Oct 2020

Simaku’s music performed by soloists of the Ensemble Intercontemporain

Jérôme Comte, a soloist of the Ensemble Intercontemporain in Paris, one of the world’s most prestigious contemporary music ensembles, has collaborated with composer Thomas Simaku on his latest composition. Jérôme Comte was 26 when he joined the Ensemble Intercontemporain at the invitation of Pierre Boulez, whose ‘Dialogue de l’ombre double’ Jérôme performed at Louvre Auditorium.
1 Oct 2020

Sadie Harrison’s ‘..in the air..’ released on Prima Facie ASC Records

We are delighted that Sadie Harrison's ..in the air.. for solo piano has been released on the Prima Facie ASC Records label. The CD is the culmination of Duncan Honeybourne’s Contemporary Piano Soundbites, a project created during lockdown as fundraising to support Help Musicians UK.
30 Sep 2020

Saxton’s ‘SUITE’ is ‘cogent and engagingly eclectic’ – Musical Opinion

The 2019 world premiere of Robert Saxton’s SUITE for violin and piano, performed by violinist Madeleine Mitchell and pianist Clare Hammond, has received an excellent review from Paul Conway, in the October-December 2020 edition of Musical Opinion. The piece was written for Madeleine Mitchell and is described as ‘… a series of intriguing, diverse miniatures that coalesced into a cogent and engagingly eclectic score’.
9 Jun 2020

Notes upon Notes audio visual exploration of Tinoco's CD/percussion works

Joanna Wyld of Notes upon Notes has produced a lovely, short film about Luis Tinoco's percussion music, as performed by Drumming Grupo de Percussão on his Odradek CD 'Archipelago'. The film also has brilliant graphics by Andrew Thompson! Watch the film on Facebook at the following link:

https://www.facebook.com/OdradekRecords/videos/ .
3 Jun 2020

WeChat selects Tinoco's 'The Blue Voice of the Water'

UYMP is delighted that hugely popular Chinese media site ‘WeChat’ (‘weixin’) has chosen Luis Tinoco’s ‘The Blue Voice of the Water’ CD on Odradek as an Editor’s recommendation. The Editor writes: 'Composer Luis Tinoco spent most of his life living at the confluence of the Tagus River and the Atlantic Ocean, wrapped in a bright blue sky all day long in Lisbon. The four modern orchestral works in the album are performed by four orchestras. The composer cleverly used orchestral music in "O Sotaque Azul Das Auguas" to talk about....
2 Jun 2020

LOCKDOWN PREMIERES CONTINUE FOR SADIE HARRISON

We are delighted that Sadie has continued to receive premieres during lockdown with new works written for the pianist Rolf Hind and members of the Kreutzer String Quartet - Peter Sheppard Skaerved, Mihailo Trandilovski and Clifton Harrison.

Rolf Hind premiered the miniature ‘Barkarolle’ on 15 May 2020 as part of his ongoing series of online performances of new works composed in lockdown:

https://www.facebook.com/rolf.hind/videos