News

5 Dec 2019

UYMP’s James Weeks and Hilda Paredes win Ivors Composer Awards

UYMP is delighted to announce that Hilda Paredes was awarded the 2019 Ivors Composer Award for ‘Stage Work’ for her composition Harriet and James Weeks was awarded the 2019 Ivors Composer Award for ‘Small Chamber’ for his composition Leafleoht.
2 Dec 2019

Russian Premiere of Ed Hughes’ ‘Sun, New Moon and Women Shouting’: Performed by I Fagiolini

Outstanding vocal group I Fagiolini will give the Russian premiere of Ed Hughes’s Sun, New Moon and Women Shouting on Sunday 8 December 2019 in the Pushkin Museum, Moscow, as part of an international tour of their Au Natural programme.
27 Nov 2019

Standing ovation for Thomas Simaku in the Netherlands

Two new works by Professor of Composition Thomas Simaku received their world premieres at the 40th edition of the Moderne Muziek Nijmegen Festival.The programme, which took place in the Netherlands on Sunday 24 November 2019, also included a string quartet by Rebecca Saunders, featuring Joseph Houston, the British pianist now living in Berlin, and the Paris–based Quatuor Diotima.

Written for the York alumnus Joseph Houston, Catena for solo piano is a substantial work consisting of five movements. As the Latin title itself suggests, Catena is a chain of musical events linked by a network of relationships at various levels, musical and otherwise.
18 Nov 2019

Tinoco is honoured with the DSCH – Shostakovich Ensemble’s new prize for composers

UYMP is proud to announce that house composer Luis Tinoco has been awarded the DSCH - Shostakovich Ensemble 2019 Prize for Composers and thereby recognised nationally and internationally as one of the most relevant Portuguese composers of today. This is the award’s first year and it is the only award in Portugal which honours the career of a composer. The prize includes the commission of a piece for the ensemble and Luis has chosen to write a work for clarinet, violin and piano entitled ‘Aleppo’, which will be premiered by clarinettist Pascal Moraguès, violinist Corey Cerovsek and pianist and artistic director of the DSCH – Shostakovich Ensemble Filipe Pinto-Ribeiro on 28th November, at the Centro Cultural de Belém, Lisbon, in a concert entitled 'CROSSINGS: Classical, Folk and Jazz'.
12 Nov 2019

Thomas Simaku’s CD on Portuguese National Radio

Portuguese National Radio has dedicated an hour-long programme to the latest CD by Thomas Simaku - Professor of Composition at York University.

Broadcast on Sunday 10 November, the programme included pieces such as the BASCA Award winning work Soliloquy V – Flauto Acerbo performed by Chris Orton; Signals and Deux Esquisses performed by the York alumnus Joseph Houston, and ENgREnage and Sound Tree performed by Peter Sheppard Skaerved and Roderick Chadwick. The programme, Geografia dos Sons, is available on the RTP website.
12 Nov 2019

BMS journal praise for Robert Saxton's 'SUITE'

Robert Saxton’s ‘SUITE’ for violin and piano, premiered by Madeleine Mitchell (violinist and dedicatee), with Clare Hammond (piano) at the Three Choirs Festival, Gloucester, on 29th July, 2019, at St Catharine’s Church, has received praise from Philip L. Scowcroft in a review of the festival in the British Music Society Journal/News, dated 1.11.19. Scowcroft writes:

‘I attended the first two days of the Gloucester Three Choirs Festival this summer. Most memorable for me was … a violin and piano recital by Madeleine Mitchell (violin) and Clare Hammond (piano) which was devoted to British music of the past century.' Scowcroft describes the finale, entitled Quest, as the ‘most memorable movement’ and the second movement Horizon as ‘almost equally exploratory’.
4 Nov 2019

Upcoming Release of Luís Tinoco's new CD Archipelago

UYMP is delighted to announce that Luís Tinoco's new CD Archipelago will be released on 29th November, 2019. Archipelago marks Luís Tinoco's return to Odradek on an album entirely filled with percussion works, most of them world-premiere recordings. These works are all performed by Drumming Grupo de Percussão which makes its debut on Odradek Records in the year the group celebrates its 20th anniversary.
31 Oct 2019

Ivors Awards nominate Paredes, Weeks and Sergeant

UYMP is delighted that UYMP House composers Hilda Paredes and James Weeks have been shortlisted for the Ivors Composer Awards (formerly BASCA) 2019. Hilda Paredes' opera ‘Harriet’ (‘Scenes in the Life of Harriet Tubman’) for soprano, mezzo-soprano, percussion, violin, guitar and electronics is one of the three nominated works in the ‘Stage Works’ category. James Weeks’ ‘Leafleoht’ for string quartet has been selected for nomination in the ‘Small Chamber’ category. In addition, Associate composer Matthew Sergeant’s work ‘Meeting the Universe Halfway’ has been shortlisted in the ‘Small Chamber’ section. The winners will be announced at the Awards Ceremony on December 4th 2019, at the British Museum, and broadcast on BBC Radio 3. We wish all three composers the very best of luck!
17 Oct 2019

New Trailer for Hilda Paredes' Codice de Adivinanzas

Here at UYMP, we’ve been very excited to receive the new teaser trailer for Hilda Paredes’ Codice de Adivinanzas.
9 Oct 2019

Simaku ‘Solos and Duos’ Naxos CD earns fabulous review from MusicWeb-International

Thomas Simaku has received a wonderful review from MusicWeb-International of his new Naxos CD Solos and Duos for violin and piano (Naxos 8.57903). The detailed and interesting review traces some of the history of Simaku’s writing and his style, or ‘styles’ of composition, the many techniques he employs, whilst ‘ever-mindful of the folk music legacy from his homeland’. Philip R Buttall writes of the CD ‘..... it would be fair to say that all the pieces, recorded here for the first time, exemplify the heterogeneous stylistic elements cited by Simaku to varying degrees, depending on the resources used.’
9 Oct 2019

Sadie Harrison appointed as Resident Composer for the Churchill Music Composition Project with the Asana String Quartet (Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra)

https://www.churchillmusic.org.uk

We are delighted that Sadie has been appointed as this year’s Composer-in-Residence with Churchill Music for their 2019 Composition Project. Through close links with local schools and St George’s Bristol, Churchill Music has developed an extensive and varied programme of youth and community work. The charity’s Patron Peter Donohoe CBE, writes:
1 Oct 2019

York Composer Wins Coveted American Fellowship

Professor of Composition at York University, Thomas Simaku was awarded a coveted fellowship from The Brown Foundation in Houston, USA, for a residency at the Dora Maar House in France.

The Brown Foundation Fellows Programme, based at the Dora Maar House in Ménerbes, France, provides residencies for mid-career professionals in the arts and humanities to concentrate on their fields of expertise.