LSO Jerwood Composer+ Showcase

My Secret Garden, revised in 2022, is an early work I composed under the tutelage of my first composition teacher, Robert Saxton. It is an ‘authentic’ work that contains the seeds of a vibrant sound world and energy that I revisit in later pieces. Although I'd composed several pieces prior, I consider this to be my first 'real' composition, and in many ways my most important work, as it shows the emergence and discovery of my musical language. It received its premiere at the Guildhall School of Music & Drama by pianist Mariko Brown, and was later performed at the Southbank Centre, having had several performances since in the UK and internationally: Finland, Spain, Estonia, Germany and Denmark. It has been specially revised for this concert.

Structurally, the music is in three parts, beginning with the repetition of a single cell, like the seed of a plant, which continues to grow into a flower. The central section contains a different treatment of the original material: punchy, energetic and rhythmic. The third section, inevitably, completes the ‘cycle’, dying away, and gradually returning to the original cell. Entirely through-composed, it is a sonic metamorphosis, evolving and de-evolving, beginning as splashes of rain, from puddles and streams to rivers and seas.

^{Note by Des Oliver}

For Luca Ferrini and Joze Kotar

1 Biguine
2 You know one Joseph Keeba
3 Time for Man Go Home

This suite of songs and dances was first commissioned by the piano-clarinet duo Luca Ferrini and Joze Kotar. Each movement of the suite is inspired by songs and dances from the islands of Martinique and Trinidad and Tobago.

The first, 'Biguine', is a typical Martiniquan dance built on a simple verse-chorus structure. The dance is historically associated with the town of St Pierre and the form has evolved to encompass satirical themes, politics, love and the carnival. The clarinet is the main instrument of the 'Biguine', a name whose origins are widely believed to come from the English verb 'to begin'.

The second movement is an arrangement of a quadrille song, 'You know one Joseph Keeba', inspired by field recordings in the village of Toco in Trinidad. In 1939 an American couple, Melville and Frances Herskovits, undertook a series of field study recordings in villages across Trinidad and Tobago as part of their life-long study of West African and African-American societies. Their recordings have preserved traditional songs that have long disappeared from practice.

The third movement, 'Time for Man Go Home', is an arrangement of a work song from Trinidadian musicologist Edric Connor’s 1955 collection of Trinidadian folk songs, Songs from Trinidad. Built on a call and response, I have combined the solo melody with the chorus response to convey the sense of a long working day coming to its end at dusk, as the workers call out that it is 'time for man go home'. In Connor’s collection, he notes that this is the only song calling to stop work.

_{Note by Dominique Le Gendre}

Dominique Le Gendre

Born and brought up in Trinidad, Dominique studied the classical guitar from an early age, while accompanying her local church choir and writing calypsos for the annual school calypso competition. Dominique trained as a classical guitarist in Paris with Ramon de Herrera, studied harmony with Yvonne Desportes and music analysis with Christian Accaoui while studying musicology at the Sorbonne.

Based in London for over 35 years, she has composed music for theatre, dance, art installations, film, television and radio drama for BBC Radio 3 and 4.

A former Associate Artist of the Royal Opera House and Manning Camerata, Dominique’s music has been commissioned and performed internationally and in the UK by BBC Radio 3 Proms, Southbank Sinfonia, ORA Singers, Vasari Singers, Nevis Ensemble, Wigmore Hall Associate Artist Gweneth Ann Rand, Oxford Philharmonic Orchestra, Philharmonia Orchestra, Calabash Foundation for the Arts (Trinidad) and Turner Prize nominee Ingrid Pollard, among many others.

Piano Piece I–IV are a series of miniatures by Julius Eastman composed in 1968. I’ve taken the liberty of re-arranging them for bass clarinet, percussion (vibraphone and marimba), accordion and piano. My new arrangement is based on an original transcription I made from a 1968 performance given by the composer himself, taken from an archival recording courtesy of the University at Buffalo, with permission from Music Sales and G Schirmer.

Each piece was premiered on 15 December 1968 in an Evenings for New Music (ENM) event at the Albright Knox Art Gallery, Buffalo. It seemed, somehow, in keeping with the ‘spirit’ of Eastman’s aesthetic to curate an event that included an element of the unknown, showcasing a work that is unfamiliar to most audience members, and completely unknown to me as the event’s curator. It also provided an opportunity to intimately acquaint myself with one of his lesser-known pieces. My hope is that both the transcription and arrangement will serve to make these miniatures more accessible to the public and to those interested in performing Eastman's music.

The transcription process consisted of several stages: first, transcribing by ear and creating, as precisely as I could, a notated version of the solo piano piece based on the composer’s 1968 performance. In addition to the first transcription which uses conventional Western notation, I created a ‘free rhythm’ version (of each miniature) with precise rhythms omitted. These are sparse in detail, like many of Eastman’s scores, and intended to blur the line between ‘composer’ and ‘performer’, allowing the player far more freedom to interpret certain aspects of the music as they see fit. This way, a performer has the option of replicating Eastman’s original performance or re-imagining the piece entirely. From there, I arranged the piece for an alternative ‘setup’, different from the suggested instrumentation of the original. So, each transcription involved creating three different ‘versions’ of each miniature.

There is some crossover between the original and my piano transcription and arrangement, as the second movement is still for solo piano. The arrangement also retains the prepared piano elements, and non-keyboard effects that occurred infrequently during the original performance. This proved to be something of a challenge as it was not always clear how the sound was produced. I spent quite a bit of time trying to reverse-engineer some of these effects, and I had to experiment with my own piano (and various objects) to find a sound that most clearly matched the original. It has to be said that much of this is guess work on my part!

My re-imagining of this piece also calls for a dancer (marked as optional in ‘my’ score) as a tribute to Eastman’s affinity for dance. I’m delighted to be collaborating with the brilliantly talented choreographer Kennedy Junior Muntanga, who will be responding to the miniatures through movement and dance. Kennedy has been given full artistic license to choreograph the piece as he sees fits, however I’ve suggested that that each of his dance miniatures should contain some element of ‘surprise’.

The piece also includes one or two vocalisations by the performers themselves, which came directly from the archival recording of Eastman’s own performance. I have no idea whether these were spontaneous contributions by the composer at the time, if they appeared in his original score, or indeed how they were notated. In any case, it seemed appropriate to retain them.

_{Note by Des Oliver}

Commissioned by the Composer's Forum in Albany, New York, Joy Boy (1974) is one of three works premiered by the S.E.M. Ensemble (of which Eastman was an on-off member), founded in 1970 by the Czech composer and flautist Petr Kotik.

Several of his chamber compositions from this period call for the performers to improvise, often by way of structured improvisation based on nominal musical material. The 'score' of Joy Boy consists of a single page, beginning on a single note, followed by groups of chords which are repeated, accompanied by a somewhat vague instruction for the players to 'create ticker tape music'. The result is a stuttering effect that creates a sublime and hypnotic florid musical texture.

During this period, Eastman began to incorporate titles in his music with socio-political themes. His titles were often intended to highlight the connection between discrimination and language. In the case of Joy Boy, the term 'boy' is a diminutive, infantilising phrase to describe an adult black male.

Eastman's deployment of such problematic terms, which are an attempt to both reclaim and subvert racist and homophobic tropes, echoes several artistic and literary antecedents: the novelist James Baldwin, filmmaker and poet Marlon Riggs, and interdisciplinary artist Thomas Allen Harris, to name a few.

_{Note by Des Oliver}

Julius Eastman

Julius Eastman (1940 to 1990) was a composer, conductor, singer, pianist, and choreographer. A singular figure in New York City's downtown scene of the 1970s and 80s, he also performed at Lincoln Center with Pierre Boulez and the New York Philharmonic, and recorded music by Arthur Russell, Morton Feldman, Peter Maxwell Davies, and Meredith Monk. “What I am trying to achieve is to be what I am to the fullest,” he said in 1976. “Black to the fullest, a musician to the fullest, a homosexual to the fullest.”
 
Despite his prominence in the artistic and musical community in New York, Eastman died in obscurity in a Buffalo, NY hospital. His death went unreported for eight months, until an obituary by Kyle Gann appeared in the Village Voice. Eastman left behind few scores and recordings, and his music lay dormant for decades until a three-CD set of his compositions titled Unjust Malaise was issued in 2005 by New World Records. In the years since, there has been a steady increase in attention paid to his music and life, punctuated by newly found recordings and manuscripts, worldwide performances and new arrangements of his surviving works, and newfound interest from choreographers, scholars, educators, and journalists. 'The brazen and brilliant music of Julius Eastman… commands attention: wild, grand, delirious, demonic, an uncontainable personality surging into sound', writes Alex Ross for The New Yorker.

_{Profile from Wise Music Classical}

American Phoenix is a short piece commemorating Julius Eastman. The title alludes to the phoenix rising from the ashes, which seemed appropriate given the resurgence of interest in Eastman’s music over the past decade through the revival, reconstruction and resurrection of many of his lost scores. Numerous performers and composers, recognising his significance as a musical innovator of late 20th-century music have created transcriptions based on recorded performances, providing new audiences an opportunity to engage with his music. Rhythmic, playful, impish, and dance-like, American Phoenix is written with Eastman in mind.

For me, he is an important figure of 20th-century music, bringing a freshness and vibrancy; fusing 'uptown' contemporary music with the 'downtown' sound of jazz and popular music. One of the originators of the Fluxus art movement of the 1950s and 1960s, Eastman was an activist of the concert hall: unapologetically radical and, at times, controversial. He was a provocateur, known for his dynamism, quirkiness and vibrant persona, which is reflected in much of his music.

^{Note by Des Oliver}

Scott Lygate
clarinet

Scott Lygate BMus MA ARAM (born 1989) is a clarinettist and composer from Ayrshire, Scotland. He has performed extensively in the UK and around the world with numerous leading orchestras, chamber music ensembles and as a soloist. Alongside freelancing with all the major orchestras (most recently with the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra, BBC Concert Orchestra and Scottish Chamber Orchestra), he is in demand as an interpreter of contemporary music and works across Europe with ensembles such as the London Sinfonietta (including numerous major tours and world premieres), Klangforum Wien (Vienna, Austria), MusikFabrik (Köln, Germany), OENM (Salzburg, Austria), PHACE (Vienna), Ensemble xx.

Alongside performing and composing, Scott is in demand as an educator. He has a busy private teaching schedule, has coached and adjudicated at various institutions such as at the Royal College of Music, London at the University of the Arts in Reykjavik, Iceland.

Scott was honoured to be awarded an ‘Associate’ of the Royal Academy of Music in 2019 for significant contribution in the field of contemporary music.

Matthew Farthing
percussion

Matt is a versatile drummer and percussionist based in London. He studied at the Royal Academy of Music with LSO Principal Percussionists Neil Percy and Sam Walton.

Since then, he is delighted to have performed regularly with orchestras and ensembles including the LSO, the John Wilson Orchestra and the Colin Currie Group.

Performances include playing with the LSO at the BBC Proms, as well as tours to Switzerland, Germany, Latvia, Romania and the US. Matt has also enjoyed recording with the LSO at Abbey Road Studios in London.

Eliza McCarthy
piano

Eliza McCarthy is a London-based pianist dedicated to performing new and experimental music. She plays in concert halls, art galleries, car parks and living rooms across the UK, Europe and US as a soloist and band member.

She has worked with, commissioned and premiered music by John Adams, Thomas Adès, George Crumb, Tansy Davies, Kit Downes, Andrew Hamilton, Nico Muhly and Laurie Spiegel, among others. She regularly collaborates with Mica Levi (Under the Skin, Jackie) and their album Slow Dark Green Murky Waterfall was released in 2018 on Slip.

Recent performance highlights include Morton Feldman’s 90-minute solo piano work Triadic Memories at the Southbank Centre and the world premiere of True Stories & Rational Numbers by Chris P Thompson with James McVinnie Ensemble at the Barbican Centre. In June 2023 she played the US premiere of Limina, a piano concerto written for her by Donnacha Dennehy, at National Sawdust with New York-based ensemble Contemporaneous. As an ensemble member she can be heard performing with Decibel, James McVinnie Ensemble and Ireland’s leading new music group Crash Ensemble. Eliza has released music on NMC, Milan Records, Slip, Diatribe Records, Entr’acte, Foom, WW Records and Clay Pipe Music.

Miloš Milivojević
accordion

Award-winning Serbian accordionist Miloš Milivojević gained a full scholarship from the Royal Academy of Music where he became the first accordionist to win the RAM Club Prize open to all instrumentalists, and was the winner of the prestigious Derek Butler London Prize at Wigmore Hall.

Miloš has premiered many works and appeared with orchestras in the UK and Europe. Recent performances include the Piazzolla Double Concerto with guitarist Craig Ogden and the Orchestra of the Swan, and the Jonathan Dove Accordion Concerto Northern Lights with St Paul’s Sinfonia, London. Miloš has appeared with the Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra at the Royal Albert Hall for Classic FM and the BBC Concert Orchestra in a live cine-concert production performance of Tim Burton’s Disney film The Nightmare Before Christmas.

As well as a soloist and prolific chamber music artist, Miloš regularly performs with leading opera companies including Opera North and Glyndebourne Opera. He performed in Graeae Theatre and the BBC Concert Orchestra’s production of Errollyn Wallen’s ground-breaking opera The Paradis Files which was recorded for BBC Radio 3.

Miloš is a member of the London Tango Quintet, Kosmos Ensemble, and Classical Kicks Ensemble, among others and regularly performs with guitarist Craig Ogden and violinists David Juritz and Lizzie Ball.

Kennedy Junior Muntanga
dancer

Kennedy Junior Muntanga, born and raised in Zambia, is a dancer and choreographer. Moving to Leeds at the age of seven, Kennedy’s passion for movement grew from his strong connection to Michael Jackson, to whose music he would choreograph short dances and host little competitions against his sister and friends. This reverence to dance was already embedded in him through his African heritage and has been an anchor and lifeline for him, and so Kennedy furthered his training and graduated in Ballet and Contemporary at the Rambert School in July 2019.

Before devoting himself to choreography, Kennedy has danced for companies and individuals such as the Akram Khan Company, Phoenix Dance Theatre, Humanhood, Robert Cohan CBE, Michael Keegan-Dolan, Alesandra Seutin, Raman Schlemmer, and many more. He is now focused on his role as Artistic Director of Kennedy Muntanga Dance Theatre, as well as Trinity Laban’s Youth Dance Company.