Learning to Howl - a CD of Andrew Ford's music
just out from ABC Classics

April 2013. ABC Classics has released a recording of Andrew Ford's double award-winning song cycle, Learning to Howl, sung by the soprano Jane Sheldon. The piece sets words by Lorrie Moore, Sappho, Emily Dickinson, Christina Rossetti, Emily Brontë, Queen Elizabeth I, Ann Timoney Jenkin and Elizabeth Smart (among others) and represents a woman's life from childhood to old age.

The CD also includes the 'single' version of a song from the cycle, the Rossetti setting 'The Birthday of My Life', together with Snatches of Old Lauds, for bass clarinet and drone, and Sounds and sweet airs, for flute and clarinet. The other major work on the disc is the Prix Italia runner-up Elegy in a Country Graveyard, recently featured in Tony Williams and Anna Hewgill's film, A Place Called Robertson.

> Buy the CD from ABC Shop

James Cuddeford with his violin in
the Hong Kong Sinfonietta concert
poster (detail).

Bright Shiners
in Hong Kong

March 2013. The Hong Kong Sinfonietta will open their morning concert on 10 April with Andrew Ford's Bright Shiners for solo violin and string orchestra. Commissioned by the Australian Chamber Orchestra in honour of Richard Tognetti's 20th anniversary as artistic director, the piece was designed to run straight into Bach's Brandenburg Concerto No 3 and that's how it was first performed by the ACO with Pekka Kuusisto in 2009. Ford is currently working on a revision of the piece (so that it need not always keep company with Brandenburg 3), but meanwhile the performance in Hong Kong City Hall under James Cuddeford will be of the original version, followed by the Bach.

New finale for Nine Fantasies about Brahms

April 2013. Two completed revisions of recent works will be heard in Australia in May. A re-polished and slightly expanded version of You Must Sleep, But I Must Dance will be played by Roger Benedict (viola) and Daryl Pratt (percussion) at the Kangaroo Valley Arts Festival on 4 May, while the Sutherland Trio will unveil a streamlined Nine Fantasies About Brahms with its brand new (and far shorter) finale at the Melbourne Recital Centre on 8 May.

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Illegal Harmonies is a ten-part history of music in the 20th century.

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Australian Aphorisms
for The Song Company
- premiere 17 May 2013

April 2013. The Song Company will give the first complete performance of Andrew Ford's commissioned work, Australian Aphorisms in the Canberra International Music Festival on 17 May. The cycle consists of settings of aphoristic poems and lines by seven Australian writers: Les Murray, John Forbes, Judith Wright, David McCooey, Maria Takolander, Barbara Blackman and David Campbell.

The first setting – of Les Murray's 'The Averted' – was composed in 2010 and first performed by the Song Company at the ISCM Festival in Sydney that year, while the last, of David Campbell's touching poem 'Hear the Bird of Day' was sung at last year's Canberra International Music Festival. Four of the songs were composed this year.

Where to find tracks and books online

November 2012. Andrew Ford's latest book Try Whistling This (Black Inc.) has been receiving strong reviews in the Australian press. It is available from any good book shop in Australia and New Zealand, and elsewhere from amazon.com. It is also available as an ebook from Readings, amazon.com and amazon.co.uk (UK residents only).

You can also download Try Whistling This, The Sound of Pictures, and the new edition of Illegal Harmonies from iTunes, and if you're not sure, you can start with the free samples.

Also at iTunes are Ford's four Tall Poppies albums (Whispers, Harbour, Icarus and The Waltz Book), together with individual pieces from Tall Poppies and ABC Classics and international releases including d'amore and The Tears of Geertje Dircx.

You can buy CDs and individual MP3 tracks of Andrew Ford's music through the Australian Music Centre. A wide selection of CDs with music by Ford is available from the Buywell online CD store.

For a full list of CDs, please see also the CD subpage.