The tenor Gerald English (1925-2019) had a long and distinguished career, beginning as a founder member of the Deller Consort in 1950. He sang in some of the first modern performances of Monteverdi’s operas and madrigals, and worked with composers such as Stravinsky and Britten, Tippett, Henze and Berio. In 1977 he founded the Opera […]
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A recording of ‘Slow Air’ by Ensemble Three
Ensemble Three – that unlikely combination of Joel Brennan (trumpet), Don Immel (trombone) and Ken Murray (guitar) – has recorded my Slow Air on a new album, Despite Our Silent Elders, from Lyrebird Productions. It’s available in hard copy through CDBaby, as digital audio via iTunes and Amazon, and as streaming via Spotify. The album […]
‘Christmas List’ for St George’s Cathedral, Perth
The Christmas music I love best tends to be rather dark and wintry. Almost as if they were afraid of this, St George’s Cathedral, Perth, commissioned me to compose a carol/anthem that would be ‘joyful’. I asked the poet David McCooey for some words about the anticipation of Christmas in blazing summer heat and he […]
Premiere: String Quartet no. 6
Andrew Ford’s sixth string quartet will receive its first performance this month and next from the Flinders Quartet, for whom it was written. A five-movement work lasting 25 minutes, it was commissioned for the Flinders by David and Kaye Birks and Julian Burnside AO QC. The two even-numbered movements preceded the others, ‘Scherzo perpetuo’ (2014) composed for […]