Modern Music

"Apres La Mort des Artistes" was written in 1996 and is the last in a series of pieces entitled "La Mort des Artistes".  It is performed by the Ensemble Exposé and is conducted by Roger Redgate.

One of the most frustrating aspects of working in the serious art music business is the notion that a lot of work that you do should be done for free. This is born out by the ever dwindling pot of money which is designated for commissioning new compositions.   Over the last few years, it has become noticeable that the amount of money spent on commissioning music is becoming more scarce. A commissioning report instigated by Sound and Music organisation (2013-14) stated that commissions are not a significant source of income for composers: 66% of composers stated that they do not find commissions to be a significant proportion of their income. Given that the respondents had an average of 2.65 commissions in 2013 with an average fee per commission of £1,392 it is easy to see why. They believe that conditions are getting worse: 49% of composers feel that there is less rehearsal/preparation time for new works.  Although there are more commissions, the amount of m...

This is something that I have wanting to get off my chest for a long time. Frustrated by the lack of opportunities, I decided to work out how many amateur orchestras there were in the United Kingdom. After a long, hard search, I managed to calculate that there were over 700 full symphony (including extended string) orchestras in the country.  And then it got me thinking...how many of those groups are dedicated to new music? Well, I searched through the descriptions of each group and I was astonished to discover the rich variety of orchestras that there were.  There were groups associated with banks, financial institutions, places of work, religion, police forces, gender and sexual orientation, age, nostalgia, historical, racial, geographical and even political affiliations  but there was one glaring error, in my opinion, one inconceivable oversight...I could not find any orchestras specifically dedicated to an area that I would have have thought would be essential: To m...

This is an interesting debate that I had with someone on the internet... I hate melody. Whenever I hear a melody, I want to chop it up into little pieces and disembody it over huge leaps so that it is unrecognisably distorted. There is nothing worse than humming along to a 'little tune' completely oblivious of the depth of emotion contained in the rest of the music. Give me orchestration/instrumentation any day. A combination of careful tuning and an expert choice of instruments can convey a world of understanding that a bumbling tune would disguise as 'cheerful contentment. Sounds like an incredibly reductive and primitive view of what can constitute a "melody". Not to diminish the value of expertly done orchestration, but both can co-exist, and the melody certainly doesn't have to be a "little tune", bumbling or cheerful. See: Ravel, Stravinsky. I wouldn't regard that much of Ravel's or Stravinsky's music contains wha...

Post by Modern Orchestral Music . This is the second piece in a group entitled "Etude de Couleur et Lumière" (Study in Colour and Light). Inspired by the French symbolist poet, Charles Baudelaire, it is an attempt to recreate a poem in musical form. Even the intonation of the poem - the exact rise and fall of the vowel sounds - is reflected in the music. In fact, every element of the poetry is represented musically. Also, this work signifies an important evolutionary step in my musical output; it unifies the two opposing elements of timbralism and colourism. La Mort des Artistes. Combien faut-il de fois secouer mes grelots Et baiser ton front bas, morne caricature? Pour piquer dans le but, de mystique nature, Combien, ô mon carquois, perdre de javelots? Nous userons notre âme en de subtils complots, Et nous démolirons mainte lourde armature, Avant de contempler la grande Créature Dont l'infernal désir nous remplit de sanglots! Il en est qui jam...

I published two videos of my piano music, "Les Codomas", to Youtube; one of them has a picture of Jazz musicians in black and white and other one has a picture of my original score. In just 48 hours, the video with the image of the my score has double the number of views than the other one which has been up for over a month.  Why is that?

TOOTSinfonia - an online orchestra.