Rainbow-Shooting Cloud Contraption – 12 July

For the past 10 days I’ve been in Aldeburgh at the Contemporary Composition course, working with Oliver Knussen, Colin Matthews and Michael Gandolfi. I’ve been writing a short piece for 15 players entitled ‘Rainbow-Shooting Cloud Contraption’, after one of the inventions in Luigi Serafini’s Codex Seraphinianus (the image to the right is, of course, the contraption in question).

Tomorrow it’ll be performed at the Britten Studio at Snape Maltings, by the players of the Britten Pears Composers Ensemble conducted by Gregory Charette, ahead of its official (and revised) premiere at next year’s Aldeburgh Festival. There’ll also be premieres of new pieces by Louis Chiappetta, Nicholas Moroz, Robert Peate, Emma Ruth Richards and Michael Taplin.

In other news, the Centro Culturale San Fedele are releasing a CD of compositions written for their Niccolò Castiglioni Prize, featuring my piece Ariadne’s Thread. Trio Magritte and clarinettist Paolo Beltramini perform the piece on the CD, alongside pieces by Manuel Contreras, Yair Klartag, Naomi Pinnock, Samy Moussa and Maurizio Azzan, and music by Alberto Carretero and George Christofi is performed by percussionist Domenico Melchiorre. It’s currently being pressed and finished and I’ll let you know when it might be available…