Thank you for coming along to the London Sinfonietta’s Family Concert and congratulations on becoming a composer!
Below you will find the recording of the new piece you created in the concert, please share your musical masterpiece with friends and family! You can also find out more information about the pieces of music featured in the concert and the composers who created them below...
La Monte Young Composition 1960 #3 and #10; Piano Piece for David Tudor No 3
Kate Whitley Movement 1 from 3 Movements
Philip Cashian Mechanik
Caroline Shaw Boris Kerner
Dai Fujikura Breathless
Eleanor Alberga Glacier
Jessie Maryon Davies presenter
London Sinfonietta
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This concert is produced by the London Sinfonietta
The work of the London Sinfonietta is supported by the John Ellerman Foundation, with the friendly support of the Ernst von Siemens Music Foundation. This concert is supported by the Southbank Centre.
An introduction from presenter Jessie Maryon Davies
La Monte Young is an American composer, artist and musician. He was born on 14 October 1935 in a log cabin in a tiny farm town in Idaho. He grew up listening to church hymns and cowboy songs and says that the natural sounds around him - the drone of crickets in the hay fields, wind whistling through the cracks between the logs of the cabin, and the hum of electrical poles – all influenced his musical style.
He is recognised as one of the first American minimalist composers and a central figure in post-war avant-garde (experimental) music. His works have called into question the nature and definition of what music is or can be.
Composition 1960: #3, #10 & Piano Piece for David Tudor No 3
These pieces come from a series of short, text-based pieces titled Compositions 1960 and Piano Pieces for David Tudor. Building on the work of another famous, experimental composer John Cage, these pieces emphasise extra-musical or performing actions for the performers and sometimes involve the audience as well. You can explore them all here: FONDAZIONE BONOTTO - Young, La Monte - Compositions (1960). Look out for the Piano Piece for David Tudor No 1 where the performer is instructed to feed the piano with a bale of hay!
Kate Whitley is a composer and pianist. She runs The Multi-Story Orchestra, whose home is a car park in Peckham. She has written a wide variety of music for orchestras, choirs and other instrumentalists. Her music has been broadcast on Radio 3 and performed as part of the BBC Proms.
3 Movements
This piece was written for CoMA (Contemporary Music for all) and can be played by almost any size and group of instruments. There are lots of layers in the music and the conductor or musicians can choose which parts to play so that each performance might sound very different. There is an ostinato (a repeating, rhythmic figure) which acts as the glue for the piece, keeping the pulse and tempo (speed) steady for the other musicians to fit their parts around.
Philip Cashian is the Head of Composition at the Royal Academy of Music. He was born in Manchester in 1963 and studied at Cardiff University and the Guildhall School of Music and Drama with Oliver Knussen and Simon Bainbridge. He has written lots of music for young and amateur musicians.
Mechanik
This piece is inspired by a sculpture, Mechaniks Bench by Eduardo Paolozzi. It is written as an open score, meaning lots of different combinations of instruments can play it. It has been performed by professional musicians as well as hundreds of school children in a shopping centre in Toronto, a solo pianist, A-level music students and numerous amateur ensembles of different configurations.
Caroline Shaw is an American composer, violinist, and singer. She began playing the violin when she was two years old and started writing music when she was only 10! She likes to try and imagine a world of sound that has never been heard before and writes for lots of really interesting combinations of instruments and voices. Aged 30, she became the youngest recipient of the Pulitzer Prize for Music for her work Partita for 8 Voices.
Boris Kerner
This is scored for the unusual duo of cello and flowerpots! Boris Kerner was a Moscow-born German-based traffic theorist and author of revelatory ideas about traffic, proving it is possible to find musical inspiration in very unusual places!
Dai Fujikura was born in 1977 in Osaka, Japan. He was fifteen when he moved to UK. The recipient of many composition prizes, he has received numerous international co-commissions from the Salzburg Festival, Lucerne Festival, BBC Proms, Bamberg Symphony, Chicago Symphony Orchestra, Simón Bolívar Symphony Orchestra and more. You can explore lots of his music here: Dai FUJIKURA - composer
Breathless
This piece was originally written to be played for a group of children in Chicago. Dai then revised it and created a new version for violin and toy piano! The violin plays pizzicato – meaning plucked - to try and match the sound of the toy piano. The music is quite rhythmic and uses some irregular patterns, and at one point the music suddenly feels as if it doubles in ‘tempo’, or speed.
Eleanor Alberga was born 1949 in Kingston, Jamaica. She decided at the age of five to become a concert pianist and five years later she was composing music for the piano. She studied music at Jamaica School of Music and then won the West Indian Associated Board Scholarship which allowed her to study at the Royal Academy of Music in London.
She is a highly-regarded British composer with commissions from the BBC Proms and The Royal Opera House and her music has been performed all over the world.
Glacier
Glacier was composed in 2012 and Eleanor Alberga describes it with the words:
Monumental, strata, perceived solid, static, immovable.
Shifting, cutting, gouging, shaping Earth.
Metamorphosis to liquid, ether, flowing molecules.
Volatile, explosive erosion, waning, floating sunken depths.
Did you hear how she translated this description into musical sounds?
London Sinfonietta Musicians
Darragh Morgan violin
Darragh Morgan was born in Belfast in 1974. He has established himself as a soloist of new music giving numerous recitals at Sonorities Festival, as well as in Prague, Malta, Nicosia, Hong Kong, South Korea, Italy, Switzerland, the Netherlands, U.S. and throughout the UK & Ireland.
Darragh has recently joined The Smith Quartet, is currently a member of the new music collective Noszferatu and Artistic Director of Music @ Drumcliffe, a chamber music festival in the west of Ireland. He also plays with the piano trio The Fidelio Trio.
Erika Curbelo trumpet
Erika Curbelo is a trumpet player who works regularly with orchestras such as the London Philharmonic Orchestra and the Philharmonia Orchestra. She grew up in Gran Canaria, Spain, and started playing the trumpet aged nine.
She has been invited to perform as a soloist at the V&A Museum in London, the Klösters Christmas Festival in Switzerland, and performed concertos with the Orquesta Filarmónica de Gran Canaria, Worthing Philharmonic and Southbank Sinfonia, where she held a seat for the year 2018 – 2019. Erika also works as an actor-musician – her most recent job being Virgin Media's advert with Usain Bolt!
Louise McMonagle cello
Scottish cellist Louise McMonagle is a versatile performer who enjoys making music in many environments. She thrives on playing repertoire that goes beyond the mainstream, and creating exciting programmes including many commissions and premieres.
Louise has enjoyed working as principal cello with the BBC Philharmonic Orchestra, Opera North, Ulster Orchestra, Royal Northern Sinfonia, and freelances regularly with the Royal Opera House, Philharmonia Orchestra, English National Opera, BBC Symphony Orchestra, London Symphony Orchestra, Aurora Orchestra and records regularly for film and TV.
David Hockings percussion
David studied at the Royal College of Music with Janos Keszei and Michael Skinner. On leaving College, he spent much time performing with the London Sinfonietta, and eventually became its Principal Percussionist in 1995, one of the most demanding positions for a percussionist anywhere in the world.
As well as his orchestral, chamber and recording work, David has also been involved extensively with education work, which has taken him to many communities, including prisons and schools, at home and as far afield as Japan, South America and the United States. In January 2008 David was appointed Head of Percussion at the Royal College of Music.
Jessie Maryon Davies presenter
Jessie Maryon Davies is a vocal leader and pianist with a passion for collaboration. Jessie co-leads and arranges for all-female pop choir Lips who have performed at the Union Chapel, Royal Festival Hall and Royal Albert Hall and sung alongside such artists as Leona Lewis and Goldfrapp.
Jessie regularly leads creative projects for Spitalfields Music, Royal Opera House, Southbank Centre, Wigmore Hall and Aurora Orchestra. She trained as a pianist at the Royal Academy of Music.
