Rory Macdonald News
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2024-04-25
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2024-02-08 08:14:00
Sitting in a concert hall is not a great place to have a musical experience: Frederick Waxman introduces Our Mother, Figure's dramatic staging of Pergolesi's Stabat Mater
This is my body Buxtehude's Membra Jesu Nostri from Figure at the Swiss Church in 2023The ensemble Figure, co-artistic directors Frederick Waxman and Philip Barrett, has had some considerable success with its stagings at Opera Holland Park of Handel's Serse (in 2022) and Shakespeare/Mendelssohn's A Midsummer Night's Dream (in 2023), but last year the company also created a remarkable immersive staging Buxtehude's sacred cantata sequence Membra Jesu Nostri [see my review].From 20 to 23 March 2024 they will be presenting Our Mother at Stone Nest. This will be a dramatised staging of Pergolesi's Stabat Mater with additional music by Alex Mills. Directed by Sophie Daneman, the staging will be performed by women of multiple generations, Dame Emma Kirkby, Catherine Carby, Rowan Pierce and Katie Macdonald.When I chatted to Frederick Waxman about the production he commented that whilst everyone knows the first 20 seconds or so of Pergolesi's music, they wanted […]
2023-09-19 08:07:00
Bringing life to Glasgow's oldest building: the seventh Glasgow Cathedral Festival
De Profundis - the finale to the 2022 Glasgow Cathedral Festivalwith light, poetry and music from three brass bandsGlasgow Cathedral Festival returns for its seventh season with a weekend of events from 28 September to 1 October 2023 filling Glasgow's oldest building with a wide variety of music from chamber music and cutting-edge electronics to silent film and Minimalism.The headline event for this year is a performance of Canto Ostinato, a 1974 work by Dutch composer Simeon ten Holt (1923-2012). An iconic work of Dutch Minimalism, Canto Ostinato will be performed on four pianos by 12 pianists from the Piano Association of St Andrews over three hours, against a video backdrop from Trenchone Industries, projected directly onto the gothic cathedral interior. The audience will be invited to move around and get a drink or sit back and relax—creating their own experience of this unique spectacle.There are two classic silent films […]
2023-08-06 06:48:00
....towards a Pure Land
[…] by the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra, as was his acclaimed 2008 disc, Body Mandala. Jonathan, you’ve written for many great orchestras including in fact the Berlin Philharmonic, but you seem to have a special relationship with the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra. How did that come about? JH: I’m still not clear why they chose me, but they did; Ilan Volkov had something to do with it, the young Israeli, brilliant, conductor. And Hugh Macdonald, who was manager of the orchestra, and who has always been very interested in contemporary music and very knowledgeable about it. So these two men I think in particular chose me, and I was delighted. I had always wanted to have a close association with an orchestra and this was the first time it happened, and it couldn’t have been happier. This orchestra prides itself on its ability and virtuosity in contemporary music, they’re […]
Norman Lebrecht - Slipped disc
2023-04-09 06:41:57
Brian Stokes Mitchell and Audra Macdonald – Ragtime... The post Ruth Leon recommends… Brian Stokes Mitchell and Audra Macdonald – Ragtime appeared first on Slippedisc.
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