We are pleased to announce that Caitlin Rowley's Pieces of Eight will be receiving its London premiere this week as part of the London New Wind Festival in a concert on 21 September called 'Brand New Music for Winds'. Pieces of Eight will be performed in a new arrangement for oboe, clarinet, horn, trombone, piano and violin, arranged by oboist Catherine Pluygers.

Also on the programme are works by Anthony Green, Meira M Warshauer, Rebecca Oswald, Orie Sato, Dudley Hyam, William Attwood, Philip Cashian and Michael Finnissy.

Tickets are £8 each, with concessions at £5 and the concert will take place at 7.30pm at St Cyprian's Church, NW1 6AX. For full details, see the London New Wind Festival website under 'Concert Details'.

Labels: composition, performance

posted by minim @ 11:55

A new publication of a new work! At long last we are pleased to announce that Caitlin Rowley's arrangement of Erik Satie's 'Chanson' from Trois autres mélodies is ready to face the world. It's been a long time coming, but at last it's here. There'll be an extract to listen to shortly too, but in the meantime, you can read the notes and have a look at the cover (and order it, too, if you're super-keen!). It's arranged for high voice, vibraphone and tape, but this is fairly flexible - sung an octave lower, it works fine for a lower voicetype (our extract will be sung by Caitlin herself, who is a contralto), and the score comes with two versions of the tape part - one which is just the tape part and other of which incorporates the vibraphone part too, which can be used either for performance, should a vibraphone not be available, or simply for ease of practice for the singer.

Labels: composition, publications

posted by minim @ 17:07

We have a new piano piece lined up for future publication - this is the 10th in Caitlin Rowley's series of short and quirky piano works and is titled The decimal egg. It's a very short chromatic piece with a duration of under 30 seconds. It will be published later this year and will be included in the planned collection of piano 'eggs' (publication date not yet settled).

Labels: composition

posted by minim @ 13:38

Caitlin Rowley is happy to announce that she has just finished a setting of the first psalm for SATB choir. The new piece is, like much of Caitlin's work, probably best described as "tonal with a twist". On first listening, the setting sounds quite traditional, but there are some challenges in there for singers and some tricky dissonances which may take a few rehearsals to get right.

Psalm 1 sets an abridged and slightly altered version of the first psalm from the King James Bible:

Blessed is the man that walketh not in the counsel of the ungodly, nor standeth in the way of sinners, nor sitteth in the seat of the scornful.
But his delight is in the law of the Lord [...]
The ungodly are not so: but are like the chaff which the wind driveth away.
Therefore, the ungodly shall not stand in the judgment, nor sinners in the [company] of the righteous.
For the Lord knoweth the way of the righteous: but the way of the ungodly shall perish

Overall, the ranges used are at the higher end of choral ranges for singers, with sopranos reaching up to an A, altos to an E-flat, tenors to a G and basses to a B-flat, but in general these high notes are not prolonged so the work should be able to be sung by most choirs, whether amateur or professional.

Psalm 1 will be published later in 2007.

Labels: composition

posted by minim @ 11:48