Staff highlights from 2014

As 2014 draws to a close the Britten Sinfonia management team look back on some of their highlights of the year;


Nikola White (Artistic Planning Director)

"There are currently no Eurostar trains leaving St Pancras today". So, one of the highlights of my Britten Sinfonia year threatens to be spoilt by unexpected but somehow horribly predictable travel disruption on the Continent.....fortunately several hours later I'm listening to Bach's St John Passion in the illustrious Amsterdam Concertgebouw and can detect no signs of tiredness from our incredible musicians, just complete, utter focus and dedication to this miraculous work (the St Matthew just edges it for my Desert Island, but not by much).

When we first broached the idea of performing the St John without a conductor, it was in somewhat hushed, tentative tones; to pull this off would be quite something.  But under the imaginative direction of our Leader, Jacqueline Shave, along with Eamonn Dougan (our Voices Director), choir, soloists and orchestra became one, and it was incredibly moving to see their collective reverence to the piece expressed so clearly; Nick Mulroy's evangelising was worth a ticket in itself - sure, we all know the story but in his hands (or, more accurately, voice) it seemed I was hearing the narrative for the very first time. We had the chance to perform the work on five consecutive nights, including a performance at the Barbican on Good Friday, which was an infinitely more rewarding Easter experience than my usual: deciding which chocolate egg to eat first.....

Read the reviews from our St John Passion tour here


Elizabeth Hunt (Development Assistant)

My favourite performance from 2014 has to be Thomas Ades' Polaris at Sadler's Wells. The trouble is, I found it so amazing that a few words in a blog post really won't do it justice... plus, I feel the pressure of writing a good piece about it because I know so many of the team here were enthralled by it and wanted to mention it as a favourite (sorry, Will!).

As a dancer, I had been looking forward to the gig for ages, and it did not disappoint. I was blown away by the whole evening and had a brilliant time as a member of the audience on the night of the world premiere and as part of the Patron's Night receptions, held for donors at Sadler's Wells and some of our generous Friends and Chair Partners. I really did see the music and hear the dance that night; the dancers and the choreography brought the music to life, for me anyway. Not being an aficionado of contemporary music (I freely admit), I'm not sure the music would have spoken to me in the same way as it did with the accompanying movement on stage. I was totally immersed in the spectacle of Polaris, the final piece of the evening, with c.60 dancers on stage moving as one, all in black; and being surrounded by fantastic music performed by our players around the auditorium was just incredible. I enjoyed the whole evening, but Polaris... I'm not ashamed to admit I welled up a little from being so wowed and in awe. And my hands hurt from clapping. Got to love a good world premiere.

But, aside from Sadler's Wells, I'm also going to mention the Fields of Sorrow concert at Milton Court as part of our Birtwistle celebrations in May. I really enjoyed Vaughan Williams' Fantasia on a Theme of Thomas Tallis and Flos Campi and following a brilliant evening in the company of lovely colleagues from the office and our musicians, I felt very proud to be fundraising for concerts like that; for amazing musicians and music which need to be seen and heard.

See some photos and read reviews of Thomas Ades: See the music, Hear the Dance here


Emily Moss (Creative Learning Graduate Trainee)

A particular highlight for the Creative Learning team was Britten Sinfonia Academy's public appearance in the pre-concert event for our celebratory John Woolrich at 60 concerts in London and Cambridge. A new year of talented young musicians performed two of Woolrich's pieces, one orchestral and one chamber piece. After an intensive weekend of rehearsals the academy members succeeded in presenting a polished and energetic performance and we are immensely proud of their hard work and enthusiasm. Having only recently joined Britten Sinfonia in September 2014 I have really enjoyed my concert experiences so far, ranging from Britten’s War Requiem at Ely Cathedral to the intimate wind quintet performance at the first At Lunch concert of the season, and I look forward to experiencing many more Britten Sinfonia concerts.

Find out more about Britten Sinfonia Academy here.


Annabel Leakey (Orchestra Manager)

It's impossible to choose a single project from 2014 as my favourite, so hopefully I can get away with picking two.... In which case, my first choice would be our mini tour of Bach's St John Passion, performed in the run up to and over Easter weekend. Even for a non-Bach-lover (an admission that's probably going to come back and haunt me in the future) the chance to spend a week absorbing the work in the distinct way you do when you follow a project through from initial rehearsal to final performance was wonderful. One of the most enjoyable aspects of my job is being able to watch how a project evolves. With a masterpiece such as the St John Passion, which members of the orchestra have played many times before with different conductors, directors and soloists, this means seeing how the ensemble, with its collective experience of assorted previous interpretations, gel together to create a fresh perspective on a work they already know well. My first visit to Amsterdam’s Concertgebouw (complete with significantly delayed Eurostar), a midnight supermarket trip for vital Easter eggs, and a 5am flight also ensured this was a project I won’t forget in a hurry…

My joint-favourite Britten Sinfonia project of 2014 has to be our tour to India. Too many experiences to mention within only a few lines, but memorable moments (for both delight and horror!) include meeting and getting to know the gracious Ali-Khan family, finding myself momentarily lost in Old Delhi on Indian Independence day – one of the busiest of the year, the realisation that anything cooked in South India is significantly hotter than anything else I’ve ever tasted, watching the amalgamation of Indian and Western musical styles come to life in Amjad Ali Khan’s Sarod Concerto, discovering that Tablas come in a variety of keys (it seems an obvious oversight, with hindsight), watching a huge bunch of enthusiastic and energetic children at Bangalore’s Samarthanam Centre join in with songs taught to them by Britten Sinfonia musicians, learning about the intricacies of the Indian visa process in a slightly-too-short space of time, and, finally, truly understanding the saying that Travel is only glamorous in retrospect.

Read Annabel’s tour blog – Part I , Part II, Part III, Part IV


Will Harriss (Development Director)

One of my favourite commissions of the year was right at the start of 2014 - a pair of works by the brilliant baritone (and composer!) Roderick Williams. That he both wrote the works and sang in their premieres was enthralling. Stepping back three hundred years or so, I was also mesmerised by our Eastertide performances of Bach's St John Passion. It was so complete a performance - excellent soloists, complemented by our musicians looking as if they were playing for their lives. Finally, our collaboration with Sadler's Wells and Thomas Adès was an absolute highlight of not only this year but, for me, the last few years. Exhilarating doesn't even begin to describe it.

Listen to Roderick Williams discuss his new work in a pre-concert talk podcast


Karys Orman (Marketing Assistant)

My highlight of the year would obviously have to be joining the Britten Sinfonia team in July! I'm very excited to be here and looking forward to what 2015 will bring... A 2014 concert highlight for me was hearing Britten Sinfonia in the Turner Sims 40th anniversary Gala concert, where it was announced that the orchestra will begin a three-year residency there starting next season. Being originally from Southampton myself, it was a real treat to hear the orchestra on home turf, the audience was clearly enjoying the performance a huge amount and this energy really rubbed off on the musicians, creating a brilliant atmosphere and some brilliant music-making!

Check out the Turner Sims Concert Hall website here


David Butcher (Chief Executive)

One of the benefits of Britten Sinfonia’s new partnership with the Barbican, is that we can propose ambitious artistic ideas, and collaborate to make them happen.  The semi-staged production of Harrison Birtwistle’s seminal opera last May, Yan Tan Tethera, is one such example.  Written in 1986 this was its first airing since the premiere and part of Harry’s 80th celebrations.  It’s a haunting and unsettling piece and akin to all great art, works on many levels.
 
Ostensibly a folk tale about a good and bad shepherd, it explores political and social themes, raising issues of prejudice and exclusion, as relevant now as they were in 1986.  Intriguingly described by the composer as a “mechanical pastoral”, it’s constructed with mathematical precision, musically and dramatically.  The two shepherds (brilliantly sung by Roderick Williams and Omar Ebrahim) emerge automaton-like as figures on an elaborate clock. They are underpinned by Birtwistle’s glistening, mysterious score, with its constantly vacillating "music of the hill" themes which, alongside Tony Harrison’s magically earthbound libretto, brings the story to life.

Yan Tan Tethera should be placed alongside the ground-breaking Punch and Judy, as a key work prior to his later larger scale achievements such as Gawain or Minotaur.  Moreover, in Yan Tan Tethera you experience the detailed musical textures and lyricism of Birtwistle’s instrumental craft, (sometimes obscured within the blocks of sound in his larger-scale works) and we can experience the visceral sensations of the wind sharking around the sarsen stones unveiling the mysteries which lie beneath. 

I hope this opera, alongside other works we performed last May (most notably Melancholia 1), demonstrates Birtwistle as a profoundly English composer, as much as Vaughan Williams or Elgar.  It’s just that Birtwistle’s vision is not one of green bucolic pastoral, but, as Andrew Clements so vividly described, “of something bloodied and cruel, rooted in pagan Albion.”

Read the reviews of Yan Tan Tethera here


Claire Bowdler (Marketing Director)

When I suggested this blog post to everyone and asked for their highlights of 2014 I hadn’t thought what I would pick myself – I’ve realised it’s actually quite hard to pick just one highlight – working with such a talented bunch of musicians and great programming team means that each individual project has something special about it. However if I had to pick one (as I expected everyone else too) it would have to be our project with violinist Patricia Kopatchinskaja (or the much easily pronounceable Pat Kop). I’d never seen Pat Kop perform before but had heard great things from colleagues and musicians. In marketing terms it was a great project to work on as Patricia is a fascinating character and amazing performer – we had a wealth of materials to use  and worked in partnership with Wash Media to create a short film trailer which has been our most popular to date.

Pat Kop’s performances were energetic, fierce, impulsive, expressive and more. A highlight of the programme was Bartok’s Romanian Dances of which I had never heard such a frenzied, raw and exhilarating performance. I look forward to the next time we collaborate with this distinctive, virtuosic musician again.

Watch the trailer for our Patricia Kopatchinskaja tour here.


To find out what we have planned for 2015 take a look at the concerts section of the website.

2014-15 Britten Sinfonia Academy so far...

Our 2014-15 Britten Sinfonia Academy members have been meeting since September for workshops, courses and performances. Clarinetist, Morgan tells us what he's been up to during his first three months as a Britten Sinfonia Academy member;

I was very excited (but admittedly a little nervous) to be accepted as a member of the Britten Sinfonia Academy as I had never been in a regional orchestra before and I really had no idea what to expect. However, from the moment I first met Natalie, Mateja and (later) Emily, I knew I would have no problems at all!

I really enjoyed our induction day in September, when  I got the chance to meet the other members of the Academy, as well as some of the members of Britten Sinfonia itself. As I play clarinet, I particularly got to know Joy, one of the clarinettists in the main orchestra, who offered me help and encouragement which has improved my playing.  I especially enjoyed the improvisational exercises, including a Japanese compositional technique called shōgi. We sat in a circle and each of us came up with a musical idea and then began playing it. Up to five musicians were playing at a time - as one came in, one dropped out, and as the music continued round the circle, a very interesting and very strange piece of music builds up! Versions of The Rite of Spring and different technical exercises were interspersed with London Bridge and my quickly-made-up attempt at a prepared piano. People also used a variety of small percussion and their own bodies to create some interesting patterns - it was imaginative, to say the least. A particular highlight was Joy and her more-than-persistent spoken contribution ("Hey, you guys...") in a variety of styles.

Our first weekend course comprised a heady mix of new and old - Now, that we all knew each other - we concentrated on learning to play together as an ensemble. We covered Mozart's Idomeneo, Debussy's Prélude à l'après-midi d'un faune, Kabalevsky's The Comedians and Finnissey's Plain Harmony, with the afternoons dedicated to chamber music including Ravel's Mother Goose suite. All of these pieces allowed each of the sections of the ensemble their own moments to shine and presented each of us with a few meatier bits to sweat over a bit! But that is a good thing!

As the courses progressed, we in the Academy continued to get to know one another more through the lunchtime football  and some particularly fascinating conversation during the breaks - made more enjoyable by the seemingly endless supply of mini brownies and rocky road bites courtesy of the very important snack rota!

In November, the course weekend focused on preparing for two pre-concert events where the Academy was playing as a "warm-up" act to Britten Sinfonia.  We were all very excited - a gig! These two concerts were retrospectives of John Woolrich (a good friend of Britten Sinfonia) and some of his influences. The Academy as a whole played Woolrich's Stealing a March (dedicated to Frank Zappa) and a quintet played In the Mirrors of Asleep. Woolrich's style is wildly eclectic and very interesting (that much we all agreed) - what we couldn't agree on was whose part was the most difficult (I still think I win).

The next time we met as an orchestra was on November 20th at Milton Court Concert Hall (next door to the Barbican) for the first of the two pre-concert events - the following day, we were back in Cambridge for the second. Nerves were high and we were brimming with excitement. The quintet went first and was received brilliantly. Then the full Academy (with one or two loan instrumentalists from various sources) took to the stage. We triumphantly stormed through Stealing a March, and the applause was rapturous. It was in all honesty, one of the best experiences of my life!

I am sure, if the first 3 months are anything to go by, more fantastic experiences await! I am so grateful for the chance to be a part of the Academy. I hope I can continue for many years!

Morgan
Clarinet, Britten Sinfonia Academy

For more information about Britten Sinfonia Academy click here

Divine Purcell, engaging Woolrich - Sinfonia Student Carl reviews

John Woolrich at 60: Britten Sinfonia @ Cambridge 21/11/14

Divine Purcell, engaging Woolrich

Rich strings and pulsating rhythms transcended the concert hall, serving as an exposition of the thought processes and sources of inspiration for one of today’s great living composers. 

The pre-concert talk was a perfect introduction to the music of John Woolrich, for those who were not already familiar with his work. An engaging presentation, together with the help of the Britten Sinfonia Academy students performing two inspiring works, In the Mirrors of Asleep and Stealing a March, helped give an informative overview of the composer’s style, however it was unfortunate that the composer could not be in Cambridge for the pre-concert talk due to a sudden back injury. We wish him well in his recovery.

The introduction of Purcell and Wolf songs for soprano and strings and solo strings was sublime, with Woolrich’s arrangements of both coming to life in the hands of Britten Sinfonia. The string sound was beautiful, and the leadership of Thomas Gould was well-judged. Susanna Hurrell did an admirable job, standing in for Sophie Bevan at the last minute. Her voice was well-suited to the Purcell, and blended majestically with the orchestra.

Soprano Susanna Hurrell with the orchestra.

The two arrangements provided the perfect backdrop for John Woolrich’s first work of the evening, Ulysses Awakens, an intriguingly named work featuring solo viola, performed with consummate skill by Clare Finnimore. The work featured harmonies identifiable with both the Purcell and the Wolf, however it brought an endearing modal feel, hinting at a folk-type sound. Both beautiful and lively, to the listener the work was a pleasure. 

The first half closed with an admirable performance of Stravinsky’s Eight Miniatures, with Duncan Ward instructing the ensemble well, and with the composer’s ineffable sense of humour and rhythm pervading the work, so as to create a pleasing performance, and a spectacular Per pieta, non ricercate, by Mozart. Hurrell was again wonderful. 

The second half could be seen as being perhaps more conventionally judged, with the lengthy first section contrasted with a relatively brief final period, including two works which functioned symbiotically, so as to create a cohesive performance. Stravinsky’s Dumbarton Oaks, a neo-classical favourite, was effervescent and sparkling in its wit, with engaging rhythms heightening interest. The audience seemed once again enthused, following their mid-concert snooze. The star of the show, however, was Woolrich’s Violin Concerto, a fabulous and endearing work, which was performed in style by Thomas Gould, under the fantastic leadership of Duncan Ward. Ward’s simple yet effective conducting - efficient is perhaps the word - suited the work beautifully, as he brought a clarity to the music that was much-needed. The violin enjoys much interplay with the orchestra in this interesting work, particularly with the marimba, which was well-judged.  

Thomas Gould and Duncan Ward receiving applause after Woolrich's Violin Concerto.

The performance was well-received, and one cannot help but suggest that the applause given to the works of Woolrich was equal to that of the well-established repertoire, indicating the composer’s relevance today. A fitting celebration, and exploration, of the man, and the composer, as he turns sixty this year.

Carl Wikeley (Sinfonia Student 2014-15)

Meet Clare Finnimore - viola

Clare Finnimore studied at the Guildhall School of Music & Drama where she co-founded the prize-winning Guildhall String Ensemble. Her musical career has included multifarious appearances as a soloist in a variety of festivals, venues and continents. She has been Principal Viola of Britten Sinfonia for the past 12 years, plays regularly with her chamber group, Britten Oboe Quartet, and can be heard on many a cinema soundtrack including Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy, the latest James Bond film, Skyfall, and The Hobbit. She has also performed live with such artists as Kylie Minogue, Sting, Bjork and Florence and the Machine.

In this blog post Clare discusses various highlights of her musical career so far (as well as the odd embarrassing moment), her favourite pastimes and super-power of choice.

What has been the highlight of your career so far?

When you play music you love with people you love playing with it's always a high!

When are you happiest?

Swimming.

What is your greatest fear?

A world controlled by multi- nationals and the diminishing of the dawn chorus.

What is your earliest musical memory?

Trad Jazz at home and my parents jiving...The Beatles: Rubber Soul....Dukas: The Sorcerer's Apprentice....Holst: The Planets.

Which living person do you most admire, and why?

Camilla Batmanghelidjh- her big heart, determination and tireless work for vulnerable children...and of course her style!

What was your most embarrassing moment?

Asking a very famous singer/songwriter: 'Is this your son?' His reply: 'No, she's my wife.'

What is your most treasured possession?

A goodbye letter from my sister Jan.

What would your super power be?

I would like to be multi-lingual.

If you were an animal what would you be?

A cat in a loving home- what a life of luxury they have! But I would NOT kill birds.

What is your most unappealing habit?

At home, being unnecessarily fussy about recycling. But if everyone did it......

What is your favourite book?

Middlemarch, Pride and Prejudice, Lost London 1870-1945.

What is your guiltiest pleasure?

Freshly baked almond croissants.

Who would you invite to your dream dinner party?

My husband, 2 sons and 2 nephews and my best female friends.

If you could go back in time, where would you go?

To the 60's - I would inject all the giant Elm trees so that they would still be here now.

How do you relax away from the concert platform?

Wine, tapas and friends.

What do you consider your greatest achievement?

Stepping up as soloist at a few hours notice for a live broadcast.

What is the most important lesson life has taught you?

To make every day the best you can.

In a nutshell, what is your philosophy?

I saw this recently on a park bench: "Love, be loved and never stop learning."

John Woolrich's piece for viola and orchestra, Ulysses Awakes, was written for Clare, and she will be performing this work with the orchestra on 20 & 21 November in London and Cambridge as part of the musical celebrations of Woolrich's 60th birthday this year. 

She will also be performing as part of our At Lunch 3 concert in February 2015, which will feature a new composition by Ben Comeau and string chamber pieces by Vaughan Williams and Beethoven.

Well isn't that Pinteresting....?

Being part of an orchestra's marketing team isn't always just about promoting concerts, keeping up to date with the latest marketing techniques, or sourcing biographies for performers... it's also quite often about cake.

At Britten Sinfonia we enjoy celebrating our staff member's birthdays with cake, and as our office team has grown to a mighty 14 members that means we get to sit down for a slice of cake more frequently than ever before! Not only do we all enjoy eating cake but quite a few of us are keen bakers. So what better way to launch our brand new Pinterest profile than with a board dedicated to just that: Office Cake. 

I was so inspired by the Blackberry and Lemon Cupcake recipe on our Office Cake board that I had a go myself! Sadly these were so tasty that none of them made it into the office...

Whilst being relatively new to Pinterest, I have found that this social media platform is an excellent way to collate all sorts of information, and has been relatively underused for sharing details about upcoming concert programmes and giving our audiences a better insight into the life of the orchestra off the concert platform. 

My favourite board is our Guest Collaborators 2014-15 board, where you can see at a glance all the fantastic artists who we will be working with over the coming season. It's a testament to the quality of the orchestra that these names include such a range of inspiring musicians (I was going to highlight a selection of the best here, but they are all so brilliant I would have ended up listing all of them!).

Music isn't just about what you hear however, and the visual element of a concert performance can be very important. It can also be fascinating, as our Onstage Fashion board demonstrates. It is sometimes easy to forget just how extravagant some concert dresses can be so we thought we would start collecting some of our favourites for all the fashionistas out there. 

One of our pins from the Onstage Fashion board - a quite extreme costume for a rather unique performance back in 2011.

To end with perhaps a more relevant note, our interest in Pinterest came about in the search for somewhere we could create a 'virtual birthday card' of sorts for composer John Woolrich, whose 60th birthday we are celebrating in concert this November. Why not have a look on our board John Woolrich at 60 where we will be adding messages from some of the musicians involved in these concerts, memories from working with John, and details for the two performances. You can even pin your own link!

We hope you enjoy seeing a slightly different side of Britten Sinfonia and keeping up to date through our boards, and remember you don't need to sign up yourself to have a browse through our profile...

See more at www.pinterest.com/brittensinfonia

Karys
Marketing Assistant

Birtwistle's interaction with landscape

In May, we celebrate composer Harrison Birtwistle's 80th birthday with performances in Cambridge and as part of the Barbican's Birtwistle at 80 season. In this article composer and programmer, John Woolrich explores Birtwistle's preoccupation with the English landscape in his compositions.

Harrison Birtwistle once described the Lancashire countryside in which he grew up as a kind of Arcady. His continuing interest in the natural world retains the influence of that rural upbringing: one of his most recent pieces, The Moth Requiem, is a setting of the names of extinct English moths.

As a student Birtwistle took his music to show Vaughan Williams, ‘I had a sort of Vaughan Williams forgery under my arm, (which was my music…). Vaughan Williams was modern music to me when I was a student’.  He was ‘very much part of my formative years and my awareness of what creativity was’. Birtwistle has described Melancolia 1, his lament for clarinet and strings, as his ‘Tallis Fantasia’.

Like Birtwistle, Gustav Holst’s approach to landscape, even in a miniature like his canon The Fields of Sorrow, is the impression it gives of traveling, and of time and space changing the perspective as the journey unfolds. For both Holst and Birtwistle the interaction of landscape and time has been a compositional preoccupation.

Birtwistle, like Vaughan Williams and Holst, uses landscape as a metaphor in his music. It may be a real one, like the mysterious prehistoric hill in Wiltshire that lies behind Silbury Air, or imaginary ones (rather like Holst’s Egdon Heath, another piece that has had a place in Birtwistle’s imagination). Birtwistle has a (Paul Klee-inspired) orchestral piece called An Imaginary Landscape. Another Wiltshire landscape has its own music in Yan Tan Tethera. The mythical story of Yan Tan Tethera is an explanation of the groaning sound made by the wind whistling round some sarsen stones in Wiltshire.

John Woolrich

Britten Sinfonia perform a semi-staged concert performance of Yan Tan Tethera on Thursday 29 May at the Barbican as part of Birtwistle at 80. More info

On Friday 23rd May in Cambridge and Friday 30 May at the Barbican the orchestra perform Fields of Sorrow, a programme tracing three English composers (including Birtwistle) response to landscape and national identity. More Info

John Woolrich is a distinguished composer and programmer, and a close friend and collaborator of Britten Sinfonia. In November 2014 Britten Sinfonia celebrate his 60th birthday with a special concert featuring the London premiere of his Violin Concerto. More Info

John Woolrich

John Woolrich's Whitel's Ey receives its premiere in a few hours (I look forward to hearing it myself tomorrow in Cambridge). John has written: 'There is no tabula rasa in music: every piece of music is connected to something else, certainly other music, but also perhaps a poem, a picture or a person. Or even a landscape. Some composers have used landscape as a metaphor for the structure of a piece, others have attempted to evoke the atmosphere of landscapes real (In the Fen Country) or imaginary (Egdon Heath).

Whitel’s Ey started with a walk in the Great Fen and conversations there. Later I looked at John Clare’s poetry and journals and Iain Sinclair’s book, Edge of the Orison, which traces John Clare’s ‘journey out of Essex’. The piece grew out of the memory of the landscape and the texts, and also thoughts about the two resonant spaces where the piece will have its first performances. Iain Sinclair’s book gave me the title, Whitel’s Ey, one step away from Whittlesey.'

Great Fen Project

One of Britain’s most exciting conservation efforts, the Great Fen Project is creating a 9,000 acre fenland habitat in Cambridgeshire. It will create a haven for wildlife and open new opportunities for business, education and recreation. Imagine walking for hours without retracing your steps in a vast mosaic of meadows, woods, streams and marshes.....

Britten Sinfonia is giving two concerts this week to raise awareness (and some money) for this project: in Peterborough Cathedral on 6 May and in King's College Chapel, Cambridge on 7 May. John Woolrich has composed a new work Whitel's Eye for the occasion, and there is music by Vaughan Williams, Sibelius, Britten and Mahler. Paul Gambaccini introduces the Peterborough performance, Stephen Fry the Cambridge one, and Alina Ibragimova is the violin soloist.

Fuseleeds09 with Efterklang

In a Fuseleeds09 exclusive and UK premiere, Britten Sinfonia and Copenhagen-based Efterklang come together to create a unique project, encapsulating the truly eclectic fusion, and pioneering, diverse vision of the festival.

Fuseleeds is a major biennial music festival celebrating the wealth and diversity of today's vibrant new music scene. When the festival launched in 2004 it broke the mould by presenting a programme that encouraged artistic risk-taking across genres through commissions and collaborations presented in new and exciting ways.

Our concert on 25 April at Leeds Academy will include John Woolrich's Stealing a March, Tansy Davies' Hinterland, and three Frank Zappa classics: Be-Bop Tango, Outrage at Valdez and G-Spot Tornado. Then we will present the UK premiere of Efterklang's score to their celebrated 2007 album Parades (The Leaf Label) for band and orchestra. The band will perform their majestic, otherworldly pop songs alongside Britten Sinfonia.

Box office details are here.

Adam Walaciński

We had planned to premiere a work by Paweł Mykietyn this week, but unfortunately the composer has been ill and has been unable to complete the commission. With our Krakow connections, we are pleased that we have been able to find a replacement piece by a native of that city, Adam Walaciński. Born towards the end of the 1920s, he is particularly renowned as a film composer. You can see his extensive filmography here. He wrote Little Music of Autumn in 1986.

You can hear this in Cambridge today, in London tomorrow, in Birmingham on Thursday, and in Norwich on Friday in our Britten Sinfonia at Lunch series. Other works are by Purcell (ed. Britten), John Woolrich, and Schoenberg.

We are grateful to the Polish Cultural Institute for their financial support for this tour.

Performance on 3: tonight

Our Night Music project will be broadcast tonight on BBC Radio 3 at 19.00 in Performance on 3. Presented by Tom Service, it was recorded at the Queen Elizabeth Hall last Monday, with music by Stravinsky, Birtwistle, Handel, Britten and John Woolrich. You can still read the programme notes and follow the texts on our website. Mark Padmore and Maxim Rysanov are the soloists.

Ulysses Awakes

John Woolrich's note on his piece 'Ulysses Awakes' belies what, to me, is one of his finest works: 'There are two great arias at the beginning of Monteverdi’s opera II ritorno d’Ulisse in Patria: one for Penelope, and this one for Ulysses, waking on the shore of his homeland. In this retelling the viola sings Ulysses.'

We are joined by Maxim Rysanov as soloist in our Night Music project.

Night Music

Mark Padmore joins Britten Sinfonia for a programme exploring the theme of night, with music by Birtwistle, Stravinsky, Britten, Woolrich and Handel. Full details are here. The concerts are in Cambridge on Thursday, Norwich on Friday, London next Monday, and Southampton next Tuesday. The literary delights equal the musical ones, with texts by Milton, Shelley, Tennyson, Coleridge, Middleton, Wordsworth, Owen, Keats and Shakespeare. Watch out for Mark's own analysis of the programme in next Saturday's Guardian Review.

The Iron Cockerel Sings

Polina Leschenko joins us at Aldeburgh on Monday evening for a performance of John Woolrich's The Iron Cockerel Sings. A young, Russian-born pianist, now living in Brussels, Polina combines a phenomenal technique with deep sensitivity and abundant imagination. Her busy career combines concerti, recitals and chamber music. A regular visitor to the Hallé Orchestra, she recently took part in their 150th Birthday Concert and created a sensation with her peformance. David Fanning wrote in The Daily Telegraph, 'Equally breathtaking ... was the young Russian pianist Polina Leschenko, who produced a dazzling firework display in the Weber Konzertstück.' She will tour South America tour with the orchestra next season. Leschenko has appeared in recital at the Lincoln Center, Carnegie Hall, Wigmore Hall, Amsterdam Concertgebouw and Vienna Konzerthaus, and returns to the Konzerthaus and Concertgebouw next season. Leschenko is a passionate chamber musician and her regular partners include Christian Poltéra, Heinrich Schiff, Priya Mitchell, Alexander Sitkovetsky and Patricia Kopatchinskaya.