Our concert in Cambridge with Paul Lewis next Thursday is sold out (although you might be lucky and get a return: check with the box-office on 01223 357851). There are still a few tickets left though for the London performance on Monday at the Queen Elizabeth Hall: book here. It's a great programme, contrasting Richard Strauss and Mozart, with two piano concertos, nos. 12 and 27.
Saturday, 16 May 2009
Paul Lewis plays Mozart
Our concert in Cambridge with Paul Lewis next Thursday is sold out (although you might be lucky and get a return: check with the box-office on 01223 357851). There are still a few tickets left though for the London performance on Monday at the Queen Elizabeth Hall: book here. It's a great programme, contrasting Richard Strauss and Mozart, with two piano concertos, nos. 12 and 27.
Wednesday, 13 May 2009
RPS Awards double
We are delighted to win a second RPS Award, this time in the Chamber Music category: 'This award goes to a flexible ensemble drawn from an orchestra which further enhanced its reputation for innovative programming with a lunchtime chamber music series. Touring in the east of England, London, Birmingham and Krakow, this remarkably fresh project included a range of commissions from established and emerging composers, a collaborative programming process, and the opportunity to highlight the Britten Sinfonia's extraordinary artistry as chamber musicians and soloists.' This follows on from our RPS Ensemble Award in 2007, awarded when we were touring Brazil.
Wednesday, 6 May 2009
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.'
Tuesday, 5 May 2009
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.
Tuesday, 28 April 2009
Efterklang concert on YouTube
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Wednesday, 15 April 2009
You’re Hired v. You’re Fired!
Our Creative Learning intern, Hannah Ellis, reflects on her time (so far!) at Britten Sinfonia: 'With The Apprentice’s latest reject, Majid, having been pulled apart in the boardroom and sent packing, it got me thinking – which is better, a day in the life of an Apprentice contestant with Sir Alan Sugar or a day in the life of a Creative Learning intern with Britten Sinfonia? For me there is no contest: one is the opportunity of a lifetime and the other is, well, working for Sir Alan! You might be muttering “She’s deluded! I know which I’d rather!”, but think again; for six figure salary or not, working at Britten Sinfonia is more my cup of tea (even if it is me making it!).
At a time when jobs were (and undoubtedly still are) few and far between, this internship provided the ray of hope that I needed, and if internships were the new rock n’ roll, then I wanted to be Elvis Presley. So what do I actually do everyday? Well, anything I do contributes to the aims of the Creative Learning department which is to enable audiences (schools, businesses, families, students etc.) to learn more about the music Britten Sinfonia plays and to get them involved in making their own music. This, however, ranges from putting together budgets and proposals for new projects, fixing musicians, securing funding, contacting schools, and liaising with venues; to paying musicians, organising travel arrangements and more recently, squelching in the mud with children from
a local primary school as part of the Great Fen Project (see Karl Heidel's photo)……to name just a few! And that’s only one month in! Of course there is the obligatory photocopying to be done and cups of coffee to be made (after all ‘intern’ can also mean imprison!) but fortunately there isn’t too much of it and I’ve taken to looking at it as ‘character building’! In fact the emphasis is much more on my personal and professional development hence why I have already been given my own project to manage and why I will also gain experience in marketing, concerts and fundraising whilst I am here.
Consequently, no day is ever the same because, a bit like that box of chocolates in Forrest Gump, I never know what I’m going to get next - unlike Majid and the other Apprentice contestants who face corporate task after corporate task. Hence not only do I gain broader experience and in a more interactive way but arguably I get greater job satisfaction and in a team that works together in harmony rather than competes against each other; this job is mine to make my own and mould how I want instead of jumping through hoops for the televisual entertainment of the nation (although don’t get me wrong, I enjoy watching as much as the next person). Talking of which, nor do I get ridiculed by the nation but instead work in an environment conducive to learning where I receive constructive comments rather than just criticism, and, unlike Rocky, a catering manager and the previous weeks’ reject who was fired after a catering task (ouch!), I am not damaging my future career prospects, but enhancing them.
As a French graduate, this internship may not have been the obvious choice but I saw it for the excellent opportunity that it is to mark out a career in events management. At the end of the day, despite our differences, what I and the Apprentice contestants have in common is that the processes we’re going through are all about striving for that dream job – it’s just that I get to do it in a much nicer way! One final way I trump Majid’s experience? He left with those immortal words “You’re fired”; I’m hoping I leave on a much better note! (At which point one of you might be lucky enough to be the new intern!)
At a time when jobs were (and undoubtedly still are) few and far between, this internship provided the ray of hope that I needed, and if internships were the new rock n’ roll, then I wanted to be Elvis Presley. So what do I actually do everyday? Well, anything I do contributes to the aims of the Creative Learning department which is to enable audiences (schools, businesses, families, students etc.) to learn more about the music Britten Sinfonia plays and to get them involved in making their own music. This, however, ranges from putting together budgets and proposals for new projects, fixing musicians, securing funding, contacting schools, and liaising with venues; to paying musicians, organising travel arrangements and more recently, squelching in the mud with children from
a local primary school as part of the Great Fen Project (see Karl Heidel's photo)……to name just a few! And that’s only one month in! Of course there is the obligatory photocopying to be done and cups of coffee to be made (after all ‘intern’ can also mean imprison!) but fortunately there isn’t too much of it and I’ve taken to looking at it as ‘character building’! In fact the emphasis is much more on my personal and professional development hence why I have already been given my own project to manage and why I will also gain experience in marketing, concerts and fundraising whilst I am here.
Consequently, no day is ever the same because, a bit like that box of chocolates in Forrest Gump, I never know what I’m going to get next - unlike Majid and the other Apprentice contestants who face corporate task after corporate task. Hence not only do I gain broader experience and in a more interactive way but arguably I get greater job satisfaction and in a team that works together in harmony rather than competes against each other; this job is mine to make my own and mould how I want instead of jumping through hoops for the televisual entertainment of the nation (although don’t get me wrong, I enjoy watching as much as the next person). Talking of which, nor do I get ridiculed by the nation but instead work in an environment conducive to learning where I receive constructive comments rather than just criticism, and, unlike Rocky, a catering manager and the previous weeks’ reject who was fired after a catering task (ouch!), I am not damaging my future career prospects, but enhancing them.
As a French graduate, this internship may not have been the obvious choice but I saw it for the excellent opportunity that it is to mark out a career in events management. At the end of the day, despite our differences, what I and the Apprentice contestants have in common is that the processes we’re going through are all about striving for that dream job – it’s just that I get to do it in a much nicer way! One final way I trump Majid’s experience? He left with those immortal words “You’re fired”; I’m hoping I leave on a much better note! (At which point one of you might be lucky enough to be the new intern!)
Friday, 10 April 2009
CD Review Disc of the Week and the Proms
Our recording of Lukaszewski's Via Crucis with Polyphony and Stephen Layton is Andrew MacGregor's CD of the Week on BBC Radio 3's CD Review on Saturday morning (and available for the following week on iPlayer). It will be at around 11.40. Our other BBC news is on our homepage: details of our Prom, announced last week.
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