A Review from Catherine White (Harpist) |
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The Future Blend Project was launched in 2015 by harpist Fran Barsby. This project is already enriching our harp repertoire with many new works over the past two years. It is an annual competition that brings composers and harpists together to create brand new music for the harp. Ten finalist compositions are chosen from anonymous scores, the composers then have five months to work with their harpist to create the best piece possible for the instrument. The Hidden Gem Concert in the first week of January is the showcase and World Premiere of these ten new works. In addition to the performance at the FBP concert, winning pieces are given video web presence on the FPB website, plus publication so they are available to all to learn and perform. 'FBP' was founded to increase the amount of music composed for the harp and is inspired by the difficult path young professional musicians and composers face in order to succeed in the music industry.
The call for submission of compositions for the 2016-17 project had a fantastic response. Thanks to the wonders of the Internet age, submissions were up massively on the previous year. The composers were truly from all over the globe. From the field of over 100 submissions, 13 finalists from El Salvador, Brazil, Croatia, Italy/Denmark, France, and the USA as well as the UK were chosen to be performed, and each composer was paired with a performing harpist to prepare the work for the concert. The project is to encourage young composers though in fact the composers were a broad range of ages and experience – some still students, others rich in life experience, if not in composing experience, and some very experienced musicians. Many of the composers have won a variety of prizes.
Olivia Jageurs, who has worked with dozens if not hundreds of composers through her 15 Second Harp project (15secondharp.com), shared some of her experiences of working with two of the winning composers on the Future Blend Project. “Since both of my composers live outside the UK, we worked mostly by Skype and phone until the very last couple of days before the concert. This worked well when there were structural issues to work on, but less well when there were issues of timbre – technology has not yet quite reached the heights to really convey accurate sound across the ether! Once I was able to meet the composers in person, we mostly worked on issues of tempi and style. Because the two composers had different amounts of previous experience composing, it was interesting to see the difference in how much the pieces changed or didn’t in the course of our collaboration. I was glad to persuade one of them to give us much more detailed information on dynamics, for example. I really enjoyed being able to add to the harp repertoire through this project!”
A capacity crowd gathered to hear the works at the 2nd Hidden Gem Concert, the first Saturday in January, exactly one year after the inaugural concert. The beautiful and extremely historic Lord Leycester Hospital in Warwick (dating mainly from the late 14th century, and fortunately no longer full of those needing medical treatment!) provided a magnificent venue for this very modern and up-to-date event. The audience was a wonderful mix of young and old, and indeed as the audience gathered we were treated to informal performances from some very young performers.
If last year’s concert was a huge success (please see Inbar Vernia’s excellent report in the UKHA magazine Spring 2016 issue, still available on the Future Blend Project website), this one was even more exciting. Thirteen solos were prepared by nine harpists, though sadly two of the performers were struck down with illness and unable to attend. Fran Barsby, the founder and director of the project valiantly stepped in to perform Claudio Passilongo’s attractive, jazzy “The Awakening” and Erica Sinclair similarly with only a couple of day’s notice prepared Stanislav Fridman’s Cyber Lullaby for amplified harp. Other harpists taking part were: Shelley Fairplay, Natasha Gale, Olivia Jageurs, Vera Khait, Catrin Meek, Sophie Rocks, Rita Schindler and Kinga Was. Many of the composers attended from overseas and UK, and it was wonderful to hear them each say a few words about their pieces
Most of the pieces held interest really well, varying in length from about 3 minutes to over 13. Styles varied from jazzy to microtonal to romantic to modern, and there were many moments of enchanting beauty. I urge you to visit the website to listen to all of the pieces!
At the concert, audience members were each given a slip to vote anonymously for their favourite – not always easy, as this listener would have liked to vote for several! There was one clear winner (by a nose) and several very close runners-up. The jury of professionals who decides which pieces will be published, was comprised of two composers, Paul Lewis, who has written prolifically for harp, and Kirsty Devaney, and harpists Amy Turk and Fran Barsby.
The audience waited while the votes were counted and then the results were announced. The audience and jury were very much in agreement on the outcomes. It was especially pleasing that all of the composers who were winners were present, several of whom had travelled across the Atlantic to be there! Here are the results, along with some of the comments from audience members:
Winner, Ivory by Anthony Green (USA/Netherlands), performed by Olivia Jageurs
"Haunting and delicate, evocative of the fragile beauty of a Japanese painting"
"Your piece touched my heart the most. It was a fascinating experience as well as comforting and melodic. Just beautiful. I loved the way you used the colours of the harp and you gave the harpist a challenge."
"Enjoyed the way the harp was made to sound 'different'. I thought the composition was well balanced. Thank you"
"A Haunting and melodic melding of eastern and western musical styles and cultures, echoing the mysteries of the east and openness of the west."
Child at Sunset, Ben Yee-Paulson (USA) performed by Erica Sinclair
"This piece showcased the wonderful sound of the harp. It had a cohesive structure and it felt like there was a satisfying progression through the piece with lovely colours throughout."
Neshama by Alexandra Coursen, (USA) performed by Olivia Jaguers
"Memorable and pleasant throughout"
"So tuneful with coherent development"
"Beautiful music all round"
It Was Snowing Butterflies by Nathan James Dearden (UK), performed by Sophie Rocks
"Couldn't help but imagine butterflies. Sweet, beautiful melody"
Haiku for Calumet Street by Arthur Keegan-Bole (UK), performed by Sophie Rocks
"A refreshing and exciting piece from a modern composer. It blew me away!"
"Forward thinking"
"Inspiring"
"Out of the box"
You will be able to listen to all these pieces and the other finalists on the FBP website.
One of the major plus points of the project is the recording and publication of these new works. Scores for many of the works presented at the 2016 concert were available for purchase at this year’s concert, as well as being available through the FBP website. I was especially delighted to buy a copy of my favourite piece from that concert Study for Amplified Harp by Yfat Soul Zisso.
A project like this cannot exist without support and help. In addition to the amazing efforts of founder Fran Barsby and her administrative assistant, Erica Sinclair, sincere thanks must go to the sponsors: UKHA, Poppy Harp, Eleanor Turner, Pilgrim Harps, Fotofilia and a Crowdfunder group. Huge credit is due for the valuable contribution this project is providing to not only the repertoire of the harp, but also awareness on the part of composers.
What is the future? Another project is scheduled for January 2018, with the deadline for submitting compositions 1 June 2017. The 10 finalist compositions will be announced 1 August, then the composers and performers will work together to create the best possible work for the harp, to be presented 6 January 2018. If you are interested in being one of the performing harpists, there is information on how to join the project on the website.
Do come attend the 2018 Hidden Gem concert next January if you can!
The call for submission of compositions for the 2016-17 project had a fantastic response. Thanks to the wonders of the Internet age, submissions were up massively on the previous year. The composers were truly from all over the globe. From the field of over 100 submissions, 13 finalists from El Salvador, Brazil, Croatia, Italy/Denmark, France, and the USA as well as the UK were chosen to be performed, and each composer was paired with a performing harpist to prepare the work for the concert. The project is to encourage young composers though in fact the composers were a broad range of ages and experience – some still students, others rich in life experience, if not in composing experience, and some very experienced musicians. Many of the composers have won a variety of prizes.
Olivia Jageurs, who has worked with dozens if not hundreds of composers through her 15 Second Harp project (15secondharp.com), shared some of her experiences of working with two of the winning composers on the Future Blend Project. “Since both of my composers live outside the UK, we worked mostly by Skype and phone until the very last couple of days before the concert. This worked well when there were structural issues to work on, but less well when there were issues of timbre – technology has not yet quite reached the heights to really convey accurate sound across the ether! Once I was able to meet the composers in person, we mostly worked on issues of tempi and style. Because the two composers had different amounts of previous experience composing, it was interesting to see the difference in how much the pieces changed or didn’t in the course of our collaboration. I was glad to persuade one of them to give us much more detailed information on dynamics, for example. I really enjoyed being able to add to the harp repertoire through this project!”
A capacity crowd gathered to hear the works at the 2nd Hidden Gem Concert, the first Saturday in January, exactly one year after the inaugural concert. The beautiful and extremely historic Lord Leycester Hospital in Warwick (dating mainly from the late 14th century, and fortunately no longer full of those needing medical treatment!) provided a magnificent venue for this very modern and up-to-date event. The audience was a wonderful mix of young and old, and indeed as the audience gathered we were treated to informal performances from some very young performers.
If last year’s concert was a huge success (please see Inbar Vernia’s excellent report in the UKHA magazine Spring 2016 issue, still available on the Future Blend Project website), this one was even more exciting. Thirteen solos were prepared by nine harpists, though sadly two of the performers were struck down with illness and unable to attend. Fran Barsby, the founder and director of the project valiantly stepped in to perform Claudio Passilongo’s attractive, jazzy “The Awakening” and Erica Sinclair similarly with only a couple of day’s notice prepared Stanislav Fridman’s Cyber Lullaby for amplified harp. Other harpists taking part were: Shelley Fairplay, Natasha Gale, Olivia Jageurs, Vera Khait, Catrin Meek, Sophie Rocks, Rita Schindler and Kinga Was. Many of the composers attended from overseas and UK, and it was wonderful to hear them each say a few words about their pieces
Most of the pieces held interest really well, varying in length from about 3 minutes to over 13. Styles varied from jazzy to microtonal to romantic to modern, and there were many moments of enchanting beauty. I urge you to visit the website to listen to all of the pieces!
At the concert, audience members were each given a slip to vote anonymously for their favourite – not always easy, as this listener would have liked to vote for several! There was one clear winner (by a nose) and several very close runners-up. The jury of professionals who decides which pieces will be published, was comprised of two composers, Paul Lewis, who has written prolifically for harp, and Kirsty Devaney, and harpists Amy Turk and Fran Barsby.
The audience waited while the votes were counted and then the results were announced. The audience and jury were very much in agreement on the outcomes. It was especially pleasing that all of the composers who were winners were present, several of whom had travelled across the Atlantic to be there! Here are the results, along with some of the comments from audience members:
Winner, Ivory by Anthony Green (USA/Netherlands), performed by Olivia Jageurs
"Haunting and delicate, evocative of the fragile beauty of a Japanese painting"
"Your piece touched my heart the most. It was a fascinating experience as well as comforting and melodic. Just beautiful. I loved the way you used the colours of the harp and you gave the harpist a challenge."
"Enjoyed the way the harp was made to sound 'different'. I thought the composition was well balanced. Thank you"
"A Haunting and melodic melding of eastern and western musical styles and cultures, echoing the mysteries of the east and openness of the west."
Child at Sunset, Ben Yee-Paulson (USA) performed by Erica Sinclair
"This piece showcased the wonderful sound of the harp. It had a cohesive structure and it felt like there was a satisfying progression through the piece with lovely colours throughout."
Neshama by Alexandra Coursen, (USA) performed by Olivia Jaguers
"Memorable and pleasant throughout"
"So tuneful with coherent development"
"Beautiful music all round"
It Was Snowing Butterflies by Nathan James Dearden (UK), performed by Sophie Rocks
"Couldn't help but imagine butterflies. Sweet, beautiful melody"
Haiku for Calumet Street by Arthur Keegan-Bole (UK), performed by Sophie Rocks
"A refreshing and exciting piece from a modern composer. It blew me away!"
"Forward thinking"
"Inspiring"
"Out of the box"
You will be able to listen to all these pieces and the other finalists on the FBP website.
One of the major plus points of the project is the recording and publication of these new works. Scores for many of the works presented at the 2016 concert were available for purchase at this year’s concert, as well as being available through the FBP website. I was especially delighted to buy a copy of my favourite piece from that concert Study for Amplified Harp by Yfat Soul Zisso.
A project like this cannot exist without support and help. In addition to the amazing efforts of founder Fran Barsby and her administrative assistant, Erica Sinclair, sincere thanks must go to the sponsors: UKHA, Poppy Harp, Eleanor Turner, Pilgrim Harps, Fotofilia and a Crowdfunder group. Huge credit is due for the valuable contribution this project is providing to not only the repertoire of the harp, but also awareness on the part of composers.
What is the future? Another project is scheduled for January 2018, with the deadline for submitting compositions 1 June 2017. The 10 finalist compositions will be announced 1 August, then the composers and performers will work together to create the best possible work for the harp, to be presented 6 January 2018. If you are interested in being one of the performing harpists, there is information on how to join the project on the website.
Do come attend the 2018 Hidden Gem concert next January if you can!
A Review from Yfat Soul Zisso (Composer) |
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Following on from its inaugural concert last year, the second Future blend concert was another success, this time bringing together harpists and composers from not just Birmingham, but all over the world, to premiere new pieces for solo harp at the beautiful Lord Leycester Hospital in Scenic Warwick. An excellent and much-needed initiative set up by Fran Barsby to address the lack of contemporary solo harp repertoire, this project pairs up each composer with a harpist. The two work on a piece together, with all pieces performed and the chosen ones (those selected to receive either the audience prize or one of the judges' prizes) published by Poppyharp publishing in both digital and physical editions.
As the concert featured no less than 13 new pieces it's hard to mention them all in name, though the result was an incredibly varied concert, performed by great harpists from all over the UK and attended by the majority of composers taking part – some travelling all the way from the US.
The winner of the audience prize, Anthony Green's Ivory, played by Olivia Jageurs, started strong with very unique-sounding pitch bends and harmonics, influenced by Green’s experience playing the Koto, a traditional Japanese instrument. The piece then unravelled an exotic and serene soundworld, returning once again to the very strong opening material.
One of the judges' prize winners, Arthur Keegan-Bole's Haiku, performed by Sophie Rocks, showed a strong understanding of the harp and its sounds. The dialogue between gestures was intriguing, though would have liked to see this understanding pushed to a bigger extent, using stronger motifs or melodies one could hang onto rather than just standalone soundworlds.
Zoran Scekic's Hybrid States, performed by Vera Khait, was a rather magical piece for microtonal harp. It was, however, very short (only about 3-4 minutes) and considering that it required a large majority of the harp be re-tuned it seems unworthy of the effort and trouble required. The re-tuning might be made worthwhile, though, if Scekic builds on this piece to create a substantial body of works for the same tuning.
Another winner of one of the judges' prizes (and a recipient of an honorary mention for the audience prize), Ben Yee-Paulson's The Child at Sunset, performed by Erica Sinclair, began very strongly, with bold chords that really bring to mind a colourful sunset. This programmatic opening, whose variations repeat throughout, was followed by mellow and florid melodies, contrasted by mysterious-sounding rhythmic sections in between them to create a constant change of mood from serene to tense.
Alexandra Coursen's Neshama, performed by Olivia Jageurs, was another winner of both the judges' prize and an honorary mention for the audience prize. A Klezemer-inspired melodic piece, it was written as a wedding gift, using motifs based on the bride and groom's names. Although pleasant, it came off as quite predictive - more variation in the use of the name motifs would have made it much stronger.
Arguably the strongest piece of the night (and one of the winners of the judges' prize) was It was snowing butterflies by Nathan James Dearden, performed beautifully by Sophie Rocks, which began with sparse ringing, giving way to a sweet beautiful melody. Although he made it clear the piece wasn't programmatic, the minimal way in which Dearden used the harp, which included knocking on the wood and fluttering rhythms, meant that you couldn't help but see butterflies.
Overall it was a delightful evening of brand new music from a great variety of composers from all over the world, played by brilliant UK-based harpists who have all risen to the challenge of performing what were mostly very difficult pieces of music. I very much enjoyed it and am looking forward to what next year's concert will bring, as well as continuing to look out for Future Blend and Poppyharp's future plans, which are always exciting.
As the concert featured no less than 13 new pieces it's hard to mention them all in name, though the result was an incredibly varied concert, performed by great harpists from all over the UK and attended by the majority of composers taking part – some travelling all the way from the US.
The winner of the audience prize, Anthony Green's Ivory, played by Olivia Jageurs, started strong with very unique-sounding pitch bends and harmonics, influenced by Green’s experience playing the Koto, a traditional Japanese instrument. The piece then unravelled an exotic and serene soundworld, returning once again to the very strong opening material.
One of the judges' prize winners, Arthur Keegan-Bole's Haiku, performed by Sophie Rocks, showed a strong understanding of the harp and its sounds. The dialogue between gestures was intriguing, though would have liked to see this understanding pushed to a bigger extent, using stronger motifs or melodies one could hang onto rather than just standalone soundworlds.
Zoran Scekic's Hybrid States, performed by Vera Khait, was a rather magical piece for microtonal harp. It was, however, very short (only about 3-4 minutes) and considering that it required a large majority of the harp be re-tuned it seems unworthy of the effort and trouble required. The re-tuning might be made worthwhile, though, if Scekic builds on this piece to create a substantial body of works for the same tuning.
Another winner of one of the judges' prizes (and a recipient of an honorary mention for the audience prize), Ben Yee-Paulson's The Child at Sunset, performed by Erica Sinclair, began very strongly, with bold chords that really bring to mind a colourful sunset. This programmatic opening, whose variations repeat throughout, was followed by mellow and florid melodies, contrasted by mysterious-sounding rhythmic sections in between them to create a constant change of mood from serene to tense.
Alexandra Coursen's Neshama, performed by Olivia Jageurs, was another winner of both the judges' prize and an honorary mention for the audience prize. A Klezemer-inspired melodic piece, it was written as a wedding gift, using motifs based on the bride and groom's names. Although pleasant, it came off as quite predictive - more variation in the use of the name motifs would have made it much stronger.
Arguably the strongest piece of the night (and one of the winners of the judges' prize) was It was snowing butterflies by Nathan James Dearden, performed beautifully by Sophie Rocks, which began with sparse ringing, giving way to a sweet beautiful melody. Although he made it clear the piece wasn't programmatic, the minimal way in which Dearden used the harp, which included knocking on the wood and fluttering rhythms, meant that you couldn't help but see butterflies.
Overall it was a delightful evening of brand new music from a great variety of composers from all over the world, played by brilliant UK-based harpists who have all risen to the challenge of performing what were mostly very difficult pieces of music. I very much enjoyed it and am looking forward to what next year's concert will bring, as well as continuing to look out for Future Blend and Poppyharp's future plans, which are always exciting.
