Friends' Newsletter January 2012 by Music in the Round

Music in the Round’s May Festival 2012 examines the magne tic qualities of this magical city. A home to generations of outstanding French composers and musicians, Paris was equall y an irresistible lure throughout the ages to musicians, artists and writers from all around the world. Join us as Lully, Berlioz, Fauré, Debussy and Messiaen rub shoulders with Bach, Chopin, de Falla, Stravinsky and Cole Porter!

Just a Note

A Look Ahead to April and May

Annabelle Lawson, Rebecca Knight and Fenella Humphreys from the Lawson Trio answer our questions…

Favourite piece of music? A: Bach’s St. Matthew Passion. R: Monteverdi Vespers - it has everything! F: Impossible! I couldn’t live without Bach, Haydn and late Beethoven string quartets ... I also need my regular John Coltrane and U2 fixes!

Who or what is your biggest influence? A: Musically speaking, it would have to be my father, Peter Lawson, who taught me from the age of four until I was eighteen, and who still acts as a mentor. R: For me eclecticism is the key - the power of the ever-fresh creativity in so many folk music traditions - from Mali to Mongolia ... But if I were to name one classical musician as an inspiration it would be the pianist, Sviatoslav Richter. F: One of my first violin teachers, Sidney Griller. What do you like to do in your spare time? A: Bake cakes, listen to different world musics, daydream, workout. R: Listen to and play gypsy and Eastern European folk music. Learn Russian and Serbo-Croatian languages. Travel! F: Knit, read and discover new whiskies. What book are you reading? A: The Human Stain by Philip Roth. R: Milan Kundera – Encounter: Essays F: Lucky Jim by Kingsley Amis. Favourite place in the world? A: Wherever my boyfriend is – soppy but true! R: Sarajevo. F: Split between Papa Westray on Orkney and Prussia Cove in Cornwall. If you hadn’t worked in music, what do you think you would have chosen as a career? A: I don’t know – I’d like to be a drummer in a samba band!

Sheffield

Thu 5 Apr, 7.45pm Ensemble 360 Bach, Janáček & Schumann Crucible Studio

R: It certainly wouldn’t have happened at school in the UK but I really love the sound of the Armenian duduk. It’s soulful like the cello! F: Cello. If you hadn’t become a musician, what do you think you would have chosen as a career? A: I’d like either to have trained as a psychotherapist or become a Salsa instructor! R: Some mixture of artist, translator, humanitarian aid worker... F: Something to do with gardening or archaeology. In one sentence sum up your average working day A: An adrenalin-fuelled juggling act, with many unexpected, magical moments! R: Days are usually fraught with fighting crowded transport systems with cello in tow, and co-ordinating freelance orchestral work and teaching with trio rehearsal schedules, so I savour all the quality cello playing time I can get my hands on! F: Exciting, challenging and constantly changing.

The Lawson Trio is touring to Warwick, Sheffield, Newcastleunder-Lyme and Portsmouth from January until May.

4th Floor | Sheffield Central Library | Surrey Street | Sheffield S1 1XZ Tel: 0114 281 4660 Fax: 0114 281 4661 Email: info@musicintheround.co.uk www.musicintheround.co.uk | Registered Charity No. 326811

Thu 12 Apr, 7.45pm Tim Horton Beethoven Crucible Studio Fri 13 Apr, 7.45pm Gwylim Simcock & Klaus Gesing Sheffield Jazz Crucible Studio Wed 18 Apr Ensemble 360 & Anna Olejnicki Warm Up for the Olympics English Institute of Sport Thu 19 Apr, 5.45pm Ensemble 360 Ravel, Bizet, Schein, Glass, Caplet, Janáček, Montague (world concert premiere) City Hall Ballroom Friday 11 – Saturday 19 May May Festival 2012: Les Nations

Priory Place, Doncaster

Wed 9 May, 7.30pm Kuljit Bhamra, Jacqueline Shave & John Parricelli Parampara: a unique collaboration of classical, jazz and Indian music And more concerts in South Yorkshire and on tour around the country, as well as a variety of talks and Q&As.

Issue No.57

We’re delighted to announce this year’s May Festival, Frida y 11 – Saturday 19 May… Les Nations - The Extraordinary Musical Life of Paris, c.164 3-1968

Friends Newsletter ’

January 2012

Meet Stile Antico Tell us a bit about Stile Antico We’re a vocal ensemble with twelve members and we’ve been going for ten years. We started at university so it still feels like early days for us! We mainly perform unaccompanied Renaissance music. How did you form? A lot of us sung together at university and chapel choirs, and quite a few us lived in Oxford, although a lot of us were at university in Cambridge, so we decided to meet in the holidays. We wanted to meet up and put on concerts and it grew from there. Three of you are sisters in the group, how is it working with family? We’re all very used to working with each other. We’ve all known each other for quite a long time so it feels like we’re all family! Two of the members are married as well. Could you tell us a bit about the programme you’re touring with MitR, and how you chose it? This programme is a little bit different to what we normally do; we normally perform music in churches and music that was written for church performance. But this music was actually written for performance in the home, so it’s great for chamber music venues. Although it’s all sacred music it was written to be sung at home as entertainment as well as being religious – domestic devotion. So it has quite a different character to a lot of the music we’ve performed before. It’s about 200 years’ worth of music: It starts in the early Tudor times and goes right up to just before the civil war, so there’s quite a variety of styles. There are a few things

Contents...

in Latin, from the hidden Catholic communities, and a lot of stuff in English. It gives you a flavour of the poetry and the religion through those 200 years. We recorded a CD of the programme last year, and it’s coming out this month, so just in time for the tour! Do you often present the music in its historical context, and do you think it helps the audience to engage with the music? We always try and find a theme for the repertoire because it can sound a bit obscure if you’re not used to it, so it’s nice to have something that leads people through. We’ve split the programme into groups chronologically to get a flavour of each, so for example we have Catholic music and an introduction on what it was like being a Catholic at the time, and how that music reflects that. There’s a section with pieces that were written to commemorate Prince Henry’s death - that is, Charles I’s older brother who died very young and was apparently going to be a very good king, so there was big mourning throughout the land. And then we ended up with Charles I, and we all know where that headed! These pieces have a lot of layers of meaning; they’re nominally sacred texts but there’s hidden meaning about things that were happening at the time, and they are also just something people sang at home for fun! You’re giving a workshop for adult choral singers in Sheffield, is this something you’ve done before? We’ve done a fair amount of that kind of thing. Every year we go down to Dartington Summer School and do a week of masterclasses and

various different vocal chamber music workshops. It’s something we really enjoy and it’s really nice to be able to pass on what we love doing and to give tips to, and hopefully enthuse, other people! The people we work with often sing in choral societies so may not be used to working without a conductor, so we spend quite a lot of time on how it is to work as a chamber musician, rehearsing as a group in which you’re self-directed and how to perform as a group without a conductor.

Stile Antico is touring to Scarborough, Milton Keynes, Sheffield, Oakham and Wiltshire from February until May. You can listen to their podcast by visiting www.musicintheround.co.uk and clicking on the Podcasts & Videos button.

Keeping Fit for Folk in the Spring Time Heart and Soul On Thursday 8 March we are bringing together some of the biggest names from the world of folk to perform an evening of Gaelic and English music. Here’s a little more about the performers involved… Karen Matheson and Donald Shaw Founding members of Capercaillie (pronounced Kap-ir-Kay-Lee), Karen and Donald have been at the forefront of the Celtic music scene since the 1980s. The group’s achievements include selling over a million albums world wide, including three silver and one gold album in the UK, the first Gaelic Top 40 single, writing the music for, and appearing in the Hollywood movie Rob Roy, and performing in over thirty countries. A key component of Capercaille’s success was Karen Matheson’s ethereal, yet powerful Gaelic vocals, with The New York Times describing her as “spellbinding and evocative ... she takes folk music to a celestial high”. As a solo performer, Karen has been involved in various collaborative projects including the awardwinning BBC series Transatlantic Sessions, where she recorded tracks with Emmylou Harris, The McGarrigle Sisters, Nanci Griffith, Rufus Wainright and a host of respected musicians. Donald Shaw has composed music for film and TV, including a score influenced by early American folk music written in collaboration with Louisiana musician Dirk Powell (who wrote the music for the George Clooney film O, Brother, Where Art Thou?). Donald has also won two Royal Television Society awards for Best Soundtrack and Best Theme in UK television and since 2007 he has been the Artistic Director of the Celtic Connections festival. Donald Grant Donald is no stranger to audiences in Sheffield, known as violinist with the Elias String Quartet and also for his folk album The Way Home. Donald’s return to Sheffield provides a great opportunity to hear him perform with long-term collaborators Karen Matheson and Donald Shaw who appeared on his debut album, with Karen providing vocals on a Gaelic song Donald co-wrote with his dad. Annie Massie Anna Massie was the winner of the BBC Radio Scotland Young Traditional Musician of the Year 2003 Award. She is part of the band Blazin’ Fiddles which was named Best Folk Band at the 2006 Scottish Traditional Music Awards. Her other group, the Unusual Suspects, is nominated for Live Act of the Year at this year’s awards.

We were all agreed, we were not going to get involved in the Olympics: note the past tense. That was before Angus stumbled across an article in The Independent that suggested that classical music is one of the best forms of music to exercise to. The seed was sown. The idea was too enticing to resist. A project was born. First came a sports-related concert programme designed to complement a new work by the wonderful US composer Stephen Montague. No stranger to writing for dance collaborations (he first came to the UK with the Richard Alston Dance Company) Stephen’s piece will explore the relationship between music and physical exercise; tempos, rhythm, themes. But the idea kept growing; why not give people the chance to try this out for themselves and get moving to the music? Enter Doncaster-born choreographer and founder of Hype Dance Company in Sheffield Anna Olejnicki. Anna will devise an artistically led aerobics-style routine to Stephen’s yet-to-be-named work. On Wednesday 18 April, to celebrate one hundred days before the start of the Olympics, the work will be premiered as a massparticipation event in Sheffield’s renowned English Institute of Sport. It will be free and open to anyone and everyone to join in with two hours of fun exercise (with plenty of breaks!) and live classical music from Ensemble 360. So get your friends, your children, their children and all their friends together for a family event that’s good for both your health and your soul. There will also be a chance for schools to get involved. The concert programme will be performed in Sheffield City Hall’s Ballroom on Thursday 19 April at 5.45pm and then the whole thing will tour to Wiltshire, Milton Keynes, Huddersfield, Portsmouth, Doncaster, Barnsley and more. It’s a wonderful opportunity for us to engage hundreds of people across England with classical music in a unique way. More details will be coming soon.

Getting to Know Paul Rissmann’

Ensemble 360 and narrator Polly Ives are currently touring The Chimpanzees of Happytown, an interactive concert for children aged two to seven, by Music in the Round’s Children’s Composer in Residence Paul Rissmann. Polly chatted to Paul about the piece and his life as a children’s composer…

Photographer: David Shapiro

s d n e i r F g n i k a M

rtant to you as out what’s impo ab e e or m t ou d o to fin to both, so we ar aires a while ag astic response ul nt nn Pa fa tio a to es d ks qu ha t an d ou th an l t, re. Specia ailing lis en, we sent ai m se ic nn ve bl tio ha pu es r ay qu m ou a u to As yo aire turned nnaires. e of you who re sent a questionn from the questio ank you to thos ta Friends. We also Th da s. e se th of on sp nt re heme, in rough ge amou e the Friends sc still working th ve inputted a hu ur ha ct ru ho st w r re d be an no an Zi prove Thomas and Al g through to im Friends. ocess we’re goin ople to become pr a pe e of or rt m pa e e ag will ar ur s re co ai en nn to s, and ade. We hope it The questio happy as Friend y changes are m re an u’ re yo fo re be h su . uc en ith to w le be in order to ey are comfortab cture, and will y an amount th d on this restru pa te to da ce up u an yo ch a ep We will ke more people nefits and give give you more be

How do you start writing a piece like The Chimpanzees of Happytown? I cover the picture book with lots of Postit notes of thoughts, notes and random scribbles. It is all about finding the best possible shape for music, pictures and words to flourish together. What do you think is the key to getting children aged two to seven interested in music? Very young children adore music. It fills their entire body and in my opinion they are the most musical members of society. At this age, we have very few inhibitions so we are more open to embracing and connecting with sound. However, young children need to be constantly entertained so for me the key is strike the perfect balance between performance and participation. What is your earliest musical memory? I vividly remember my mum singing to me as a child. Also, from a very early age I was fascinated by record players, which perfectly sums up two of my key obsessions in life: music and technology. What has been the greatest influence on your career? I was so lucky to attend the brilliant Park Mains High School in the outskirts of Glasgow. Music was totally embedded into the curriculum and hundreds of teenagers all participated actively in music every single day of the week. It was like Glee - but with much more rain! I then went on to study saxophone at the Royal Scottish Academy of Music and Drama in Glasgow and then at the Royal Academy of Music

in London. After five years of intense conservatoire performance training, I switched my principal study to composition at the Guildhall and I’ve never looked back. When meeting people for the first time, how do you describe what ` your job is? It can be really difficult for people to make sense of my career, even though I simply think of myself as a musician. I write music, I programme concerts for young people and I present concerts. I once did a really funny interview with a newspaper in Abu Dhabi when after three or four very strange questions I realised that the journalist had misunderstood the term “animateur”, which is often used to describe people in my line of work. This became crystal clear when she asked to see my drawings! How is it working with Ensemble 360? I adore working with them. I love how they make absolutely no distinction when performing to young children; they simply play with as much energy and commitment as if they were playing to an adult audience. I’ll never forget the first time I heard them play my music - I was speechless! I have built a close working relationship with them over the last few years and have a tight understanding of the instrumentation and the characters within the group. When I wrote Giddy Goat (my first piece for the Ensemble) I was really scared of the intimacy of the instrumentation. I had really only composed big, fullsized orchestral works, so eleven players felt frighteningly exposed. Now, I am so excited by this!

What do you love about your job? I’m an adrenalin junkie - I think I need to feel scared at work at least once every three weeks! So, this has fuelled a desire to try many new things, whether that be leading a composition project for the under fives, composing a participation piece for 2,000 kids and symphony orchestra or presenting an analytical concert exploring the music of Stravinsky to 100 taxi drivers! What are you looking forward to in 2012? I’ve just spent the weekend in book shops all over London searching for the next story to set for Ensemble 360 and Polly. I think I may have found the perfect book and can’t wait to get started. I’m heading out now to buy Post-its immediately! The Chimpanzees of Happytown is in Rotherham on 9 Feb, Barnsley on 10 Feb, Warwick on 12 Feb, Doncaster on 25 Feb, Shrewsbury on 26 Feb, Tonbridge on 10 Mar and London (Wigmore Hall) on 30 Jun.

To watch a video of Paul, Polly and Ensemble 360 in action at The Crucible visit www.musicintheround.co.uk and click on the Podcasts and Videos button.

, iends Event

ends’ lunch are hosting a Fri e w ry ua br Fe e Exploring On Sunday 19 et, as part of th re St ey rr Su , nt uld join us and at Ego restaura lighted if you co de be d e’ W . nd med twoBeethoven weeke for a German-the m 5p .1 12 at ns 1 4600 or icia Daisy on 0114 28 t some of the mus ac nt co e ac sp book a course meal. To eround.co.uk. th daisy@musicin rson. ed, £14.95 per pe Places are limit