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News
22ND JULY 2009 I’m delighted to say that I’ve just completed a deal with Record Union, an online distributor of music. Downloads of three of the albums featured on the Recorded samples page of this site are already available on Amazon and iTunes; they will be sold in many other online music stores too and will also be available on streaming services like Spotify. I’m thrilled that this deal has been negotiated, since it will give the recordings a wider airing. Currently I’m looking into whether or not “Late Flowering of the Romantic Piano Sonata” and “Beltane” can be distributed in the same way; the problem with these two is that much of the material is still in copyright, and while obtaining licences for manufacture of a fixed number of CDs was straightforward, obtaining them for something less circumscribed (particularly when some of the participating online stores may or may not have some components of a blanket mechanical licence already) could turn into a legal and administrative quagmire for me. As for the sixth recording, “Center of Huntly”, the rights to distribute this are not mine, so if it is ever to be disseminated online it will be up to Deveron Arts to make arrangements.
I’m very conscious of the fact that updates to this page have been few and far between recently. This has not been because things haven’t been happening; it has more to do with the time involved in maintaining the page as well as the difficulty in deciding what is of general interest and what isn’t. In the light of the online availability of some of my recordings, a number of pages of this website will be receiving an overhaul soon. I’ve also now created a business page on Facebook, and it may be that the current News page on this site could eventually be taken down and replaced by a link to my Facebook page. This will give greater flexibility; it may also allow people to make comments and/or to “sign up” for periodic alerts about the latest developments.
11TH DECEMBER 2007 I’ve recently taken part in another CD project, this time a disc of works by the Aberdonian composer Ronald Center. This CD is now available, and details are on the Recorded samples page. The CDs are available from Deveron Arts (see Links page for details of their website), and I also have a few copies here.
Readers from Aberdeen may be interested to know that I will be performing Chopin’s Op. 10 Studies in the Cowdray Hall lunchbreak series on 22nd January at 12.45pm.
7TH NOVEMBER 2007 It gives me great pleasure to announce that my latest CD recording, “Nielsen Piano Music”, has now been released. Head over to the Recorded samples page for a taster. The CD can be found in various retail outlets, and I also have a number of copies here. For any enquiries about availability please don’t hesitate to contact me. Thanks go to all who helped in this exciting project, including David Martin for maintaining the piano, Niall Mathewson for his painstaking work on sound engineering, Rosy Long for providing a beautiful cover image for the CD, and all at Sound Recording Technology, St. Ives for their help in undertaking the pressing.
A couple of other announcements. On Thursday 8th November at 12.45, I will be giving a recital with the flautist Margaret Preston in the Cowdray Hall, Aberdeen, as part of the sound festival. The programme will consist of John McCabe’s Variations (1963) for solo piano, Edward McGuire’s Prelude No. 3 for solo flute, and Jindrich Feld’s sonata for flute and piano.
On 11th November I will be giving a solo recital for Dunfermline Arts Guild. This will take place in the Carnegie Hall, Dunfermline, at 7.30pm. The programme will contain Mozart, Beethoven, McCabe, Chopin and Liszt.
7TH AUGUST 2007 A couple of reviews of my Caird Hall performance in June have just been brought to my attention; click here to find out more.
I’m now starting to put together a CD containing some of the piano works of Carl Nielsen. These beautifully crafted pieces are not as often heard as they should be, and I hope that my recording will go some small way towards redressing the balance. I’ll be undertaking recording work for the project in September, but so many other factors (mixing, artwork, design and so on) are involved that it’s impossible to announce a definite release date at the moment.
1ST JUNE 2007 On 23rd June I shall be performing Liszt’s Concerto No. 1 in E flat in the Caird Hall, Dundee with Tayside Symphony Orchestra. The concert starts at 7.30pm. Click here for further details.
28TH FEBRUAY 2007 On 2nd March at 7.30pm I shall be performing a programme of Mozart, Beethoven, Schubert and LIszt at Fetteresso Church, Stonehaven.
23RD DECEMBER 2006 I’m going to be giving yet another recital in the Cowdray Hall, Aberdeen as part of the Lunchbreak series, this time on 11th January 2007 (at the usual time of 12.45pm). The programme will consist of Beethoven’s Das Lebewohl sonata (Op. 81a) followed by Ronald Center’s fascinating piano sonata. Center (1913-1973) was an Aberdonian and will be of considerable interest to those carious to find out more about some of the music associated with the city. His magnificent sonata, although very different in style from the Beethoven, charts something of the same spiritual journey - from restlessness, through despair, to final unalloyed triumph.
18TH NOVEMBER 2006 Continuing the theme of recitals in the Cowdray Hall Lunchbreak series, I thought that perhaps those in and around the Aberdeen area might like to know that I’ll be performing again in the Cowdray Hall very soon - on 7th December - this time on my own. The recital starts at 12.45pm as usual. The programme, which contains some of Mozart’s late works, brings to a conclusion this season’s Mozart anniversary celebrations. I’m also going to perform Nielsen’s Chaconne Op. 32. Amid all the attention that has been given to Mozart and Shostakovich, many have overlooked the fact that this year is also the 75th anniversary of Nielsen’s death. I’m becoming increasingly interested in the piano music of Nielsen, much of which is not often played. This music is beautifully written and I certainly plan to include more of it in future recital programmes.
27TH OCTOBER 2006 Those in and around the Aberdeen area on 16th November may be interested to know that I will be performing as part of sound, North East Scotland’s contemporary music festival. This exciting series of concerts spans most of November, and if you are interested in finding out about the other events that will be taking place please click here to visit the official website. My contribution will be a performance with the flautist Margaret Preston in which we will be featuring some of the works included on our recently released Beltane CD (see Recorded samples page for details). Our recital will take place in the Cowdray Hall, Aberdeen, starting at 12.45pm.
1ST AUGUST 2006 I’ve just returned from a highly enjoyable and very successful weekend organised by the Ronald Stevenson Society at the Cathedral of the Isles, Cumbrae.
The programme included lectures and recitals featuring the music of Ronald Stevenson, as well as that of two composers who have had a significant influence on him: Ronald Center and Arnold Bax.
As somebody who has recorded Bax’s First Piano Sonata, I found it particularly interesting to discuss his wider output and to be introduced to the orchestral works as well as pieces by Ronald that draw on the music of Bax.
I performed, among other things, Ronald Center’s magnificent Piano Sonata, a work that deserves far greater attention; I feel a definite kinship with this work (and with Center’s music in general), perhaps some of it emanating from the fact that he, like me, was an Aberdonian.
I also performed some Nielsen (amid the Mozart celebrations many have overlooked the fact that this year is also the 75th anniversary of the Danish composer’s death), as well as one of my own compositions for solo piano.
It was nice to be given the opportunity to perform these lesser-known works before such discerning and knowledgeable listeners, and no doubt much of this repertoire will be possible to include in upcoming concert programmes.
I hugely enjoyed the event as a whole. Each person who contributed had something new and individual to bring to the weekend. I don’t want to single out anyone in particular, since all who gave talks and performances were excellent and I’m grateful to each of them for such enjoyable playing and for introducing us all to such a wealth of new and exciting repertoire.
Above all, my thanks go to all those who organised the conference and made the whole event possible.
13TH MAY 2006 I’m very pleased to be able to announce that the latest CD “Beltane”, produced in collaboration with the flautist Margaret Preston, is now available. Head over to the Recorded samples page for further details. The CD can be obtained in several retail outlets; I also have a number of copies here. For any enquiries about availability please don’t hesitate to contact me.
This is the first CD to feature my own compositions. It also contains music by Ronald Stevenson, Eddie McGuire, George MacIlwham and John Hearne.
I’d like to thank all involved in making this project possible: Margaret, of course, for her wonderful playing and for her general input into the project, Niall Mathewson of the Mill Recording Studio in Banchory for his expert engineering, David Martin of Stonehaven for his meticulous attention to detail when tuning and servicing the two pianos featured on the CD, Rosy Long for providing a vibrant and striking image for the front cover, and all at Sound Recording Technology, St. Ives for their help in putting together the final pressing.
4TH MAY 2006 On Tuesday 16th May I’ll be performing Mozart’s Piano Concerto No. 27 with Aberdeen Sinfonietta in the Music Hall, Aberdeen. The concert starts at 7.30pm. Further information is available here.
1ST APRIL 2006 At last I’ve finally got round to updating the site again! As you’ll see, it’s actually been more of a rewrite than an update. The increasing complexity of the site has pushed the software I’ve been using for web design to its limits, and I’ve therefore decided to transfer everything to a much more professional design package. One of the benefits of this is that the site will be much easier to maintain. I was finding before that in order to insert a minor news item, I’d end up doing an afternoon’s work because I’d have to fit everything else onto the predefined page templates. The package I’m now using is a great deal more flexible, and it will be childsplay to add new items, new pages (I’m hoping eventually to have an Archive section for old news) and so on. During the most recent update, some sections of the site have received more attention than others. The “Programmes” article has simply been ported over from the old site, so I’ll be looking at all this again in due course.
So to music. The main news is that the long-awaited CD of music by living Scottish composers which I’ve been preparing in collaboration with the flautist Margaret Preston is almost ready for pressing. A few small design details for the artwork have yet to be finalised, and we’re also currently waiting for an MCPS licence which will give us copyright permission to use certain items. But there’s very little that needs to be done after that. I can’t say anything absolutely precise about a release date, but I’d anticipate that the first copies will be ready for sale some time during May. The title of the CD, appropriately enough for May, will be “Beltane”. Watch this space for further details of this release.
I’ve also been keeping busy with the usual run of teaching at NESMS and at the University, and with performance of concertos and solo recitals for the Mozart season. Now that it’s easier to update this site, I hope to use this page to announce, much more regularly than before, the dates of important upcoming concerts and other events.
14TH OCTOBER 2005 I have uploaded a preview sample of the new flute and piano CD which will be released in 2006 (see “Other notes” page).
10TH OCTOBER 2005 I have now introduced a “resources” section to this site (see the updated “Other notes” page). This currently contains samples from my CDs and a number of articles that I have written. I hope to add to this with samples from the new CD when these become available, as well as uploading any other written material that may be of interest.
6TH OCTOBER 2005 Several pieces of news are worth reporting now: 1. I have uploaded my paper on pitch-colour associations to this site. This was presented in July at the International Conference on Synaesthesia and Art in Spain. The presentation was well received, as was the recital I gave afterwards. The entire conference was an enjoyable and very worthwhile experience. 2. As part of the Mozart 250th-anniversary celebrations, I’ll be performing two Mozart piano concertos in the Music Hall, Aberdeen during the early part of 2006; details will be posted nearer the time. 3. Recording of the CD of Scottish music, in collaboration with the flautist Margaret Preston, has begun with a single intensive recording session. Several subsequent recording sessions are planned for late 2005 or early 2006 in order to complete the recording, since the disc itself will contain a substantial amount of solo content for each of us in addition to the pieces we have just recorded together. The three compositions of mine that will be included on the CD have, however, been recorded and are ready for transfer to the finished product as soon as all other sections have been completed. 4. In addition to teaching at NESMS and Aberdeen University and to giving the usual set of solo recitals, I have been invited to give several masterclasses this year, including a high-profile event in Edinburgh in early 2006, to be jointly organised by the European Piano Teachers’ Association and the Incorporated Society of Musicians. The most memorable masterclass for me, however, will probably be one I have been asked to conduct at my old secondary school, Portlethen Academy, a place I have not set foot in for over twelve years. In fact, this will be the last time I ever do set foot in the building I used to know so well, because it is due for demolition in the summer of 2006, and will be replaced by a new and much larger building. 5. Owing to volume of sales, my Chopin CD is now undergoing a second pressing.
13TH JULY 2005 Synaethesia lecture-recital in Spain: I will be giving a presentation on music and synaesthesia (click on “Other notes” for details of my interest in this fascinating perceptual phenomenon) at the University of Almeria, Spain, on 26th July 2005. This is part of Artecitta’s International Congress on Synaesthesia and Art. My presentation will consist of a lecture followed by a short recital. In the former, I will discuss my own experiences with synaesthesia and absolute pitch, giving illustrations at the piano. Recording: I am currently putting together a programme of Scottish flute-and-piano music for future recording with the flautist Margaret Preston. The programme will contain works by many of Scotland’s leading composers for the flute. Among the pieces currently being considered are several of my own, including a Sonata which we have performed together on several occasions, to much acclaim. Recent events: I have been undertaking an increasing amount of concerto work recently, particularly with local orchestras. This has included performances of Rachmaninoff’s Paganini Rhapsody with the Aberdeen University Symphony Orchestra in the Music Hall, Aberdeen, and of Tchaikovsky’s Second Piano Concerto with Tayside Symphony Orchestra in the Caird Hall, Dundee. I have also been involved with the thirtieth-anniversary celebrations of the North East of Scotland Music School (see “Links” for further details of the school). Forthcoming local events: I will be performing in the Cowdray Hall on 27th October at 12.45pm. Other local events are in the pipeline; further details will be posted as they become available. |