News

March 2008

Recording for CD of 'the burden'd air' for cello and live electronics; Matthew Barley, cello, with Carl Faia, sound engineer.

30 March Peter has been invited by The Sage Gateshead, to write and direct a new cello concerto for Matthew Barley and the Northern Sinfonia. The performance will be preceded by a week of improvisation workshops, led by Peter and Matthew. These workshops will be for local musicians and for the Sinfonia players themselves, who will improvise in the piece. Entitled 'To the shades of the departed', as part of a concert in The Sage Jazz Festival. Peter also directs works by Mark Anthony Turnage, David Lang and Mike Gibbs.

January 2008

11 January Premiere of new work for clarinet and piano, Peter Sparks and Matthew Schellhorn in the Park Lane Group's 'Young Artists New Year Series'.

13-14 January Returning to bcmg to conduct 4 family concerts. Programme to include pieces by Boulez, Reich, Knussen, Cashian, Stravinsky and Peter's new arrangment of his piece for piano and percussion, 'That man's talking nonsense', for ensemble. With graphics and live video by Terry Braun.

August 2007

17 August Peter conducts BBC Young Composers Prom and is panellist for the Young Composers Competition.

19-27 August Chamber Music International. Peter and Martin Butler deliver the composition seminars and classes which form part of this leading international residential course, held at Purcell Scholl of Music.

July 2007

28 July BBC Proms - Prom 21. Peter conducts his work, He is Armoured Without at the 2007 Proms on Brass Day, for the BBC Philharmonic, soloists Torbjorn Hultmark, David Purser, musicians from Uzbekistan, the Coldstream Guards, plus 100 more brass players.

May 2007

4 May 25-piece Brunel improvising ensemble, ‘Brunel new noise’ performs in Canterbury , The Orange Street Music Club, starting at 8.30pm.

March 2007

13-15 March Newcastle. Working with choreographer/video maker Gretchen Schiller and Sally Jane Norman director of Culture Lab (www.ncl.ac.uk/culturelab) using video capture as the basis of making new work based on Wiegold’s conducting, as part of their ‘Cultural Technologies of the Body’ project.

10 March Peter will work with young Cardiff musicians on the music for the Working Title film, Hunky Dory, with Catherine Zeta Jones, to be filmed summer 07.

19 March Peter will once again conduct Southbank Sinfonia for part of their spring season, at St John’s, Waterloo. Programme will be Ligeti’s Chamber Concerto, Ramifications for string orchestra and Stravinsky’s Pulcinella.

28 March Peter conducts the opening concert of the Cologne Festival, Berio Accordo.

February 2007

Workshops in Glasgow and Manchester with members of the BBCSCO and BBCPO and young composers, as part of preparations for the Young Composers Prom

Final edits made to Rand Steiger’s ‘Traversing ‘for ‘cello, string orchestra and live electronics recoded by Peter with Matthew Barley and the Southbank Sinfonia last September, prior to its release in America.

13 Feb Music-theatre Workshop. Extra workshop led by Gretchen Schiller and I. She is a Brunel drama lecturer/choreographer/video maker, who is working with me on video capture based on my conducting. This will be an exploratory workshop about the relation of the musical and the physical, including drama students alongside music students.

January 2007

Sees Peter conducting Northern Sinfonia at The Sage Gateshead in a performance of Martyn Harry’s ‘The Spell’. This is a return visit, after the recent success last October of ‘Anthem for Northumberland’, with Nitin Sawney.