2012
January: the score of the piano collection children pieces has been published by the German publishers Bellmann Verlag. The new score can be ordered directly from the publishers at http://www.bellmannmusik.de
2011
October: the latest acousmatic work mémoires has been awarded with the 2011 Presque Rien Prize in Paris. The ceremony and world premiere will take place in the Studio 116 at the GRM, Radio France, in Paris on 29th November.
Breathing Silence. An interview with John Palmer
musicologist Cristina Scuderi has interviewed John Palmer early this year. The interview is focused on the electro-acoustic output of the composer and has just been published in English on the Musica/Tecnologia Journal by the Firenze University Press.
The complete interview can also be read online: Breathing Silence. An interview with John Palmer
an interview focused on the world premiere of se potessi will be broadcast on Radio Corax, Germany, UKW 95.9, in the programme Ground Zero at 3.10pm on Friday 9th September. See brodcast details
September: a new work for tape entitled mémoires has been recently written for the Presque Rien Association in Paris using exclusively sounds by the late composer Luc Ferrari.
June: a new work for piano entitled "se potessi" has been completed. "Se potessi" was commissioned by the State Library of Cremona, Italy and is based on a poem by Leopoldo Verona. The world premiere will take place in the church of Gollma, in Northern Germany, on 11th September on occasion of the Tag des offenen Denkmals and will be performed by Maria-Clara Thiele.
March: new CD recording. The new work transference, for flute, clarinet, violin, cello and piano, has been recorded on CD by the Italian ensemble Interensemble. The CD has been released by the Italian label Taukay (see also CDs)
February: cellist Matias De Olivera Pinto plays the world premiere of trans-solo 4 at the BKA Theater in Berlin on 15th February
2010
26th November, All Frontiers Festival, Gradisca d'Isonzo, Italy: Italian pianist Agnese Toniutti will perform the Italian premiere of glimpse, written on the death of John Cage in August 1992. Graduated from the conservatories of Udine and Venice, with a thesis on Giacinto Scelsi, Agnese Toniutti undertook further studies in piano and chamber music with François-Joel Thiollier, Massimiliano Damerini, Lya De Barberiis and Pamela Mia Paul. As a soloist and chamber music pianist she is active in several chamber and choral groups while dedicating herself to the contemporary piano repertoire and multimedia performance. She has performed at the Mozarteum in Salzburg with the Simultaneo Ensemble Venezia, at Palazzo Cavagnis and Palazzo Pisani in Venice, at the Strehler Theater of Milan on a live RAI broadcast, and in the USA at the University of North Texas and the UNT Concert Hall in Denton (Texas), and in the UK at the Shropshire Foundation.
October-November: the score of a day poem is presented at SCHUNCK* in Heerlen, Netherlands, during the Anarchy of Silence - John Cage and Experimental Art Exhibition (http://www.schunk.nl)
October: the world premiere of transference, performed by Interensemble, has taken place at the Contemporanea Festival, Udine, on 17th October.
Interensemble performing transference in Udine at the Contemporanea Festival
September: the world premiere of trans-solo 2, for solo clarinet, has taken place at the "Settembre in Musica" Festival in Ascoli Piceno, Italy on 16th September. The perfomer was Federico Paci. For further details see: http://www.ascolipicenofestival.com
July: the brand new quintet transference (for flute, clarinet, violin, cello and piano) has been awarded with a Special Mention and the Medal of the President of the Italian Republic at the 2010 Citta' di Udine Eighth International Competition for Composers.
new work: transference, for flute, clarinet, violin, cello and piano, commissioned by the The Modern Art Sextet. The German premiere will take place at the Konzerthaus in Berlin on 19.1.2011.
new works: trans-solos 1-4. Four solo pieces for piano, clarinet, violin and cello following a previous commission from the "Eppur si muove" foundation.
New commission. The Modern Art Sextet has commissioned a new chamber work for 5 instruments which will be premiered in Berlin during the 2011-12 season.
January: on 28th January the works inwards and "...as it flies..." are diffused at The Place, London, at 8pm in the contemporary dance performance entitled "Across and Beyond" by Material Sequence, the dance company of choreographer Laura Krasnic. www.theplace.org.uk
Some reviews:
"Amorphous yet crystalline" Donald Hutera (critic for Dance Europe, Dance Now, The Times, Time Out)
"Heavenly to listen to - and to watch" Eileen Strong (freelance critic)
Liv O'Donoghue and Abi Kessel-Massei of "Material Sequence" dancing on Spirits
January: the new score of the piano collection Musica Reservata has been completed. The collection consists of 12 short piano pieces written in 1988-1989 which can also be performed separately. The new score is available as pdf file.
2009
December: "...as it flies..." in Barcelona
The work "...as it flies..." in its original 8-channel version will be heard from 11th to 13th December at the Zeppelin 2009 Festival in Barcelona (see "performances" for details)
October: the new score of Concertino for orchestra, winner of the 1992 Surrey Sinfonietta Composition Prize, has been completed. The full score and parts are available as pdf files.
July: the work Transient has been selected at the 36th Bourges International Competition Electroacoustic Music 2009 in Section II: Trivium - 3rd category. 'Transient' has been released on the new CD below (SCD28059).
May: the work Transient has been selected by the Japanese Society of Electronic Music for performance at the JSEM/MSJ Electroacoustic Festival taking place at Nagoya City, Japan, in May 2009. The world premiere of the acousmatic version took place on 10th May.
 2009 - new CD out on sargasso
works included:
INWARDS: Antje Langkafel (bass flute), John Palmer (electronics)
DRANG: Sergej Tchirkov (accordion)
TRANSIENT: Lydia Kucht (soprano), John Palmer (prepared piano & electronics)
TRANSFIGURATION: Vinko Globokar (trombone), John Palmer (electronics)
FADO: Yseult Jost and Domingos Costa (piano)
John Palmer presents a series of compositions exploring breath and the process of breathing. The instruments are often pushed to the limit of their possibilities while blending with their electronic counterpart in order to express the humanity and spirituality of breath. As Simon Emmerson writes in his introductory notes: 'For the works on this CD Palmer takes his inspiration - in all senses! - from the breath. He has created an extraordinarily varied, colourful and sensitive world which invites and rewards our deep listening.' CD Catalogue No. SCD 28059
2008
October: the revisions of You (for solo trombone and chamber orchestra) and Legend (for solo harp and chamber orchestra) have been completed. The full score and parts are now available as pdf files.
July 2008: present otherness on CD
The new electronic work present otherness, commissioned by Jonathan Harvey, has been released on the sargasso CD 'Other Presences', a compilation of brand new music including works by Jonathan Harvey, John Palmer and other composers. CD Catalogue No. SCD 28057
blurring definitions, hypothesis and antithesis: three new works for quartet (flute, violin, cello and percussion) have been completed in June. The three works are all interconnected thematically and have been written for the Cadillac Moon Ensemble of New York.
June: John Palmer interviews Simon Emmerson: An interview with Simon Emmerson has been completed in conjunction with Emmerson's new CD. The interview is released in "Tempo", British journal of Contemporary Music, January 2009.
May: commission from The New York Miniaturist Ensemble for a duo for violin and clarinet to be premiered in New York.
May: new work transient, for soprano, prepared piano and electronics
"Based on a text written in 1988 in memory of a friend, transient is scored for soprano, prepared piano and two electronic sources, one being processed live, the other consisting of the text - whispered, spoken and sung by the soprano - recorded and transformed in the electronic studio. Another vocal source is breathing, imagined as a surreal metaphor of life after life. The unfolding of the music is based on a relational system where a word (a phrase, or a concept) of the poem is associated to a specific pitch. Thus syntactic relations between pitch and word (meaning) become musical phrases articulated in six sections corresponding to the six verses of the text".
April: new piano work Three cadenzas on Mozart
"4th April 1990: I play Mozart's piano concerto in C-minor, KV 491, including my own cadenza for the first movement. 18 years later I accidentally find an old manuscript with the cadenza I had forgotten about and decide to add two variations to it. 4th April 2008: the three cadenzas now constitute a “self-contained” triptych unfolding in gradual tonal evolution and celebrating the art and joy of improvisation not only as an integral part of the old concerto performance, but also as a musical experience to be enjoyed beyond historical styles and as an independent and idiosyncratic practice."
The university of Oldenburg (Germany) has invited John Palmer to give a lecture on his music on 27th June 2008.
piano duo Domingos Costa and Yseult Yost performing fado at the Théatre National de Montbéliard, France
In the Temple, in its new 8-channel version, will be diffused at the Harvest Moon Festival in Montreal on 3rd October 2008
new work: present otherness
Commissioned in 2007 by Jonathan Harvey, present otherness has been completed in January 2008. It is a work for tape for 2- or 8-channels. The commission involved the composition of acousmatic music solely based on the trumpet recordings played by Markus Stockhausen for Harvey's work "other presences". Present otherness shall be released on CD by the sargasso label, London, in May-June.
27th October: world premiere of the revised version of In the Temple at the Arena Festival, Riga, Latvia.
27th October: interview at the Latvian National Radio.
 
rehearsing In the Temple in an ex-Soviet factory in Riga, now used by the Arena Festival
15th-19th October: Mastercourse at the Latvian Academy of Music, in Riga, Latvia. Workshop on nowhere.
Thoughts on the new work fado, for 4-hands piano, commissioned by piano duo Domingos Costa and Yseult Yost: "Longing, nostalgia, sadness, pain and much more to it: the Portuguese fado resembles a formidable stage for feelings of all sorts, including love and happiness. But it is the “saudade” - a yearning for another 'place' and elusive 'otherness' - that strikes me as being the most moving feature of this song genre.
By extrapolating the fado from its traditional settings such as text, form and instrumentation I have proposed an almost surreal musical rendering for two pianists where words have been replaced by fragments of melodies and traditional harmonic progressions often re-proposed and interspersed by the resonances of the piano. This music was written for Domingos Costa and Yseult Jost to whom is dedicated.
28th June: In the Temple at the Electronic Studios of the Technical University, Berlin, 6.00 pm. TU Berlin, EN8, Room 324, Einsteinufer 17, 10587 Berlin. http://www.kgw.tu-berlin.de/Studio/ Ubahn Ernst-Reuter-Platz. Sbahn Tiergarten
26th June: world premiere of over, for solo violin at the BKA in Berlin. Theodor Flindell, violin
Theodor Flindell, violin. over (world premiere)
2nd June: afterglow is diffused at the Michaelis Theatre, University of Roehampton, London. MFA Choreography: Laura Krasnic
22nd May: performance of inwards at the BKA in Berlin. Klaus Schöpp (bass flute), John Palmer (live-electronics)
Klaus Schöpp (bass & contra-bass flute)
20th May: performance of inwards in Brandenburg, at the Brandenburg Theatre. Klaus Schöpp (bass flute), John Palmer (live-electronics)
7th April: broadcast premiere of In the Temple, DeutschlandRadio. Broadcast at 0.05 (the night of 6th April!)
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