John Palmer

news

2010

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. The premiere will take place at the Teatro San Giorgio, Udine, on 17th October.

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)

November: the recordings of five early piano works of the 1970s and 1980s have been discovered in the archives of the composer. The works are: shambala, beginning, stream, gone by and sketches. The new scores will be produced soon.

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!)


Heidelberg, Main Aula, University, 5th November 2006: without (world premiere). Utae Nagakawa (violin)

Heidelberg, 5th November 2006: world premiere of without
The world premiere of without took place at the Heidelberg Biennale for New Music and was given by violinist Utae Nagakawa.


Trossingen, Musikhochschule, 3rd November 2006: inwards. Antje Langkafel (bass flute), John Palmer (electronics)

London, 23rd June 2006: world premiere of afterglow
The world premiere of afterglow is given by ELEVEN, Detta Danford (fl), Arianna Palin (pno), Rick Campion (electronics) with John Palmer (electronics) at The Space, Enterprise '06 festival (www.space.org.uk).

London, 18th June 2006: performance of nowhere
nowhere is performed in London on Sunday 18th June, 7.30pm. Bush Hall, Shepherd's Bush London W12. Sounds Underground concert (www.soundsunderground.org) with Katherine Spencer (clarinet), Iain Farrington (piano), Andrew Morgan and John Palmer (live electronics).

2006: NEW CD including waka, "...as it flies...", nowhere (www.sargasso.com)
For his new CD John Palmer has collaborated with the versatile and innovative Ensemble Omega in Germany. The three new compositions presented here go from the purely acoustic waka to the purely electronic ''...as it flies...'' and are all concerned with metric and perceptive correlation between musical and literary forms. John Palmer asks: ''Can music be perceived as poetry? Can sounds, as doors of perception, emulate, equal, or even surpass the evocative imagery of verbal description?''. Waka explores Japanese literary metric forms and applies them to the musical structures. By contrast, ''...as it flies...'' which is dedicated to composer Luc Ferrari who died last year, uses as its only sound source the words of William Blake's 'Eternity' poem. Finally, nowhere is inspired by a poem written by Palmer himself.

New commission: In the Temple
Deutschland Radio Berlin has commissioned a new work to be broadcast on 7th April 2007. The title of this acousmatic work is In the Temple and is inspired by an underground temple in the Italian Pre-Alps.


Temple recording in Northern Italy, April-September
John Palmer has recorded several sessions of instrumental and vocal samples in the underground Temple of Humankind in Northern Italy (Federation of Damanhur) in conjunction with the new work In the Temple commissioned by DeutschlandRadio.

Stuttgart, 16th June 2006: world premiere of Transfiguration
The electronics for Transfiguration (for trombone and electronics) was completed at the end of May. The trombone part, originally played by Vinko Globokar, was recorded at the studios of the Technical University, Berlin, in December 1999. The world premiere took place 16th June 2006 in Stuttgart. Patrick Crossland (trombone) and John Palmer (electronics). See PERFORMANCES for details.

London, 23rd June: world premiere of afterglow
ELEVEN, a London-based ensemble for contemporary music and multimedia have commissioned a new work for alto flute, piano, electronics. The premiere took place in London at The Space, on 23rd June.


Berlin, BKA, 27th December 2005: almost (world premiere). Matias De Olivera Pinto (cello)

Rome, 16th November 2005, Goethe Institut: nowhere. Maria Carla Notarstefano (piano), Federico Paci (clarinet), John Palmer (electronics)

London, 24th November 2005: after silence (I) premiered in London
A SARGASSO:C CONCERT took place at London's Salon des Arts on 21st July 2005. John Palmer premiered the first movement of a new work for piano & electronics called after silence. On this occasion he created an ad hoc version for Fender Rhodes piano. He also joined flautist Paul Cheneour, Daniel Biro and Paul Chauncy in a final jam session.

London, 29th October, Goldsmiths College, University of London
Harpsichordist Jane Chapman participated to a symposium at Goldsmiths College, University of London, called 'Listening to Others'. The symposium explored non mainstream influences on contemporary music. Jane Chapman discussed Encounter (for harpsichord, world percussion and electronics) and played some extracts of the work. The Ian Gulland Theatre, Goldsmiths College, New Cross, London SE14 6NW.

21st September: completion of Javanese Gamelan recording

John Palmer at the Javanese Gamelan in Montebello, Italy

On 21st September John Palmer and Giovanni Sciarrino have finalized the recording of the complete Javanese Gamelan orchestra. This is a unique collection of 548 original samples of Javanese Gamelan instruments, the first of this kind. The project began in September 2004. The Complete Javanese Gamelan Catalogue will be commercially available soon on the sargasso label.

London, 21st July: Spirits performed at the Sargasso: C CONCERT in London
Despite the bomb scare, the SARGASSO:C CONCERT took place at London's Salon des Arts on 21st July 2005. John Palmer performed his classic meditative piece Spirits for synthesizer. He also joined clarinetist Gareth Davis, Daniel Biro and Paul Chauncy in a group improvisation at the end of the concert.

commissions in 2005:
without, for solo violine, commissioned by Utae Nakagawa
Inwards, for bass flute solo or with live electronics, commissioned by Antje Langkafel and the Landesmuseum Stuttgart
from the lake, for oboe and piano, commissioned by Piet Van Bockstal
over for solo violine, commissioned by the Modern Art Sextet, Berlin
almost for solo cello, commissioned by the Modern Art Sextet, Berlin

new writing by Sergej Tchirkov on Drang
Russian young accordion virtuoso Sergej Tchirkov has recently written a thesis on Drang (for solo accordion), a work he is currently championing in Europe. The thesis was awarded with “distinction” by the State Conservatory of Music Rimsky-Korsakov in St.Petersburg. Here the details:
State Conservatory of Music Rimsky-Korsakov, St. Petersburg, Accordion Department. State Examination for the Degree of Master of Arts
Title: John Palmer's "Drang": A Methodic Analysis of Performance Techniques with Commentary, by Sergej Tchirkov.

within (piano concerto)
The revision of the Piano Concerto within has been completed with a newly re-written solo microtonal piano part. The work is scored for piano solo, orchestra and choir.