Howard Assembly Room, Leeds, UK

Commissioned by Opera North as part of the Britten’s Friday Afternoons project, Charlotte is writing two songs for a compilation new song book, which is for children from four schools in Yorkshire to sing.

Opera North
Friday Afternoons

Symphony Hall, Birmingham

Jac van Steen  conductor
Youth Orchestra of the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra

Charlotte Bray  New Work (World premiere – Feeney Trust commission)
Wagner   Tristan und Isolde: Symphonic Synthesis (arr. Stokowski)
R Strauss  Also Sprach Zarathustra

Kings Place, London

Off the Rails & All at Sea   solo piano
Three Rhapsodies   clarinet quintet
Midnight Interludes   cello & clarinet
Replay   piano quartet

The Benyounes Quartet

with

Joseph Houston piano
and Harry Cameron-Penny clarinet

more info
kings place website

Sunday 9 June 2013
15:00  (ends approx 3.45pm) No interval

Orford Church, Suffolk, UK

Ronald Corp conductor
New London Children’s Choir

more info

Aldeburgh Festival
Tuesday 18 June 2013
15:00 (ends approx 16.25)

Britten Studio, Snape

Lucy Schaufer mezzo-soprano
Birmingham Contemporary Music Group

February 2014

Wednesday 15 May 2013

7.15pm

Purcell Room, Southbank Centre, London

Benjamin Britten: Canticle 3 (Still falls the rain), Op.55 for tenor, horn & piano
Hannah Kendall: On the chequer’d field arrayed for piano (World premiere)
Interval
Charlotte Bray: Yellow leaves for soprano & piano (World premiere)
Sir Peter Maxwell Davies: Sea Eagle for solo horn

more info
buy tickets here

Preconcert event: Katie Derham in discussion with composers Charlotte Bray and Hannah Kendall

The concert includes the premiere of Three Rhapsodies, an arrangement of my Saxophone Quartet Throw Back, for clarinet and string quartet. Alongside this we’ll be treated to the Mozart Clarinet Quintet, Stravinsky’s Three piece for Clarinet Solo, and Britten’s Divertimenti. I’m is delighted to announce that the Benyounes String Quartet, Adam Newman (viola), and Harry Cameron-Penny (clarinet) will to perform the concert.

Sunday 19 May 2013
7.30pm

This recital takes its title from another major guitar work of the 20th century, Nicholas Maw’s Music of Memory - an intricate set of variations on a theme from Mendelssohn’s String Quartet in A minor. It is coupled with premiere recordings of Maw’s Little Suite for Guitar; Peter Racine Fricker’s dramatic, Spanish-inflected Paseo, commissioned by Julian Bream, but never recorded; and works by Bayan Northcott, John McCabe and Joseph Atkins. Finally, the recording features two new works commissioned by Antonis from Charlotte Bray and Matthew Taylor, with support from the Britten-Pears Foundation.

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Long before my career as composer began, I heard the playing of cellist Guy Johnston. We were teenagers in fact, and he had just won the BBC Young Musician Prize. As a cellist at the time, I greatly aspired to become as technically proficient as Johnston, and yearned to be able to express emotion as he did through my own playing. Although I went on to study cello at conservatoire level, I soon found my true love- composition- through which I could express myself far more efficiently than I was ever able to on my instrument. Needless to say, I am totally thrilled to be working with Guy all these years later.

The opportunity to work with practitioners from other art forms is a very special and exciting prospect. I’m absolutely thrilled to have formed a partnership with dancer and choreographer, Jiří Bubeníček. Bubeníček is one of the world’s best dancers and creative minds. He is currently Principal Dancer of the Semperoper Ballet, Dresden. He has become over time one of the world’s sought after choreographers, having works premiered with the New York City, Zurich, Hamburg, Dreden Semperoper, and the China National Ballet. A fantastic partner for this project, Bubeníček is enthused about cross-genre collaboration and he has a wealth of experience in the field, particularly in working with musicians.

Creatively the project is in its infancy and we are exploring many directions. What is certain is that the work centers musically around the cellist Guy Johnston, and it will explore composing with electronics, through which I am collaborating with sound engineer Moritz Capellmann. This artistic partnership presents me with the opportunity to explore working in a totally new way. Crossing boundaries and exploring the relationship between the two art forms, the piece aims to freely collaborate and improvise, resulting in an exciting, distinctive new work.

Performances of the work are already scheduled and we’re in the process of planning a UK and Europe-wide tour. But we need your help!

Realising a project such as this will take a huge amount of initiative on our behalf and an enormous amount of support. We’re currently looking for co-commissioners for the piece, private and corporate sponsors, as well as Crowdfunding in order to make the project happen.

We’re inspired, are you? Join us on this exciting journey and help us make it happen!

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FURTHER DETAILS

Please contact me if you are an organisation, venue, festival, corporation, or individual with an interest in donating to or co-commissioning the work. We need you!

THE PRINCIPAL ARTISTS

• Composer Charlotte Bray, from High Wycombe (UK)
• Choreographer Jiří Bubeníček, Principal Dancer of the Semperoper Ballet, Dresden, (Germany)
• Cellist Guy Johnston, based in London
• Dancer(s) from Jiří Bubeníček’s company (Germany)
• Sound Engineer Moritz Capellmann, based in Berlin and Paris

MANAGEMENT

• General manager: Barbara Maria Rathbone, Musica Universalis
• Tour manager and admin support: Sean Rourke
• Communications management: Jessica Bray, freelance communications planning expert, and Emily Bray, digital marketing director, MindShare (Australia).

A huge thank you goes out already to Barbara Maria Rathbone (Musica Universalis) and Sean Rourke, who are managing the project. And to my sister, Jessica Bray, for all her support and expertise in the communications planning.