We are looking for commissioners, performers and composers to create and give online premieres of new solo pieces for a range of instruments and levels.
- Commissioners: the suggested contribution is £50, which would to be matched by CoMA. Commissioners may suggest their own composer or opt for CoMA to choose
- Performers: the call for players has been extended to those keen to take part without presenting a premiere, but rather leave it to a professional who has worked with CoMA in the past.
- Composers: interested in being commissioned and being matched up with a volunteer CoMA performer to create the solo work
Mentoring: some younger composers may opt to be teamed with an experienced CoMA composer for advice along the way; likewise, CoMA performers may similarly be ‘teamed’ with professional player, to work on the piece via video where possible.
The project’s Director is Piers Hellawell
Deafening silemce
The first to be recorded was Defening Silence for piano, its composer Greg Caffrey finding it “a real challenge to keep the music within the technical boundaries required to allow it to be accessible to as many varied performers as possible, from Grade IV right up to professional performers, and at the same time create something thoughtful and interesting”. Such a performance is offered by CoMA East Midlands pianist Antony Clare.
Antony comments “Greg’s piece is really beautiful and can be enjoyed by all pianists of Grade 4+ technical standard. This is a fantastic project – many thanks to Piers for the idea and to CoMA for picking up the ball and running with it.”
All about Snoob
A piece for solo bassoon, written by Piers Hellawell for Jeremy Crump.
Piers’ programme note explains “All About Snoob is a character piece. Snoob is a louche character – a wit, of some learning, a flâneur who is now somewhat down at heel – the type who seems to know everybody, without having any obvious profession. Everyone runs into Snoob, but no one knows much of Snoob’s history… Such characters add colour to the tapestry of other lives but seem to lack any clear framework to their own; in chance encounters they point out things we had not thought of, even things we wished we had not thought of – but then they’re gone, as if only to exist for that gad-fly purpose – stinging us into seeing things through another’s imagination. Such characters leave much of what they feel hidden away; maybe they only exist at all in our own consciousness. So this is all about Snoob.”
Jeremy says “I’ve found this project very interesting and have greatly enjoyed working with Piers. There is now an excellent new bassoon piece, which should be of interest to bassoonists in CoMA and everywhere else, and I have personally benefitted from the discipline of producing something sufficiently accurate to be worth recording.”
Recollections
Composer Ruta Vitkauskaite has played written and written for CoMA London, was a tutor at the CoMA Summer School in Orkney and, this year has been instrumental in establishing CoMA Glasgow. For the Triangles Project, she has written a piece for solo oboe, Recollections, which has been performed and recorded by Jane Carrington-Porter.
Gardenscape
A piece for solo violin by Emily Doolitle and it is premiered by Ruta Vitkauskaite who has recently set up CoMA Glasgow.
Emily writes:
“After lockdown began, I initially found it very hard to compose…
But as I spent day, after day, after day, only in my flat or in the shared garden behind it, I came to realise that the ever-shifting soundscape of the garden was a perfect counterpoint to my ever-shifting state of mind.
The wood pigeons in variously comforting, invigorating, or annoying, depending on my own mood: the blackbird can poeticize my melancholy, or remind me of the beauty that is still around.
Gardenscape provides the ingredients for the performer to recrate their own series of ever-varying Glasgow garden soundscapes.”