Debut Discs ambassador Sir Peter Maxwell Davies talks about the current social climate and its impact on emerging composers.
"An opportunity like this that NMC gives to these very, very deserving and talented composers is, not only for me but for all of us, a chance to learn, a chance to come in to contact with something which is vibrant and alive ... they really do feel that it is a hell of a job to break through and to get anybody to take any notice of them and I'm very moved and very touched that this wonderful opportunity is presented to these young people to get their work out there" - Peter Maxwell Davies
"There's no card, business card, better than a compact disc for a composer. It doesn't half impress people and they get a long way on it ... these composers they will get more performances, more commissions, more recognition just by having that disc" - Peter Maxwell Davies
"From having to pay back money for their education, to having to earn money for whatever reason, when they don't get the grants that they used to get they don't get the scholarships that they used to get to study. These things have made it very, very tough for a lot young musicians, particularly young composers. And I'd just like to say one thing which I think is very, very serious; coming from my background, had I been born much later and been going into the Royal Academy or to university now and I would have had to have borrowed money in order to do that, my parents would have said "no, it is immoral to borrow money, you never do it". And I wouldn't have had the education ... people like John Ogdon, Harrison Birtwistle, Elgar Howarth, and I wouldn't have had a look in" - Peter Maxwell Davies
This recording of music by Sam Hayden is released on NMC Recordings in CD, MP3 and FLAC format. Visit http://www.nmcrec.co.uk/debut-discs for more information and to purchase.
NMC's Debut Discs project offers emerging British composers an international platform for their work. Released over four years from June 2012, each of the 12 discs will be devoted to a single composer's work, branded as part of the Debut Discs series.
The series has the ambassadorial support of Sir Peter Maxwell Davies and a fantastic collaboration with BA (Hons) Graphic Design students at Central Saint Martins College of Arts and Design who have designed the artwork for the covers. Cover artwork for Sam's disc (featured at the start of this video) is by Virgil Ferragut.
With thanks to all the funders who made this series possible and to our UK distributor RSK Entertainment (http://www.rskentertainment.co.uk) who helped produce this video.
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NMC Recordings is a record label and registered charity (no. 328052), established in 1989 to record and promote the best in British contemporary classical music.
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This recording of music by Huw Watkins is released on NMC Recordings in CD, MP3 and FLAC format. Visit http://www.nmcrec.co.uk/debut-discs for more information and to purchase.
NMC's Debut Discs project offers emerging British composers an international platform for their work. Released over four years from June 2012, each of the 12 discs will be devoted to a single composer's work, branded as part of the Debut Discs series.
The series has the ambassadorial support of Sir Peter Maxwell Davies and a fantastic collaboration with BA (Hons) Graphic Design students at Central Saint Martins College of Arts and Design who have designed the artwork for the covers.
Cover artwork for Huw's disc (featured at the start of this video) is by Sabba Keynejad.
With thanks to all the funders who made this series possible and to our UK distributor RSK Entertainment (http://www.rskentertainment.co.uk) who helped produce this video.
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NMC Recordings is a record label and registered charity (no. 328052), established in 1989 to record and promote the best in British contemporary classical music.
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This recording of music by Dai Fujikura is released on NMC Recordings in CD, MP3 and FLAC format. Visit http://www.nmcrec.co.uk/debut-discs for more information and to purchase.
NMC's Debut Discs project offers emerging British composers an international platform for their work. Released over four years from June 2012, each of the 12 discs will be devoted to a single composer's work, branded as part of the Debut Discs series.
The series has the ambassadorial support of Sir Peter Maxwell Davies and a fantastic collaboration with BA (Hons) Graphic Design students at Central Saint Martins College of Arts and Design who have designed the artwork for the covers.
Cover artwork for Dai's disc (featured at the start of this video) is by Natalie Braune.
With thanks to all the funders who made this series possible and to our UK distributor RSK Entertainment (http://www.rskentertainment.co.uk) who helped produce this video.
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NMC Recordings is a record label and registered charity (no. 328052), established in 1989 to record and promote the best in British contemporary classical music.
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http://www.nmcrec.co.uk/debut-discs
In December last year we briefed the BA (Hons) Graphic Design students on the project and what they needed to consider when creating a CD cover, and invited Huw Watkins, Helen Grime, Dai Fujikura and Sam Hayden to talk about their music and compositional process to help inspire their designs.
The final designs for the 12 releases in this series were selected by a judging panel including composer Colin Matthews, graphic designer (4AD and Bella Union) Vaughan Oliver and Guardian/ BBC Radio 3 journalist Tom Service.
The collaboration allows the work of new designers to be showcased alongside the music of up-and-coming composers, forging connections between the emerging talents and illustrating the connections between the two contemporary arts forms.
Congratulations to the following students who will have their artwork featured on the front covers of this series.
Ross Aitken
Idil Ateşli
Natalie Braune (artwork features on the Dai Fujikura cover)
Nick Carter
Clelia Colantonio
Virgil Ferragut (artwork features on the Sam Hayden cover)
Zheng Rui Hu
Sabba Keynejad (artwork features on the Huw Watkins cover)
DaEun Lee
May Yan Man
Hanna Piatrusha
Gilad Visotsky
National Youth Orchestra of Great Britain performing Anna Meredith's HandsFree at the PRS for Music Foundation launch party (January 2012)
HandsFree enables NYO's young musicians, from all over Britain, to share their musicianship and creative inventiveness without their instruments, through clapping, body percussion and beatboxing. Set for flashmob style performances in cities nationwide and as a surprise opener/encore to NYO concerts, Anna shaped HandsFree in workshops with members of the NYO, in her words, 'building a piece they're excited to perform and want to own, that showcases their virtuosity to audiences old and new'.
This new composition is part of New Music 20x12, the brainchild of Jillian Barker and David Cohen who wanted to put new music at the heart of the Olympic celebrations in 2012. It is delivered by PRS for Music Foundation in partnership with BBC Radio 3, LOCOG and NMC Recordings
All New Music 20x12 recordings are available on NMC Recordings, for more information visit http://www.nmcrec.co.uk/new-music-20x12
Saxton's epic opera merges Christian and Jewish tradition in the myth of the eternal outsider, the Wandering Jew.
'The action shuttles through space and time, beginning in a Nazi death camp, going back to Jerusalem during the Roman occupation, then forward to Córdoba in the 11th century and to the Venice carnival in the 18th, and including confrontations with Faust, Mephistopheles, Odin and Kundry en route' Guardian
Commissioned for broadcast by BBC Radio 3, the work features soloists including Roderick Williams, Tim Mirfin, Teresa Cahill and Brindley Sherratt; the BBC Singers and BBC Symphony Orchestra conducted by Andre de Ridder; and post-production from Antony Pitts.
'This project blew me away ... Saxton's tonal (or modal) musical language ranges from the cinematic spectacular to rapt spirituality' The Times (*****)
This recording is available on NMC Recordings (NMC D170)
http://www.nmcrec.co.uk/recording/wandering-jew-0
Produced in association with BBC Radio 3
With thanks to the Peter Moores Foundation and John Fell Oxford University Press (OUP) Research Fund.
Sir Harrison Birtwistle talks to conductor Ryan Wigglesworth about the three works recorded on NMC's new CD: The Shadow of Night,
Night's Black Bird and The Cry of Anubis.
This recording is available on NMC Recordings (NMC D156) http://www.nmcrec.co.uk/recording/nights-black-bird
Take a look at Birtwistle's Aleatoric Pebble too, which we filmed at the end of the interview. http://youtu.be/GbtspU4aGx0
http://www.nmcrec.co.uk/recording/big-meeting
Lumsdaine's poetic collage was recorded on location at the Durham Miners' Gala, 1971 - a large annual gathering associated with the coal mining heritage of the region, and known as The Big Meeting. This remarkable work assembles snatches of brass bands, choirs, speech and song alongside the sounds of a historic occasion.
"Big Meeting is remarkable not only as a technical feat — I can't think of a electronic work that gives a more vivid sense of movement within a particular geography —but also as a haunting evocation of a lost world. If the sound of the miners' hymn in Durham Cathedral doesn't bring a tear to your eye, you must be one of the Koch brothers" Alex Ross, The Rest is Noise
This recording is available on NMC Recordings (NMC D171)
http://www.nmcrec.co.uk/recording/big-meeting
http://www.nmcrec.co.uk/recording/unknown-britten
This recording on NMC features eight premiere works: the 3 songs originally intended to be part of Les Illuminations, recorded here by French soprano Sandrine Piau; In memoriam Dennis Brain for four solo horns and strings; the Rondo Concertante for piano and strings, featuring pianist Rolf Hind, the Untitled Fragment for Strings; Variations for Solo Piano; and the completion of Movements for a Clarinet Concerto, with soloist Michael Collins. The Northern Sinfonia is conducted by its Music Director, Thomas Zehetmair.
GRAMOPHONE EDITOR'S CHOICE & CD OF THE MONTH · INTERNATIONAL RECORD REVIEW OUTSTANDING RECORDING · THE SUNDAY TIMES BEST RELEASES OF 2009
"One of the most important Britten recordings in many a year." Gramophone
"Seriously beautiful ...buy it for Les Illuminations; savour it for those new discoveries." Radio 3 CD Review
This recording is available on NMC Recordings (NMC D140)
http://www.nmcrec.co.uk/recording/unknown-britten
http://www.nmcrec.co.uk/recording/nmc-songbook
To mark its 20th Anniversary in 2009, NMC Recordings commissioned The NMC Songbook. Nearly 100 composers, ranging from the country's most highly regarded figures to the younger generation of emerging talents, each wrote a song on the theme of 'Britain', for single voice or duet and a range of accompanying instruments.
The songs are set to text chosen by the composers and cover a vast array of subjects, from lyrics by Blake and Byron and schoolbook rhymes listing the Kings and Queens of England, to extracts from a National Trust brochure, chants from the Leyton Orient terraces, a recipe for whisky, and road rage at the shopping centre Lakeside. Songs are interspersed with instrumental interludes from versions of a Galliard by Thomas Morley, arranged for the Songbook by Colin Matthews.
CLASSIC FM GRAMOPHONE AWARD WINNER 2009 · GRAMOPHONE 'RECOMMENDATION FOR MAY 2009' · BBC MUSIC MAGAZINE 'CHOICE FOR MAY 2009' · MUSIC WEB 'RECORD OF THE MONTH FOR MAY 2009
"This extraordinary project confirms the robust health and endlessly varied landscape of Britain's new music"
John Adams, composer
"Unpredictable, audacious, exhilarating and continually fascinating, the Songbook is an outstanding project. A Lucullan feast for the ears" International Record Review
This recording is available on NMC Recordings (NMC D150) http://www.nmcrec.co.uk/recording/nmc-songbook
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Sir Peter Maxwell Davies talks about
Peter Maxwell Davies talks about Debut Discs
NMC Debut Discs - Sam Hayden presence/absence
NMC Debut Discs - Huw Watkins In My Craft or Sullen Art
NMC Debut Discs - Dai Fujikura Secret Forest
NMC - Debut Discs Cover Design Competition
NMC - Anna Meredith HandsFree (live)
NMC - Robert Saxton: The Wandering Jew
NMC - Harrison Birtwistle's Aleatoric Pebble
NMC - Harrison Birtwistle: Night's Black Bird, The Shadow of Night
NMC - David Lumsdaine: Big Meeting
NMC - Benjamin Britten: Unknown Britten
NMC - The NMC Songbook (4 CD boxset)
