Happy Birthday Luke Bedford!

This Saturday, BBC Radio 3 broadcasts the complete recording of Luke Bedford’s opera Seven Angels (video intro here). Nicholas Collon conducts the BCMG in a production by the Opera Group directed by John Fulljames last summer.

Listen online this Saturday 14 April at 22:00 London time (23:00 Paris, Berlin, Vienna) on BBC Radio 3.

To celebrate the first broadcast, we’ve uploaded the full piano reduction of the opera. Click below for a full screen view (also available on ISSUU.com).

The first reviews of the Scottish Ensemble’s world première of Luke Bedford’s Wonderful Two-Headed Nightingale are in.

Kate Molleson in The Guardian calls it a “bold, dense and arresting blast of a composition – a work that forcefully reiterates Bedford’s voice and brilliantly showcased its fine set of players.” ****

Juliet Williams at Classical Iconoclast writes, “The soloists seem at times to be ‘joined at the hip’ but at other times to be locked in a power struggle.”

Kelly Apter in The Scotsman explains, that “offering no comfort, it made me sit up in my chair and listen, as Morton and guest violist Lawrence Power battled with each other, then came together in harmony, just as the conjoined twins who inspired the piece must have done.” ****

Alan Coady of Bachtrack.com writes “The dramatic tension in this piece derives from two solo lines which follow equal mindsets: striving to break free from the other; reunited and more happily resigned to the status of being a twin.” ****

And some goosebumps:

Loved the @ScotEnsemble concert @queens_hall last night. The Alwyn was superb and Bedford gave me goosebumps. :)

— Grainne M Rooney (@GrainneMRooney) February 20, 2012

Tomorrow’s performance at the City Halls in Glasgow
is broadcast live on BBC Radio 3.

This week, Oliver Knussen conducts Luke Bedford’s Outblaze The Sky with the Seattle Symphony Orchestra (17 and 19 Nov).

In an interview for the Seattle Times, Knussen says:

“[Bedford] writes music that is at the same time highly abstract in structure and very poetic in sound and resonance. ‘Outblaze the Sky’ is a short piece which is, in effect, a single big crescendo. He writes beautifully for orchestra, and the harmonic world is beautiful and distinctive. And it’s practical and relatively easy to put together!”

Read the full interview at the Seattle Times.

More on Outblaze The Sky, including an audio excerpt.

Luke Bedford is in Vienna for a performance of his Man Shoots Strangers from Skyscraper. Franck Ollu conducts the London Sinfonietta.

The concert, which is part of the Wien Modern festival, is the ensemble’s first in Vienna for 15 years.

Also on the programme is Harrison Birtwistle’s Silbury Air, as well as works by George Benjamin, Simon Holt and Thomas Adès.

Luke Bedford’s opera Seven Angels comes to the Tramway in Glasgow tomorrow. Here’s the new video trailer.

Watch on YouTube.

Luke Bedford is in Birmingham for tonight’s world première of his new opera Seven Angels, based on Milton’s Paradise Lost. The libretto is by Glyn Maxwell. Read his article in the Guardian about the work.

Andrew Clements chose Seven Angels as one of his picks of live music this week, also in the Guardian.

Director John Fulljames and Luke Bedford spoke to the BBC’s In Tune programme yesterday. Listen again here (about 1:06 in).

Seven Angels is an Opera Group and Birmingham Contemporary Music Group production, co-produced with ROH2 and Tramway. Nicholas Collon conducts.

Carolin Widmann performs Wolfgang Rihm’s Über die Linie VII, Morton Feldman’s For Aaron Copland and Luciano Berio’s Sequenza VIII at the Konzerthaus in Vienna tonight.

Vykintas Baltakas’ (co)ro(na) is performed in Düsseldorf by the notabu.ensemble (15 June)

Ernst Krenek’s Das Geheime Königreich opens in Athens at the Greek National Opera.

The world première of Luke Bedford’s opera Seven Angels is on Friday 17 June.

The world première of Johannes Maria Staud’s Par ici is given by Ensemble intercontemporain, also on Friday.

Richard Rodney Bennett’s All the King’s Men can be heard in a new production in Cambridge on Saturday.

The list goes on … see all forthcoming concerts in our online performance calendar.

Watch composer Luke Bedford, writer Glyn Maxwell and director John Fulljames talk about Bedford’s new opera Seven Angels at rehearsals in London.

Watch on the Opera Group website

Rehearsals are underway here at the Jerwood Space in London for Luke Bedford’s new opera Seven Angels.

The Opera Group is conducted by Nicholas Collon, John Fulljames is directing.

Seven Angels premières in Birmingham with the BCMG on 17 June, followed by a tour of Cardiff, Glasgow, Brighton, Oxford and London as well as a special appearance at the Latitude Festival in July.

This Saturday, Luke Bedford’s new piece for the Wigmore Hall (where he is composer-in-residence) will be given its world première.

Igor, The Bird Who Couldn’t Sing – for clarinet, piano and narrator – is based on the children’s book by Satoshi Kitamura. Clarinettist Michael Collins and friends are the performers.

See also Luke’s Willy and Hugh, a previous commission for the Wigmore Hall, and based on Anthony Browne’s bestseller children’s book of the same name.

British artists flock to set up home in liberating Berlin

Charlotte Higgins reports in the Guardian on a growing number of young (and not so young) artists who have chosen Berlin as their home.

“When you say you are a composer it feels really normal in Berlin”, says Luke Bedford. “In Britain people often don't seem to think you can actually be a composer; people are rather confused by it and think you must write music for TV, or something.”

The full article is here.

Here’s a full list of works by Luke Bedford.

His new opera, Seven Angels, will be premièred by the Opera Group and BCMG this June.