Thank you all for tuning in to read up on this coming season’s activities! As always, it’s a thrill to introduce new works, balanced with maintaining a run of recent premieres in performance. My refocus on my solo recital is the constant theme of the season, and Colin Currie Group wishes Steve Reich a very happy 80th birthday with nine concerts in four countries. Read on!
In May 2013 I lost one of my dearest friends and perhaps my most significant musical mentor, with the passing of British composer Steve Martland. Mark-Anthony Turnage shared my grief at this bitter, sudden and untimely loss, and he asked if we could perhaps think of a work to remember him by, united as we were by our strong feelings for him. The result is the premiere this spring of “Martland Memorial”, a concerto for Marimba and Vibes, which will be an intimate and fond remembrance of one of the UK’s most altruistic and avuncular musical figures. Our thanks to the Britten-Pears Foundation, the Southbank Centre and Aldeburgh Music for supporting this project.
My decision to return to solo recitals is the major focus of this season. I have refined my programme and it will be presented variously in the UK and also debut at numerous fine US institutions, such as Boston Celebrity Series, Washington Performing Arts, and Princeton University Concerts. I’m really excited about this programme and trust the assembled repertoire implicitly. Stockhausen, Xenakis, Carter, Norgaard – and my new marimba classic, Rolf Wallin‘s eerie “Realismos Magicos”.
WHO can believe that Steve Reich turns 80 on October the 3rd 2016? Scarcely creditable, but we at the Colin Currie Group (also celebrating its 10th anniversary!) felt it right to have a serious musical knees-up this season and celebrate our musical founding father. We will play concerts in Germany, China, the UK and Japan, and add the glorious “Tehillim” to our repertoire for special events at Tokyo Opera City and our London base of the Royal Festival Hall.
As always, my proud gaggle of recent concerto premieres still effervesce, and I will play HK Gruber “into the open…” in US Premiere, Kalevei Aho “Sieidi” in Helsinki Premiere, James MacMillan “Percussion Concerto No.2” in Australasian Premiere, and with much joy on my part, repeat one of my dearest and most sensitive of concertos, that of Mr Joey Roukens, in Rotterdam’s DeDoelen. Last season’s extremely fiesty premiere of Andrew Norman’s “Switch” , also receives its West Coast Debut, as part of my second season as Artist-in-Residence with the Oregon Symphony.
As always, with my best wishes and encouragement to keep good new music live!!
Colin