David Bruce - Composer

Golden Gumboots

The Golden Gumboot in Tully, Australia

I just heard from Lachlan O'Donnell from the Strahlend Quintet who have just finished their tour of regional Queensland where they were performing Gumboots. The final concert of the tour threw up a rather fantastic coincidence, as Lachlan relates:

I had a lot of people approach me after the concerts and ask about Gumboots. It was definitely the most popular work on the program. The most enthusiastic response we received was at our final concert in a small town called El Arish, a few hundred km north of Townsville. A lot of people came down to see us from Tully which is the neighbouring town about 20 minutes away. As we drove through Tully we saw that they have a giant Gumboot sculpture in the middle of town. Apparently Tully is officially the wettest place in Australia and their big annual event is a Gumboot festival which includes Gumboot dancing among other things! It was a nice coincidence and it seemed as though the locals all really enjoyed hearing your work.

I'm delighted performances of Gumboots have taken off in recent months. There is a further performance by Chroma here in the UK in December, the Ensemble ACJW performances at Carneige in February and an exciting one brewing in Belgium, of which hopefully more soon.

Giora

Some time back in the mid 90s I got hold of a CD that changed my view of what a clarinet - and indeed music itself - was capable of. This was the klezmer clarinet music of Giora Feidman, and these sounds - the shrieking, the wailing, the laughing, and a pianissimo of extreme serenity - have reverberated through my compositional style ever since. Indeed, I fashioned the blaring opening of my mini-opera 'Seven Tons of Dung' (I knew how to title a piece in those days) after a particular moment on the CD, without at that point realising that Giora had himself been imitating the Shofar, the traditional ram horn used in Jewish religious ceremonies.

So it was hard to beleive, 15 years later, when Giora himself got in touch with me, after hearing some of my music, and invited me to work with him on some projects, kicking off by making some arrangements for a forthcoming recording project. It's a tremendous honour for me, and quite surreal to be on the end of the phone to Tel Aviv with one of my musical idols, who seems only capable of speaking words of tremendous wisdom.

Centers of gravity

Dawn Upshaw, Bridget Kibbey and Avi Avital in the premiere of 'The North Wind was a Woman'

What a wonderful world-premiere of The North Wind was a Woman on Wednesday evening at the Chamber Music Society of the Lincoln Centre. We had a great reaction from the audience, which CMS director and cellist-extraordinaire David Finckel kindly describes on his blog:

"With highly-skilled instrumental writing to support Dawn's magical singing...the piece was one of the most smashing successes for a new work I have seen in a long time. A prolonged ovation brought musicians and composer to the stage time and again before the intermission."

The New York Times also praised the work, calling it the center of gravity for the evening, and describing it as 'fresh' and 'striking'. I was particularly happy that my dear friend and collaborator Avi Avital was singled out for much deserved praise of his 'exquisitely sensitive playing'. Bravo Avi!

Alex Fiterstein and Todd Palmer, who play a bass clarinet duet
in the opening of 'The North Wind was a Woman'

With Mandolinist Avi Avital after the performance.

A warm welcome from Alice

Tomorrow night is a very special night for me. My new piece The North Wind was a Woman will be premiered at the Gala opening of the Chamber Music Society of the Lincoln Center.

Special for the sheer quality, beauty and warmth of the singing, playing and atmosphere. It's a beautiful hall and a beautiful occasion. Sometimes you can't help feeling incredibly lucky...

A climactic Push!

In this month's Spectator magazine, Michael Tanner's subject is the new 'Grimeborn' festival in Dalston, Cumbria. But he starts by reminiscing over a decade of similar chamber opera ventures, and Tête à Tête's role at the forefront of that movement. Tanner then writes

Tête à Tête itself... has had a largely successful decade, the climax being, for me, the full-length opera Push!, the chronicle of a day in the life of a maternity ward, set to often brilliantly apposite music, and performed with vocal and histrionic virtuosity.

It's a pleasant surprise to get a good review when the topic of the review in question isn't even your piece. It makes you feel like they must really mean it!

[>> read more about Push! here]

Gumboots in Queensland

More details here of one of the Strahlend Quintet's performances of Gumboots in Nambour, a short hop up the sunshine coast from Brisbaine on 16th Oct.

They are touring as 2009 winners of Queensland Arts Council�s Gertrude Langer Ensemble Award, which each year sends a talented young ensemble on a debut Queensland tour.

Other dates on the Queensland tour are up on my Calendar page

Dawn in Hyde Park

Dawn Upshaw was in town at the end of August for her Prom concert with the Tonhalle orchestra from Zurich (who impressed me tremendously). The day before we took the opportunity to do some publicity shots ahead of our concert at the Chamber Music Society of the Lincoln Center on 23rd Sept. The photos were done by Neil Matthews. Here are a couple of the best:

and then there's the cutest one :

Freshly polished Gumboots

I've finally had a chance to make the revisions I wanted to make to my clarinet quintet Gumboots, in time for the Australian and UK premieres which coincidentally are happening on the same day. Chroma, who gave such a fabulous performance of Piosenki earlier in the month will be giving the UK premiere of Gumboots in Norwich on 25th Sept, and on the other side of the world, the exciting young Strahlend Quintet will kick off a regional tour of Queensland with the first of 10 performances of the piece down under. Any one know what they call gumboots/wellies in Australia?

Windy music

My piece for Dawn Upshaw and Chamber Music Society of the Lincoln Center is finally finished! It's called The North Wind was a Woman and features three poems by Alasdair Middleton (who wrote the libretto for A Bird in Your Ear) as well as two poems by yours trully. All five poems feature 'elements' singing in the first person (snow, wind, night, moon and mountain). The Lincoln Centre press release below has more info, and you can read the poems and the program note I wrote here. To book tickets for the concert on 23rd Sept visit the Lincoln Center site.

Chroma / Piosenki video

Tete a Tete have posted an excellent video of the days events at Riverside Studios on Aug 9th, including some footage of the last 'Trumf Trumf' movement of Piosenki, featuring the beloved lagerphone.

Chroma / Piosenki pictures

Some rehearsal shots before the wonderful performance of Piosenki last night at Riverside Studios with Chroma, and Kyle and Melissa singing, pics taken by Claire Shovelton.

Piosenki in Hammersmith Aug 9

Just a reminder to friends and acquaintances and anyone reading this who will be in the London area on Aug 9th that the wonderful group Chroma will be performing my Piosenki at the Riverside Studios in Hammersmith at the crazy and wonderful Tete a Tete Opera Festival. Tickets for the show are selling out fast, so do book soon if you want to come.

There's some fab stuff on for the rest of the day, including my friends at Golden Hat Opera at 4pm, and clarinettist Neyire Ashworth at 5.30. The Piosenki concert starts at 7pm - 6 each or just 15 gets you in to all three events.

Everyone is also very welcome at the party I'm hosting with GHO at Riverside Studios straight after the show.

At today's rehearsal, the healthy appetite of this group was clear to be seen:

Book Online here

Tete a Tete's website

Box Office: 0208 237 1111

Orchestra of St. Luke's Perform Sports et Divertissements

Orchestra of St. Luke's has confirmed they will be performing my arrangements of Satie's Sports et Divertissements at this year's Caramoor Festival.

UK premiere of Piosenki

Chroma will be giving the UK premiere of Piosenki at 7pm on Aug 9th at the Riverside Studios, Hammersmith, featuring Melissa Wegner soprano and Kyle Ferrill baritone. The program also includes Errollyn Wallen's rather fabulous 'From Fair Eleanor to Sweet William'. Should be a lot of fun.

Book Online here

Tete a Tete's website

Box Office: 0208 237 1111

NYCO clips and video for A Bird in Your Ear

New York City Opera has posted audio excerpts of their performance in May of A Bird in Your Ear. There's also a brief video interview with the composer on a warm day in Central Park. The composer's wife noted with surprise how unusually quickly and eloquently he talked - the joy of splicing and video editing!

VOX website

Windy City premiere

Caja de Musica will receive its Chicago premiere at the Museum of Contemporary Photography on May 30th, with Bridget Kibbey, hosted by ICE.

Tasty Dishes

Over at NY Times, Anthony Tommasini's taste buds seem to have been tickled by my opera performance at VOX:

The last work showcased was by far the best... The music, rich with imagined folk tunes, undulant accompaniment patterns and vibrant choral writing, is delicate, tartly tonal and lucidly orchestrated. The characters are enchanting, and the vocal writing mostly effective. [The opera is] skillfully written and imaginative...

Read the full NY Times review here

...and in a very brief overview of the VOX festival for New Music Box, Frank J.Oteri described the ending of Bird as 'extraordinarily moving'.

>> More info and samples of A Bird in Your Ear here

Bird calls and radio shows

Extracts from A Bird in Your Ear will performed on WNYC Evening Music (93.9 FM) on Friday May 1st around 7pm, as a preview to the City Opera VOX performance on Saturday evening.

We had the sitzprobe yesterday, after making a last minute dash to the crazy "mind-your-head-on-that-sitar" world of Music Inn on West 4th to secure some additional bird call instruments needed for the closing pages of the piece. After some initial resistance to the idea, members of the orchestra could soon be found in all corners of the rehearsal building diligently practising their bird effects. It was quite a treat.

>> More details on the VOX performance

Bridget at Carnegie

Bridget Kibbey performs the premiere of Caja de musica tonight at Carnegie's Weill hall. (Tickets)

The City Opera performance of A Bird in Your Ear is on Saturday, the VOX website has sold out, but apparently a good number of the (free) registered tickets don't get taken up, so the organises are telling us that people who turn up on the day should have a good chance of being getting in.

Gumboots and Groanbox Recordings

The Groanbox Boys and Metropolis Ensemble conducted by Andrew Cyr play Groanbox Mvt 4: Redhook Revival Rival.

The Carnegie Hall website has released the recording of the world premiere performance of Gumboots by Todd Palmer and the St Lawrence Quartet. I've recently been doing some re-working on the piece, sprucing and tightening it up. I've also uploaded all 4 movements from Groanbox, also from the world premiere, played by the Metropolis Ensemble and the Groanbox Boys at LPR in January. As you can see above, a great video of the complete piece is now also available on my Groanbox page, and video of the Groanbox Boys subsequent set, together with Michael's lagerphone piece Kicking Up Dust can be found on the Metropolis Ensemble's page on vimeo