2023 has been filled with highlights on and offstage, and as the New Year beckons I wanted to share a few with you.
In the summer, Paraorchestra toured the ever-joyous SMOOSH! to London and Weston-super-Mare, engaging and entertaining local residents literally on their doorsteps. It also popped up at Glastonbury - the fourth time I’ve had the honour of playing at Worthy Farm with Paraorchestra. This year was extra special as following our Sunday afternoon performance in the Circus Fields I witnessed musical history as Elton John played his last ever UK performance - a spectacular “I was there!” moment for me and around 100,000 other revellers in front of the iconic Pyramid Stage.
On 30 November (when the weather was somewhat chillier) the Paraorchestra had the huge honour of reopening the Bristol Beacon after a prolonged closure for refurbishment. I think the venue looks and sounds extraordinary, and as a Bristol resident I can’t wait to experience more shows at the Beacon in 2024. To mark its reopening night, we premiered Trip the Light Fantastic - a major new commission bringing together techno artist Surgeons Girl, Limbic Cinema and Oliver Vibrans, while Oliver’s fellow Paraorchestra composer Asteryth Sloane provided an enchanting opener to the whole evening called Prelude to a Beginning.
Alongside planning our programme of live performances and recordings, part of my job as Associate Music Director involves working with our amazing musicians to broaden their artistic horizons and develop their individual careers. This took a huge step forwards in the Autumn when we launched Modulate, Paraorchestra’s new Artist Development programme. Conceived as a year-round strand of talks, seminars, commissioning pots, skills development courses and residencies, I’m excited to see how Modulate helps level the playing field for our professional disabled musicians over the next few years.
It’s been an exceptionally busy 12 months outside of Paraorchestra too. The Colour of Dinosaurs was birthed at Bristol Old Vic’s beautiful Weston Studio during October half-term. This was an idea that grew from a chance encounter between me, director Dom Coyote and palaeontologist Jakob Vinther several yeas ago. Jakob writes more about its origins in a fantastic article titled “Dinosaurs as Ambassadors for Humanity” - recently published in Current Biology journal. And if you missed the dinosaur detectives when we were in Bristol, please come and see us in London next summer when we’ll be at London’s Polka Theatre for a whole month!
The Colour of Dinosuars, Bristol Old Vic (image by Paul Blakemore)
I wrote a new solo piece, Sgraffito, for hornist Isaac Shieh, who also commissioned it. He gave the first performance in September at the Royal Academy of Music. My talented friend Charlotte Harding invited me to play in the ensemble for a new BalletBoyz show, England on Fire, at Sadler’s Wells - a thoroughly enjoyable project making new friends and learning more about the world of contemporary ballet.
My work as chair of the Classical Council of the Ivors Academy really took a step up this year, most notably around lobbying the BBC to reverse their proposal to close the BBC Singers - a disaster averted (for now at least). I was invited to judge BBC Young Composer for the second time, this competition being another shining example of what the BBC can do so well. For UCAN, of which I’m a trustee, I ran the Cardiff half-marathon and played a gala concert at the Royal Welsh College of Music and Drama - both raising money during UCAN’s year as the Lord Mayor of Cardiff’s Chosen Charity.
So, despite a challenging backdrop in the UK arts sector and times of uncertainty for many of us, I’d say 2023 was ultimately a productive and enjoyable one for me, in which I pushed myself to learn and try new things. See you next year!