Primavera

music by Enid Luff and Julia Usher

PERFORMANCES

London New Wind Festival 2007

Enid’s new piece, Lamentation, for wind ensemble, was given its first performance on Friday, November 23^rd, 2007,by the New Wind Ensemble, Director Catherine Pluygers. Catherine is also the Director of this exciting and wide-ranging festival, which lasts for several days during November each year, and features new music across the range of style and instrumentation.

This concert was at 7-30pm in the Regent Hall, The Salvation Army, Oxford Street, London, and ended an evening’s music which began with a saxophone and piano recital at 6pm of New Music for Winds, given by Melanie Henry, saxophones, and Sally Mays, piano. This was followed at 6-45 by brief violin and piano recital by Mazuka Yamamoto, violin, and Stephen Beville, piano.

The main concert at 7-30 was attended by about 40 people, and the programme of new pieces by contemporary composers was well received. Unusually for a concert of this kind, the programme had a theme, insofar as many of the pieces were openly or inwardly concerned with the deterioration the planet as a result of the changing climate. This produced an extraordinary and palpable sense of a direct link between the music and socio-political life outside the hall.

The London New Wind Festival has been favourably reviewed in Musical Opinion:

The most striking aspect of this event was the quality of the performances. . . every technical demand called particularly for the player’s innate musicality. . .The second aspect worthy of emphasising was the artistic quality of . . . the new music . . . Lamentation by Enid Luff for Wind Sextet and the American Geoffrey Gordon’s A Canticle in Shards for Wind and Piano were but two examples from several demonstrating the validity in artistic terms of this Festival.

Read more about the London New Wind Festival by clicking on

www.londonnewwindfestival.org

Recent performances

Enid’s music has been featured during the past year, first during the Bangor New Music Festival, which takes place in March every year at the University of Wales, Bangor. The Footprints of the Storm, for violin and piano, was included in a Festival concert in the Powis Hall at the University on March 16^th, 2007 given by the gifted young violin and viola player Matthew Jones, accompanied by pianist Michael Hampton.

On May 17^th, 2007 Enid’s Lament for the Ashes of Language, for soprano, clarinet Bb, and piano, was given by Sylvia Strand, soprano, Graham Jones, clarinet, and Andrew Wilson-Dickson, piano, at a lunchtime recital of contemporary Welsh music on the Tesco Stage in the foyer of the Wales Millennium Centre. This stage, with its fine concert grand piano, provides a focus in the busiest part of the Centre, with ambient noise from footsteps, children’s voices, conversation, and a coffee shop. It is a challenging venue, but confident, authoritative performances like this one which are able to break through to the audience have their own special buzz and excitement.

On June 12^th, 2007 Lament for the Ashes of Language was presented again, at a concert in Carmarthen during the Trinity Festival, in the Chapel of Trinity College, Carmarthen, given by the same excellent performers, Sylvia, Graham, and Andrew. The programme also featured pieces by living Welsh composers Einion Dafydd, Rosemary Thorpe, Lynne Plowman, Dafydd Bullock, Ben Heneghan, Andrew Wilson-Dickson, Ian Lawson, and Eilir Owen-Griffiths, as well as including some contemporary classics, to give a rounded and attractive programme heard in a dignified and responsive space.

Enid’s The Wake, for solo oboe, was taken on tour in September 2006 by Ensemble Cymru, to seven venues in North Wales and the Wales Millennium Centre in Cardiff, in a programme which included Music by Madeleine Dring, CPE Bach, Poulenc, Vaughan Williams, Schumann, and Gabriel Grovlez. The soloist was Huw Clement-Evans.

The seven short movements of The Wake follow the course of an old-fashioned funeral from the point of view of one of the mourners, reflecting the changing emotions from the initial “Chorale” to the final leaving behind of mourning in “Afterwards”. It is in some sense a homage to Britten's Metamorphoses.

Plums, for solo cello and speaker, is one of a set of accompanied recitations of some of Gillian Clarke’s warm and vividly imagined nature poems. It evokes gathering plums in the autumn, and was performed during the Bangor New Music Festival in 2006, at the Powis Hall at the University of Wales, Bangor, as part of a concert of pieces by members of Cyfansoddwyr Cymru/Composers of Wales, on Friday March 10^th.

Sky Whispering, for solo piano, was given at a recital on May 7^th 2005, at the Canton Uniting Church in Cardiff, by the gifted young Finnish pianist Taina Neimela, in a programme of works by contemporary Welsh composers, and including a stunning performance of Stockhausen’s Piano Piece X, all played from memory. Taina repeated this performance at a recital at the Llandudno Festival on July 14^th 2005, in a programme including works by New Zealand composers and paired by a performance of the same programme in New Zealand.

Viola Lullaby, for solo viola, was played by Philip Heyman on October 7^th 2005, at the Wales Millennium Centre.

About the Wind, for flute and piano, was played at the Wales Millennium Centre, Cardiff, on November 5^th 2005, by Emma Collins and Andrew Wilson-Dickson. Click on the link for a picture of the event.

Julia’s"Malkin; Games and Shadow Dances, for ensemble, was given its first performance on June 6th, 2007 by IXION at the Colchester Institute.

She has also been intensively involved this year with the production of the DVD Touching the Wall, a collaboration with the clavichordist and graphic artist Andrea Gregori.

More about Touching the Wall

In April 2006, Julia wrote:

April 10th - I had such a wonderful performance of Light Catcher, for piano and cello, by young players from Simon Speare's Big Noise - fantastic inward and soulful playing.
Light - Catcher - "two ways of catching cosmic information: the giant bowls of radio telescopes, and the light - deflecting and splitting arrays of mirrors and prisms which quantum scientists set up to demonstrate that at the quantum level there is no predictability, or certainty, only the possibility of microcosmic choice, and unbreakable relationship."

In 2005, on July 5^th, Periodic Table lll for Flexible Ensemble was performed by Firewire (Coma East) at Colchester Arts Centre. And on

On August 5^th, 2005 Unruly Sun, for Harpsichord, Violin and Cello, was played at the Semley Festival, Dorset. This was a Festival commission, and was performed twice, by The Bande of Instruments.

Over the last four years, Julia and Enid have been privileged to take part in projects which have a resonance beyond their musical content. To read about some of these special projects, click on

Special projects

Primavera, 11 Langham Place, Highwoods

Colchester, CO4 9GB Tel (01206) 751522

enidluff@googlemail.com