Primavera

music by Enid Luff and Julia Usher

Our special projects

Over the last four years, Julia and Enid have been privileged to take part in projects which have a resonance beyond their musical content, by virtue of a collaboration with an artist from another discipline.

Julia was also involved during 2004 as composer in residence to the Watts Gallery, Compton, near Guildford, and had the task of responding to the Victorian painter's astonishing and challenging vision. Watts was on the edge of the Pre-Raphaelite movement, but more famous for his huge symbolic pictures, visionary representations of Love, Time, Death, Progress, and the experience of Eve. His latest works at the turn of the 20th century are almost abstract images of the cosmos.

Julia composed for this a major piano work in three movements, The Sower of the Systems:

- Time, death and Judgment

- The Sower of the Systems.

- And She shall be called Woman

On October 10th, 2004, at the National Portrait Gallery, London, at a Watts and Friends Gala Evening, Julia performed and composed live incidental music to a Recreation of Letters by George F. Watts and his contemporaries, read by Timothy West and Prunella Scales. On October 17th, 2004, at the Watts Gallery, Compton near Guildford, Julia gave a Lecture Recital, together with Mika Hori (piano), about her work, The Sower of the Systems, which included the first performance of Piano Friezes, The Sower of the Systems, commissioned by the Watts Gallery. There was also a second Performance of Watts and Friends with Timothy West and Prunella Scales, music by Julia Usher.

Julia’s previous commissions from Faber Music include:
Autumn 2004: Midnight Blue for Oboe and Piano, published 2005 in Unbeaten Tracks for Oboe.
Spring 2005: The Soldier and the Dancer, for violin and piano, to be published 2006;

Sending Text, for Clarinet and Piano, to be published 2006.

Enid completed a substantial commission in 2004 to compose music for the Sound Sculptures of the well-established artist, Derek Shiel. These beautiful metal sculptures provide a rich palette of resonances to blend with other instruments or to be used alone in improvisation. In contrast with works already written for them by many other composers, Enid’'s music accompanied a spoken recitation of classical and modern poetic texts in both the English and Welsh languages, under the title of Taro Arian/Struck in Silver, which was given at the Tabernacl Arts Centre, Machynlleth, as part of the Machynlleth Festival, 2004,to a large and enthusiastic audience.

More about Sculpted Sound

The programme brought together two worlds - –that of Sculpted Sound and that of the Welsh poetic tradition -– and two ages, the fourteenth century and the twentieth, linked by the voice of the speaker Dewi Savage. The players of the ensemble were Nicky Heinen, Flute, Roberto Filoseta and Tazul Tajuddin, percussion. The texts included "The Wind" and "The Court of Owain Glyndwr" from the fourteenth century in Wales, and poems by the present-day Anglo-Welsh poet Gillian Clarke.

More about the programme

Primavera, 11 Langham Place, Highwoods

Colchester, CO4 9GB Tel (01206) 751522

enidluff@googlemail.com