Pushing things forward and helping along the way

So this Saturday I am conducting players from the London Chamber Orchestra in a composition workshop. We have chosen six pieces and each will be work-shopped by the players, Diana Burrell, Steve Potter and myself - as well as recorded filmed and then reperformed on May 26th at St John's Smith Square.

Having done a similar thing with the Colorado Symphony Orchestra and try to encourage this sort of process with new pieces played by Cambridge University's New Music Ensemble, it is a real pleasure (and I am very excited - I have a list of the players, and trust me I felt like a boy who had been given a new toy!) to be working with the LCO.

The workshop is part of a larger process that started in November with a day of talks around the idea of architecture in music, giving the composers 'food for thought'. The composers then went away and composed a work based on the day and submitted them for selection - we chose six and that's the stage we are at now.

Waiting to hear what a work will actually sound like, I find really unnerving, but also really exciting (I know I have already used that word...). It challenges my ear. Does the piece really sound how I hear it from the paper? It's also as if you are brining something into the world. OK so that is a bit 'arty farty' but it is true. It is like going to see a new work of art you have been reading about in the paper for a few weeks or an opera you have read reviews of. It is about bringing the 'other' or 'removed' into reality.

One of the best things about these types of workshops is the players get feedback from really seasoned (and good!) professionals. It is fine for another composer, teacher or conductor to tell you this or that about your work but when it comes from a player it seems to have more of an effect. If a teacher tells you, 'such and such' is impossible to play then you can secretly tell yourself that they are talking rubbish. But, if the clarinetist of the LCO and London Sinfonietta tells you it can't be played... the likelihood is that unless you get Kari Kriikku to practice it for a year it can't be done. Secretly I love it because it is the closest I get to actually composing - maybe I can suggest one or two things that will make a difference!

So come and listen to the day in conjunction with the East Festival in London:

http://www.lco.co.uk/RVE4c131004979e4324ac5ba14fdc1e09f1,,.aspx

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