25 March 2017 – Schott’s Recital Room

Biographies & programme notes

Kerry Andrews is a visual artist who has always been interested in music and sound. He often uses the three modes together – e.g. audio with static or moving images, or graphic scores which use traditional notation alongside graphics or images. His visual artwork has developed through various media over the years, but is currently based in drawing, which is sometimes extended into video projection and sound.

Where Now (2017) – a piece in response to David Bowie’s last single Where Are We Now?

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Deborah Broderick Edwards was born in the USA in 1942, where she studied piano during her school years and at university. She moved to London in 1969. Her works have been performed in the UK and the USA. She has written for a wide range of instrumental groupings, from solo piano and small ensembles to full chamber ensemble, songs and choral works, recently experimenting with electronics.

Fly Away is an interpretation of Jimi Hendrix’s piece (music and words) Little Wing.

Well, she’s walking through the clouds,
With a circus mind
that’s running wild,
butterflies and zebras and moonbeams,
and fairytales,

That’s all she ever thinks about

riding with the wind

When I’m sad she comes to me
With a thousand smiles
She gives to me free

It’s all right, she says
It’s all right
Take anything you want from me
Anything

Fly on, little wing.

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Daniel Figols-Cuevas was born in Barcelona in 1980. Cellist and physicist, he studied composition at ESMuC, Barcelona and Paris Conservatoire. He also studied electronic music at IRCAM, Paris, where he focused in real-time electronics, interactive music installations and Computer Assisted Composition. He is currently finishing a PhD in composition in King’s College London under Silvina Milstein and George Benjamin’s supervision.
Daniel’s music has been performed by KlangforumWien, Neue Vocalsolisten Stuttgart, Ensemble Vocal Exaudi, NEM, Orchestre National de Lorraine, BCN216, Lontano Ensemble, Musica Qu Lacoza, UMS n’ JIP and Vertixe Sonora.

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Derek Foster gained his BMus from Goldsmiths College as a mature student, after attending various evening classes at Morley College. He currently teaches music in West London and plays piano and vibraphone, encouraging many composers to write for the latter instrument.
Derek plays in a duo with composer/pianist Anthony Green.
He has written music in a tonal style, including for jazz bands he once played with, as well as atonal music, occasionally reaching from one idiom to the other.

It was fifty years ago today – refers to the lyrics of the Beatles’ track
“Sergeant Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band”, recorded early in 1967.
My piece is based on motifs from “Two of Us” on their last album, “Let It
Be”, but there are brief references to other Beatles and Rolling Stones
songs, including “Day in the Life” on the Sergeant Pepper album.

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Gordon Edwards is a professional physicist who spent much time in the 70s as a washboard player in jazz bands, whilst simultaneously earning his living by measuring the speed of light at the National Physical Laboratory. Subsequently he took up the drums and is still involved in jazz.

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Ilze Ikse is a flautist based in London. She obtained her BA and MA at the Latvian Academy of Music. Ilze continued her studies at the Royal Conservatory in The Hague and later moved to London where she received an S.S. Payne Award to study for a Postgraduate Diploma at the Royal Academy of Music.
Ilze has a special interest in contemporary music and has worked with many young composers as well as with the renowned Distractfold Ensemble, Dr. K and the Clapton Ensemble.
Ilze’s recent performances have taken her to the Royal Festival Hall, the Barbican Hall, St James’ Church Piccadilly, The Forge, Grimeborne, Tête à Tête Opera Festival, Rough For Opera and London Contemporary Music Festival, as well as venues in France, Sweden and Spain.
She is also part of Kammer Klang – a series of live music events at Café Oto, presenting curated programmes of new contemporary classical, experimental music.

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Jerry Wigens is a composer who produces works in fixed and open forms. He plays guitars and clarinets and is also interested in improvised musical activity of all kinds, and has participated in workshops led by Eddie Prevost and George E Lewis. His concern for placing creative musicians at the heart of the creative process was a central theme in the practise-based research undertaken for a Ph.D in composition awarded by Goldsmiths University of London in 2014. He currently works on a freelance basis in a variety of musical contexts as tutor, performer and writer

Beyond the Salt Water – a piece inspired by Simon and Garfunkel’s interpretation of the traditional tune Scarborough Fair. It is essentially a set of variations based loosely on the original chord progression. In the first part of the piece I have reversed the five bars of 3/4 in the verse’s initial line to three bars of 5/4 though this idea is eventually superseded as the piece’s rhythmic structure develops. Another aspect of the original song that interested me was the intended exchange between two lovers in alternate verses making impossible demands of each other. This was reflected by the flute and guitar taking alternate leading lines in the first part of the piece. Again this idea is overtaken later on as a more integrated texture emerges.

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