January 2024

Neil2024-01-17T09:05:01+10:00January 17th, 2024|classical music|

In her blog ‘Enchantment and the Courage of Joy: René Magritte on the Antidote to the Banality of Pessimism’, Maria Popova writes: In a world pocked by cynicism and pummeled by devastating news, to find joy for oneself and spark it in others, to find hope for oneself and spark it in others, is nothing less than a countercultural act of courage and resistance. This is not a matter of denying reality — it is a matter of discovering a parallel reality where joy and hope are equally valid ways of being. To live there is to live enchanted with the underlying wonder of reality, beneath the frightful stories we tell ourselves and are told about it.* And she quotes Belgian surrealist artist René Magritte [...]

Kin

Neil2024-01-05T19:42:47+10:00January 5th, 2024|classical music|

https://youtu.be/o-XOBAJksgQ This video is a brief introduction to my latest composition, a double concerto for cor anglais and bassoon. I’ve titled it ‘Kin’ because of the obvious kinship between these two instruments – both woodwinds played with a double reed, both occupying the mid-to-lower part of the full orchestral range, and, especially in the two octaves where their ranges overlap, both having somewhat similar although distinctive timbres. Despite their superficial kinship, however, the cor anglais and bassoon have different family histories, the cor anglais having developed historically from the oboe, the bassoon from earlier bass double-reed instruments such as the dulcian. The cor anglais is also played by oboists who relish its lower range, not bassoonists who yearn to go even higher than the already enormous [...]

Monthly Archives: January 2024

‘joy and hope are valid ways of being’

Kin