Looking Forward
On June 21st, the wonderful Siân Philipps played my ‘Nocturne’ and ‘Cortège?’ for violin and piano in Brighton. Both pieces are reflections on poems by García Lorca. She also played works by Vaughan Williams, Sally Beamish and Egon Wellesz. The concert was part of the Brighton Fringe. Both pieces will be played again in September (also in Brighton) by Ellie Blackshaw and Yoko Ono.
Marcel Morceaux
Sadly, pianist Karen Kingsley had to cancel the June concert including my three ‘Marcel Morceaux’. The concert will be rescheduled!
Period Pieces
Last year I wrote four pieces for keyboard in the form of a baroque suite (Allemande, Courante, Sarabande and Gigue).
I have now recomposed them for string trio. You can hear the Sarabande in Soundcloud.
Sleepless City
‘Noc
turne’ is a short new piece for violin and piano, a partner for my ‘Cortège?’ – both prompted by poems by Lorca. In this case it is the bizarre, threatening ‘Nocturne, Brooklyn Bridge’ written by Lorca in the 1920s when he briefly lived in New York (the title of the collection ‘Poet in New York’ was meant to sound paradoxical!)
“Out in the sky, no one sleeps. No one, no one.
No one sleeps.
Lunar creatures sniff and circle the dwellings.”
Changing places
Fellow composer Julian Broughton and I have suggested changing our identities (and shaking up our ideas) by using each other’s compositional ‘f’ingerprints’. We have teamed up with clarinettist Steve Dummer to try to raise funds to commission and perform new pieces for clarinet and piano, intended for students as well as professional musicians.
https://www.justgiving.com/crowdfunding/julian-broughton-1
image © 2021 AO Kaspersky Lab
John Hawkins studied composition with Malcolm Williamson and Elisabeth Lutyens. He has written a wide range of chamber, vocal, choral and orchestral pieces, which have been performed worldwide.