Marcel Morceaux
Happily, the concert including my three ‘Marcel Morceaux’ which pianist Karen Kingsley had to cancel in June has now been rescheduled to Saturday 2nd October.The event includes works by Benjamin Britten and pieces by several members of New Music Brighton. It will be at the Friends’ Meeting House in Brighton at 2.30 pm.
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
Contretemps
The bassoon is an awkward, athletic, melancholy, rambunctious instrument!
There aren’t many solo pieces for it – so I’ve just written this.
https://soundcloud.com/johnbhawkins/contretemps
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.