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
New Year’s Irresolution
‘Kiss Me on Wednesday (Don’t Kiss me Now)’ is a cabaret song cycle I wrote with brilliant lyrics by Alison Rutherford, sad and funny. This one is ‘New Year’s Irresolution’.
Another New Year,
Another fresh look at your life:
A change of career?
Perhaps a new husband or wife?
Click the picture to see it full page.
O Ecstasy!
These SATB settings are of four vivid poems by Mervyn Peake. They alternate between the nonsensical and the heartbreakingly tragic.
1. ‘O Love!, O Death!, O Ecstasy!’
2. ‘And I Thought You Beside Me’
3. ‘The Trouble with Geraniums’
4. ‘Out of the Chaos of my Doubt’
Score available from me https://johnhawkinsmusic.co.uk/contact/
No longer distant Echo
In 1991, director Wilf Judd at Covent Garden developed a wonderfully imaginative scheme (The Garden Venture) to commission short chamber operas. Mine, titled ‘Echoes‘, had a brilliant libretto by Anne Harris whose skills – developed writing for television – were perfect for opera. I’ve just revised the music and the score is now available from me in PDF.
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.