Equally at home mixing live electronics and multimedia with harpsichords, choirs and orchestras, Kevin Malone embraces postmodernist and polystylist approaches. Malone read mathematics and computer science at university before changing to composition, with degrees awarded from the New England Conservatory, University of Michigan and University of London Goldsmiths' College as well as a Fulbright Fellowship for a year’s research in Paris. He also studied privately with Morton Feldman. His work focuses on global events and issues, the nature of performance, the spoken voice, and interdisciplinary work and installations. Central to his output are three concertos about the events of 11 Sept 2001, chamber music and sound design for films. Performances, broadcasts and installations in Europe, North America and Australia have attracted enthusiastic reviews. He is Head of Composition at the University of Manchester and his work is recorded on the Centaur, ASC, Forsyth, Campion and Harwood labels.
Aims, Goals, Targets and Objectives is a downsizing process via exhumed cadences – those moments devoid of thematic content – from Haydn's String Quartet op.74, no.3 as the exclusive source material. Minor alterations to Haydn's rhythms with time-stretched durations reveal a hidden world of tango, cartoon music, minimalism and film soundtrack harmonic grandeur. The premiere was given by The Lindsays in 2003 with subsequent performances by The Ukrainian String Quartet in Kiev and Stillman Quartet in Manchester.
Alan Dudley Bush was born in Dulwich on 22 December 1900. As a student at the Royal Academy of Music (1918-1922) he won several prizes both as pianist and composer, after which he continued his studies as a composer with John Ireland and as a pianist with Benno Moiseivitch, Mabel Lander and Artur Schnabel in Berlin. He later returned to the Academy as a professor of composition, where he taught several generations of British composers over a period of fifty years (1925-1975). After his studies in the Royal Academy of Music, Bush became aware ‘of organisations of working-class people whose aim was the establishment of the rational society of socialism’. In 1924 he joined the Independent Labour Party and a year later he became actively involved in the London Labour Choral Union. In 1929 he entered Berlin University to study Philosophy and Musicology but his work towards a degree was cut short by the depression and the threatening rise of Hitler fascism. He returned to London in 1931. Throughout his life Bush’s political beliefs played a major part in his own musical activities, and in the reception of his works in the UK. He took an active part in the working-class movement and joined the Communist Party in 1935. In 1936 he helped found the Workers’ Music Association, of which he was president from 1941 until his death in 1995. As a composer Bush wrote many works in numerous genres. His early success as a professional composer came when his String Quartet, op. 4, was given a Carnegie award in 1925. One of his best known works, Dialectic, op. 15, for string quartet, helped establish his reputation abroad when it was performed at the Prague International Society for Contemporary Music Festival in 1935. Both in his music for masques and pageants during the 1930s and in his operatic works written after the Second World War he made use of popular song. His wife, Nancy Bush, wrote the texts for a number of his songs, and for six of his seven operatic works. Many of his songs were published by the Workers’ Music Association, as were some of his arrangements of works by other composers. Further works were published by, amongst others, Boosey & Hawkes, Henschel, Novello and Williams.
David Beck was born near Mansfield in 1941. When his family moved south, his musical education began in earnest at age 10 when he attended the Kent Junior Music School in Maidstone. At age 16 he was awarded a Minor Scholarship to Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge where he was a member of a student string quartet lead by Simon Standage. After gaining his MusB in Composition and Performance he worked as an orchestral violinist in Manchester where he was at various times a member of the Hallé, the Manchester Camerata and the BBC Philharmonic Orchestras. Since his retirement from the BBC, composition has once again come to the fore. He is a member of the North West Composers Association. The single-movement String Quartet of 1962 was written in Cambridge, when he was a post-graduate student. It was intended to be an entry for the Cobbett prize, awarded annually for single movement chamber-music works. But the piece remained under wraps until scrutiny revealed ways whereby it could be made more presentable, resulting in a first performance in 2007. Modelled on the Bartôkian symmetrical arch form, it is structured as slow, quick, slow, quick, slow. The material is by and large derived from the opening fugue subject, stated by the viola.
Geoffrey Kimpton was born in Lincoln in 1927. Some of his most enduring musical impressions came from the great singers and instrumentalists who performed there during the war. Other fine musicians in the forces visited his home, including an ex-Hallé violinist who taught him for a while, then recommended lessons with the great Yorkshire teacher Arthur Kaye. Geoffrey also studied harmony and counterpoint with cathedral organist Dr Gordon Slater. After National Service, he attended the Guildhall School of Music where Alfred Nieman, his composition teacher, had the Midas touch in transforming simple beginnings by his magical improvisations. There followed two memorable years at the Vienna Academy, then back to London and Birmingham. The music of Andrzej Panufnik, for two years conductor of the CBSO, was a great inspiration and influence. In the early 1960s, Geoffrey and his family settled in Manchester, and he has had a career as orchestral player, lecturer, violin teacher and composer. While in the BBC Northern Orchestra (now the Philharmonic), his Passacaglia and Fugue for Strings was broadcast. Over the years, various works for instrumental ensemble, some with voice, have been performed in Manchester, Birmingham, Cheltenham and St.David's. The founding of the North West Composers' Association in 1994 opened new opportunities for concert performances and recordings.
String Quartet No.2 (The Livingstone) is in one movement. This work was first performed in August 1992 by the Richey Quartet in St. David’s Cathedral. The title refers to the great 19th Century explorer, and indicates that this music is a kind of exploration. Short musical ideas and their development may be compared to the sources of rivers and changing landscapes. The biblical meaning of ‘living stones’ was also in the composer's mind with the intention being to form a musical edifice with some spiritual meaning. |
