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Producer Steve Plews is pleased to announce the next in the series of Campion Cameo British Composer Series - Lucifer's Dynamo, compositions for solo piano composed by Camden Reeves and performed by the exceptional pianist Richard Casey.

Here are some of Camden's thoughts on the project:

'I have been in love with the piano for as long as I can remember. My grandfather was a Jazz musician and there was a piano in his house (in fact it’s still there); and I am told that, even before I could walk properly, I would clamber up to the thing and bash out my earliest discordant creations. I could not have been aware that it was a musical instrument, or even of what music was, but I found it fascinating, and I still do. Indeed, as a composer, the piano has never been far from my thoughts, as most of my composing is done at the keyboard; but my ideas about writing for it as a solo instrument did not come to fruition until quite recently. Inventions & Fantasies was completed in 2002, and then two years later I was awarded a fellowship at the University of Manchester by the Arts and Humanities Research Council of Great Britain to collaborate with the pianist Richard Casey over three years on the composition of a series of new works for piano. This CD marks not just the culmination of that project, but of a life-long affair with this most remarkable of instruments.'

Camden Reeves (b. 1974) studied composition with Philip Grange at the University of Exeter, with David Blake and Roger Marsh at the University of York and with Paavo Heininen at the Sibelius Academy in Helsinki. At the age of just 22, he was appointed Composer Fellow with the Hallé Orchestra in Manchester, a fruitful two-year collaboration that resulted in a number of striking orchestral scores. He is currently AHRC Fellow in the Creative and Performing Arts at the University of Manchester, where he has taught composition since 2002. His music has been performed throughout the world by a range of artists and ensembles, including the Basle Soloists, Birmingham Contemporary Music Group, the BBC Philharmonic Orchestra, Richard Casey, the Celtica Duo, Gemini Ensemble, the Hallé Orchestra, the Lawson Trio, Loré Lixenberg, Okeanos, Psappha, Dominic Saunders, Alison Wells and Clive Williamson. The piano trio Starlight Squid is also available on Borderlands, Campion Cameo 2053 (Chagall Trio, 2005).

Richard Casey was born in Manchester in 1966 and started playing the piano at the age of seven. After graduating in Music at St John’s College, Cambridge, he studied piano at the Royal Northern College of Music with Marjorie Clementi and Martin Roscoe. In 1997 Richard won first prize in the British Contemporary Piano Competition, an achievement which attracted a series of solo engagements in the UK and abroad. Based in Manchester, Richard complements his solo career with a strong commitment to chamber music. Since 1994 he has been pianist with the New Music Players and has performed frequently as a guest with the London Sinfonietta, the Composers’ Ensemble, Lontano and Liverpool-based Ensemble 10:10. Richard is also a founder-member of the Manchester-based contemporary music ensemble Psappha. Since 1991 he has performed over 200 works with the group throughout the UK and in tours of Spain, Holland, Ireland, France, Belgium, Australia and the USA. Recent projects have included working with the Richard Alston Dance Company in Stravinsky’s Three Movements from Petrushka, collaboration with radical improvisation group Bark! and an invitation from Pierre Boulez to join the Ensemble Intercontemporain in a performance of his Sur Incises in Carnegie Hall, New York.