04 Sep 08

Elliot Carter celebrates his 100th birthday this year and has created a body of more than 130 works, thirty of which were composed in the last ten years, and nine of which were composed in 2007 alone.

Four Oxford composers will premiere new works in a special concert this evening to celebrate the 100th birthday of American composer Elliot Carter.

The concert tonight, 4 September 2008, will be held at the University Concert Hall in Cardiff and will be performed by the London Contemporary Music Group.

The Group, founded and directed by Oxford composer Dr Phillip Cooke (a Career Development Fellow at Queen’s College) and composer Adrian Hull, is a leading UK new music ensemble.

Oxford composers whose work will be performed are Dr Cooke, Dr Robert Saxton (University Lecturer and Fellow at Worcester College), Dr Thomas Hyde (Lecturer at Worcester College) and Dr John Traill (St Anne’s Director of Music).

The group will be conducted by Dr Traill, in his debut performance with the ensemble, and repeat performances and a recording are being scheduled in Oxford and further afield later in the year, including a performance at the Holywell Music Rooms in Oxford on 5 November.

Dr Saxton and Dr Traill are also founders of the Faculty new music group, Ensemble ISIS, providing an annual series of workshops, Composer Speaks lectures featuring leading international composers and an annual New Music Forum – all of which directly support composition studies at Oxford.

Dr Traill said: ‘Dr Robert Saxton has been an icon of British composition for decades, and many of Britain’s leading composers have studied with him. I am delighted to be working with this exciting, and extremely versatile, ensemble.  The inclusion of so many Oxford composers in this LCMG event is testament to the fertile creative landscape that the University facilitates.’

Many Oxford graduates go on to careers as composers, and in recent years these have included Tarik O´Regan (two-time British Composer Award Winner), Ryan Wigglesworth, and Alicia Grant.  In 2008, Mark Simpson, the only person to have won both the BBC Young Musician of the Year and BBC Young Composer of the Year (2006), joins Oxford as an undergraduate at St. Catherine’s College