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Trinity Laban presents a panoply of contemporary and improvised music for piano, chamber ensemble and dance.

Each day will feature three pre-recorded programmes followed by a live-streamed evening concert from the Old Royal Naval College in Greenwich.

Among the new works will be the UK première of Amir Konjani’s piano trio Topaz no. 2 and two world premières of solo pieces from Canada: Opera Transcription: Don Giovanni by Rodney Sharman and Meditations by David Jaeger. Several other new pieces created in collaborations between TL’s composition and piano students will also receive their first public performances.

There is much other music to experience – from 20th Century classics by Debussy, Bartók and Takemitsu to works by Mario Davidovsky, Douglas Finch, Augusta Read Thomas, Frederic Rzewski, Yuka Takechi and Norbert Zehm.

The second day explores identity in Inès Murer’s Thinking, Feeling, Playing and ends with a concert entirely dedicated to the art of improvisation, including winners of this year’s Gladys Puttick Improvisation Competition. Audience are invited to submit themes in advance which will be chosen at random during the concert to provide starting points for the performers’ spontaneous creations.

  • Douglas Finch, artistic director
  • Sara Pay, project manager
  • Howard Felton, video editor
  • Lucy Coppens, marketing lead
  • Garrett, Snedeker, social media host
  • Roxanna Albayati, assistant improvisation coordinator

June 17th

Performance 1 \ 20th Century Classics \ 10am

Watch here

Piano music by Debussy, Ginastera, Milhaud and Bartók

Trinity Laban pianists explore pieces that both reflected and influenced musical culture in the 20th Century.

Images (book 2) – Claude Debussy

  1. Cloches à travers les feuilles
  2. Et la lune descend sur le temple qui fut
  3. Poissons d’or

Viola Lenzi, piano

Argentinian Dances – Alberto Ginastera  

  1. Danza del viejo boyero
  2. Danza de la moza damosa
  3. Danza del gaucho matrero

       Yan Yan, piano

Scaramouche (3, Brazileira) – Darius Milhaud

        Yan Yan and Xinyu Liu, 2 pianos

Out of Doors  – Béla Bartók

  1. With Drums and Pipes
  2. Barcarolla
  3. Musettes
  4. The Night’s Music
  5. The Chase

          Bo Lyu, piano

Performance 2 \ Opera Transcriptions Litany \ 1pm

Watch here

Christos Fountos performs works by Rodney Sharman and Toru Takemitsu

Trinity Laban Masters student Christos Fountos premières a new work by Canadian Composer Rodney Sharman commissioned for New Lights. His new Opera Transcription is based on the Commendatore Stone Guest scene from Mozart’s Don Giovanni, as suggested by Christos. Performing from the concert hall of the ARTE Music Academy in Nicosia, Cyprus, Christos also includes three earlier Puccini Transcriptions by Sharman as well as Takemitsu’s haunting Litany.

Much of my instrumental music blurs distinctions between harmony and timbre, allowing music to grow from the acoustical properties of the instruments themselves. In other pieces, I transform historical western music through colour, layering, elongation, fragmentation, distillation, and distortion, taking the original as a point of artistic departure.

– Rodney Sharman

Three Puccini Transcriptions  – Rodney Sharman

  1. La Rondine (1991)
  2. Turandot (1989)

III.  Madama Butterfly (1990)

Opera Transcriptions: Don Giovanni (2021)*  – Rodney Sharman

*World Première

Litany, in memory of Michael Vyner (1989) – Toru Takemitsu

  1. Adagio
  2. Lento misterioso

Performance 3 \ Meditations Illuminations \ 4pm

Watch here

Annie Li performs music by David Jaeger and Douglas Finch

Recorded in Toronto’s Arts and Letters Club, TL alum Annie Li gives the world première of distinguished Canadian composer David Jaeger’s Five Piano Meditations and also performs Douglas Finch’s Illuminations inspired by the extraordinary Symbolist prose poems of Arthur Rimbaud, written in his late teens between 1872 and 1874.

Illuminations after Rimbaud (2006)  – Douglas Finch

  1. Mystic
  2. Flowers
  3. Marine
  4. After the Deluge
  5. Dawn
  6. Vigils
  7. Cities
  8. Childhood
  9. Fairy
  10. War
  11. Genie
  12. Departure

Five Piano Meditations (2021)*    David Jaeger

*World Première

  1. Meditation On a Smile
  2. Meditation on ‘Du bist die Ruh’
  3. Meditation on the Tranquility of Union
  4. Sprightly – Delicate
  5. Quasi Toccata

Livestream 1 \ Capturing the Piano \ 6pm

Watch the livestream

18:00 – 20:00, June 17, 2021

Creative collaborations by Trinity Laban’s Composition and Piano students, as well as music by Augusta Read Thomas, Norbert Zehm and Amir Konjani, performed by the Helix Trio.

1st half:

Capture  – Anders Waller

Milda Vitartaite, piano

Zephyr  – Anastasios Antoniou

Daniella Abou Nassar, piano

Sarabande and Enlightenment  – Ryszard Tan

Elle Lumb, piano

Watching the Rain  – Marisa Muñoz López

Ryszard Tan, piano

The Glass Fantasy – Georgia Barnes

  • Georgie Proctor, flute
  • Miriam Pancheva,  violin
  • Georgia Barnes, piano

Fantasia Frustrata – David Balica

Idiome Latine

Ana Sofia Nunes, voice; Arnaldo Cogorno, piano

Local Practice  – Daniel Greenwich

Jinah Shim, piano

2nd half:

Helix Trio
  • Daniel Pukach, violin,
  • Claire Durgan, cello
  • Milda Vitartaite, piano

A Circle Around The Sun (2000) – Augusta Read Thomas

Nocturne for Piano Trio (1992) – Norbert Zehm 

Topaz no. 2  (2021)* – Amir Konjani

*UK première

 

June 18th

Performance 4 \ Synchronisms \ 10am

Watch here.

Beginning with Pulitzer Prize winning American composer Mario Davidovsky’s seminal electro-acoustic work from the 70’s, the programme continues with solo and chamber pieces in a variety of styles.

Synchronisms No. 6  (1970) – Mario Davidovsky

Milda Vitartaite, piano

Pour le Piano et Pianiste – Seungjo Park

Seungjo Park, piano

’The Space in Between’  – Nneka Cummins

  1. what is
  2. must be
  3. then decay

Serena Sheane, prepared piano

Improvisation on Karakurenai (by Andy Akiho)

Serena Sheane, prepared piano

Fantasia in Bb Minor – ‘Beyond the Moonlit Sky Lies the Truth’

                                                   David Balica  

David Balica piano, Alex Lyon clarinet, Faith Whiteley flute, Floora Valila cello

Performance 5 \ Winter Light \ 1pm

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Yukiko Shinohara performs Yuka Takechi’s – Winter Light / Ephemera for Piano

The piece was inspired by the Haiku poem ‘Winter’ by Saisei Muro. Along with words and images, this year’s programme presents Yukiko’s complete performance of the work, following last year’s documentary ‘prelude’.

The idea of her composition is based on cognition of time and space, and transforming elements from within genres of Japanese traditional music such as Shomyo, Gagaku and Noh.

Performance 6 \ Thinking, Feeling, Playing \ 4pm

Watch now

Garrett Snedeker and friends perform Music by Inès Murer and Frederic Rzewski

Trinity Laban alum Garrett Snedeker joins his cousin and pianist Dutcher Snedeker from Grand Rapids, Michigan (US) in a two-piano performance of Rzewski’s Down by the Riverside. Dutcher improvises as Garrett performs the written score, creating a new interpretation of this work. The piece is accompanied by documentary footage of the United States from slavery to the 1960s, depicting different perceptions of America’s history. The transatlantic slave trade is the cause of racism and its institutional oppression in the US, and you can donate to organizations such as the Equal Justice Initiative and the Southern Poverty Law Center to help dismantle prevailing racist systems in the US today.

Garrett and Inès Murer then team up for the group premiere of Murer’s Thinking, Feeling, Playing: Words in Progress, which reflects on experiences of identity and its expression through the words we use. The piece also blurs lines between performer, composer, and audience.

Down by the Riverside – Frederic Rzewski   

  • Garrett Snedeker, piano
  • Dutcher Snedeker, piano/video editor

Thinking, Feeling, Playing: Words in Progress – Inès Murer

  • Garrett Snedeker, piano
  • Inès Murer, voice
  • Rebecca Burden, cello
  • Alexandra Bierlaire, dance
  • Anika Nowicka, dance
  • Tímea Szalontay, dance

Livestream 2 \ Whose Theme is it, Anyway? \ 6pm

Watch the livestream

Trinity Laban pianists and guests improvise on themes provided by both live and on-line audience with spontaneous creations ranging from traditional to experimental and tragic to comic.

The programme will include winners from this year’s Gladys Puttick Improvisation Competition Rebecka Edlund (voice), Caius Williams (double bass) and Daniella Abou Nassar (piano) as well as former Gladys Puttick winner Roxanna Albayati (cello) and the festival’s artistic director Douglas Finch.

Online audience members are invited to submit a ‘theme’.  These will be added to a box and chosen at random for the performers to improvise on. The theme can be a tune from any genre of music, a few lines of poetry, or something visual. This can be submitted anytime before 12:00 noon on June 18th.  To send your ‘theme’, please use this form

The programme will also feature the Helix Trio giving their second performance in the festival of Augusta Read Thomas’ A Circle Around the Sun in an extended version with improvisation joined by dancers from Laban

Performers

  • Daniella Abou Nassar
  • Roxanna Albayati (cello)
  • Dominic Bentham
  • Rebecca Burden (cello)
  • Claire Durgan (cello)
  • Rebecca Edlund (voice)
  • Douglas Finch
  • Pietro Iacopini
  • Ella Ingram
  • Xinyu Liu
  • Alex Lyon (clarinet)
  • Celia Margalet Boquera
  • Alexander Maxted
  • Priscila Oprescu
  • Daniel Pukach (violin)
  • Asami Takei
  • Efstratia Tsakalofa
  • Milda Vitartaite
  • Caius Williams (double bass)
  • Yui Man Jessica Wu
  • Yan Yan

 

  • Maria Vittoria Bortolotti (dance)
  • Chander van Daatselaar (dance)
  • Adri Garcia (dance)
  • Hannah George (dance)
  • Lilli O’Reilly Wagner Hansen (dance)
  • Ashley Lim (dance)