Boosey & Hawkes

MacMillan 50th in Manchester, London and Edinburgh

(April 2009)

2009 events celebrating James MacMillan’s 50th birthday on 16 July continue with a BBC Philharmonic concert in Manchester as part of the three-day Raising Sparks series focusing on his music (28-30 April). The Royal Opera presents his music theatre work Parthenogenesis at the Linbury Studio Theatre (11-18 June) and summer festival features include Seven Last Words from the Cross at the BBC Proms and the Edinburgh Festival.

The BBC Philharmonic rounds off its nine-year association with James MacMillan as its Composer/Conductor on 29 April with a 50th birthday concert at the Bridgewater Hall in Manchester. MacMillan conducts Symphony No.3: Silence inspired by the Shusaku Endo novel, the Maundy Thursday meditation with concertante cor Anglais The World’s Ransoming, and Symphony No.5 by Sir Peter Maxwell Davies who he succeeded in the BBC Philharmonic role. MacMillan hands the Composer/Conductor baton to HK Gruber and from 2010 takes up a new position as Principal Guest Conductor of the Netherlands Radio Chamber Philharmonic with concerts planned in Amsterdam and Utrecht and recordings on the BIS label.

The BBC Philharmonic’s birthday concert is a highlight within the MacMillan Resonances series in Manchester entitled Raising Sparks, with three days of events at the Royal Northern College of Music and the Bridgewater Hall. Concerts include a wind, brass and organ programme including Sowetan Spring and Le Tombeau de Georges Roualt (28 April), chamber music programmes (29 April) and a final concert featuring Cumnock Fair and the song-cycle Raising Sparks (30 April). MacMillan will be attending the series, and taking part in talks and student events. On 9 May musicians from the RNCM travel to the Wigmore Hall in London for a MacMillan study day, exploring his chamber music through concerts and discussions with the composer.

Katie Mitchell directs a new staging of MacMillan’s Parthenogenesis at the Royal Opera House’s Linbury Studio Theatre in London opening on 11 June. This music theatre work, developed with poet Michael Symmons Roberts and Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams, explores a documented instance of virgin birth in wartime Germany and the ever-topical themes of genetics and cloning. As well as conducting the stage performances with the Britten Sinfonia, James MacMillan takes part in an insight evening exploring Parthenogenesis on 12 June.

MacMillan is featured at both the BBC Proms and the Edinburgh Festival this summer. Seven Last Words from the Cross, recently released on disc by Naxos – its third recording, is performed at a late-night Prom on 20 July by the BBC Singers and the Manchester Camerata conducted by Douglas Boyd. The Edinburgh Festival feature includes a further performance of Seven Last Words featuring Tenebrae and the Scottish Ensemble (26 August). A ‘Made in Scotland’ programme in Edinburgh combines MacMillan’s The Confession of Isobel Gowdie and Britannia with music by Peter Maxwell Davies performed by the Royal Scottish National Orchestra conducted by Paul Daniel (16 August).

MacMillan 50th celebrations continue next season with the London Symphony Orchestra presenting an Artist Portrait of MacMillan including a further performance of St John Passion (28 February 2010) and the world premiere of a new violin concerto for Vadim Repin conducted by Valery Gergiev (12 May 2010). MacMillan has recently completed a third piano concerto to be premiered by the Minnesota Orchestra in its 2010/11 season.

> Further information on Work: Seven Last Words from the Cross

Photo: Eric Richmond/ArenaPAL

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