MacMillan choral commission unveiled in US and UK

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(August 2006)

Premiere performances of James MacMillan's major new choral work Sun-Dogs take place in the US and UK in August.

James MacMillan's Sun-Dogs is a four-way co-commission between The IU Jacobs School of Music at Indiana University, the Three Choirs Festival, the Netherlands Chamber Choir and the Soundstreams Festival in Canada. The premiere takes place in Bloomington on 6 August with the Contemporary Vocal Ensemble conducted by Carmen Helena Téllez. MacMillan will attend the performance and will be the keynote speaker the day before at a university colloquium on the subject "Composers, Text and Music".

The European premiere of Sun-Dogs follows on 10 August at the Three Choirs Festival in Hereford with the festival chorus conducted by the composer. The Canadian premiere is given by massed choirs at the Soundstreams Festival in Toronto on 5 November conducted by the composer. The Dutch premiere is part of a ZaterdagMatinee concert on 21 April 2007 at the Concertgebouw in Amsterdam, with the Netherlands Radio Choir conducted by Marcus Creed.

The 18-minute a cappella work sets texts by the award-winning poet and novelist Michael Symmons Roberts whose earlier collaborations with James MacMillan have included Quickening, Parthenogenesis, Raising Sparks and the libretto for a new opera, The Sacrifice, to be premiered by Welsh National Opera in 2007. The text of Sun-Dogs is richly allegorical, iconographic with a deep well of Christian symbolism. The metaphors are complex, evoking a range of emotions and images, dark and terrifying one minute, radiant and ecstatic the next.

James MacMillan is guest speaker at the Association of British Choral Directors conference at the Sage in Gateshead on Saturday 26 August. His two sessions are entitled A Composer's Lifelong Love of the Choir and Music, Modernity and the Sacred.

For the latest on choral music, visit our new Choral website.

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MacMillan choral commission unveiled in US and UK

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