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The year in brief<br />
In Michaelmas Term we welcomed new members to the Isaiah Choir and<br />
established an enthusiastic and dedicated group of singers, meeting every week<br />
to work on technique and sight-reading and to tackle new repertoire. I wrote a<br />
short piece called ‘The Wondrous Bells’ which the choir performed with great<br />
spirit and panache at the Winter Concert in December. Alongside this, I wrote two<br />
commissioned choral pieces, one for Magdalen <strong>College</strong> School, and the other for the<br />
Oxford-based chamber choir, Commotio.<br />
In much the same spirit of challenge and discovery, which drives chefs to introduce<br />
their eating public to new dishes, I set up the Innocent Ear project in Hilary Term.<br />
This involves posting three tracks for members of <strong>College</strong> to listen to each week.<br />
There is no information about the tracks, which presents the opportunity to enjoy<br />
the music (or not) without knowing that, for example, the singer is Barry White, or<br />
the conductor Bernard Haitink. I received a number of enthusiastic and supportive<br />
messages about this project and, although other commitments made me lay it aside<br />
in Trinity, I will be restarting it for the new academic year.<br />
Trinity Term was a whirl of activity. Towards the end of May, Susanna Fairbairn,<br />
who is a dear friend and a wonderful soprano, came to Wolfson with the pianist<br />
Matthew Schellhorn. Together they gave a stunning recital of English and French<br />
song around the theme of childhood, with works by Poulenc, Britten, Debussy and<br />
Colin Riley. They also performed the premiere of my setting of the Edward Lear<br />
nonsense poem ‘The Owl and the Pussy-cat’, and the concert was full of passion,<br />
verve and humour. My pièce de résistance (as chefs are wont to say) was a series of<br />
miniatures, written for the Fournier Trio. This work is called Seven Meditations,<br />
and each movement takes its title from the Seven Last Words (of Christ on the<br />
Cross). It’s not a religious work per se, but I wanted a meaningful starting-point.<br />
The Fournier Trio gave the premiere – a fine and moving performance – in late<br />
June in the Leonard Wolfson Auditorium.<br />
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