Friday 26 June 2009

Oy, for six clarinets and almglocken

My piece, "Oy", for six clarinets and almglocken, has been chosen as one of the winners of the BBC Proms Young Composers' Competition. Although I don't win any money, I get a few good commissions: there's a short fanfare piece being done at the Last Night, which will be written as a team by the winners of the competition (I'm a bit anxious about this, but more details will follow).

But more generally, its seems a really great opportunity for me to meet people, attempt to spread some of my hair-brained ideas, and maybe learn some things. I think this piece has probably the most radical instrumentation the competition has yet encountered, which is exciting.

For anyone who's interested in the piece, there a score, below.


Monday 22 June 2009

Ben Lewis - Gursky Documentary and others


Directed by Ben Lewis (2002)

Subsequent to this film, a Gursky print was bought for US$3.34 million (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/99_Cent_II_Diptychon).

Last year, Ben made a film about how the contemporary art bubble has blown up and burst over the last few years. That film isn't on the web (although it was on BBC4/iPlayer for a while, if anyone saw it), but there's a little thing he did in November 2008 in which he discusses it.



He mentions a story published in the Independent about a stockpile of about 200 Damien Hirsts at the White Cube, worth about £100million, which he hadn't (at that time) sold. There was a document that showed this list of work, and it was leaked to the media. In fact, during the making of the film, Ben got hold of the document and leaked it to the media himself.