UYMP house composer, James Weeks, has recently released a new album G O M B E R T with the ensemble, Apartment House, under the record label, Another Timbre. 

The album consists of seven motets and a chanson by 16th century Franco-Flemish composer, Nicolas Gombert, arranged for instruments by Weeks who also composed the interludes between the Gombert pieces. Weeks straddles the worlds of both early and contemporary music, and his 'media vita' interludes act as resting points between Gombert's intricate pieces. 

Read more about the project at http://anothertimbre.com/gombert.html 

Purchase the album on Bandcamp at https://anothertimbre.bandcamp.com/album/g-o-m-b-e-r-t

 

Many belated congratulations to Evis Sammoutis on his recent (2024) appointment as Associate Professor of Composition at Eastman School of Music in the USA.  We are also delighted that Evis has been awarded a Senior Research Fellowship from the GATES International Excellence in the Humanities Programme, at Université Grenoble Alpes, France.  Eastman School of Music write that Evis will ‘spend part of 2025 in Grenoble working with faculty from various disciplines and will also be a Visiting Fellow at St. Cross College, Oxford, in May 2025.

Described by the reviewer as ‘pure pleasure’, a wonderful review of Danny Driver's early January concert at the Wigmore Hall has just been published by Gramophone, in their "Spring 2025: Live concert reviews’’.  As a ‘centrepiece’, ‘ideally placed in this recital’, the concert included the world premiere of Catena IV,  a substantial work for piano by Thomas Simaku.  The reviewer writes: ‘Beginning with two Chopin Nocturnes, he went on to play Ligeti’s provocative Musica ricercata as a series of highly atmospheric impressions, suggesting an exhilarating journey of exploration.