University of York Music Press

UYMP is delighted to announce that we are looking for a part-time Assistant Administrator to join our small, York-based team. This role will focus on the administration and operation of the UYMP office, supporting the Administrator in their work.

In this role you will:

• Contribute to general office duties and assist with enquiries, as required.
• Assist with the promotion of UYMP publications, liaising with composers, performers and promoters, and building relationships with them.

To find out more about the role and how to apply, please click here .

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.

John Donne, Beckett, Berio, Joyce and The Beatles - just a few of the eclectic collection of artists who influenced the composers in the upcoming York Late Music concert on 1st March (19:30) by the Elysian Singers of London, conducted by Sam Laughton. The programme will also include the first performance of David Lancaster's The World’s Last Night. Late Music also celebrate Roger Marsh's (Professor of Music at the University of York from 1989 to 2019) 75th birthday on Saturday, with a lunchtime (13.00 hours) concert by the Trifarious Ensemble. Trifarious will play Roger's Ferry Music and Easy Steps, as well as works by Berio, Takemitsu, Tom Armstrong and David Power.   

We are absolutely thrilled that the young pianist Yash Saran has just won the Ethyl Smyth Award for Performance of a Work by a Female Composer in the 2025 Woking Young Musician of the Year Competition 2025, adjudicated by George Caird. He performed the first movement of house composer Sadie Harrison’s Lunae (1. ...around and a round...) for solo piano.

Yash Saran has been playing the piano since the age of 6, and now studies at the Royal Academy of Music Junior Department with Eleanor Hodgkinson.  He is a thrice winner of Woking Music Festival's Junior Musician of the Year and twice runner up of the Piano Prize at the Academy. 

We are happy to announce that our friends Late Music York’s 2025 season begins this Saturday 1st February.  As usual, concerts will take place in the beautiful Unitarian Chapel, 31 St. Saviourgate, York, YO1 8NQ. Late Music write: ‘From Bingen to Bingham! Join us on Saturday 1st February for the first concerts of 2025. At 1pm we’re taking flight with women writing for women as Nia Rhein Passmore and Kate Ledger explore music by female composers from Hildegard Von Bingen to the present day. This is followed by the Bingham String Quartet at 7:30 (with a pre-concert talk at 6:45) taking on Phillip Glass’ fascinating 3rd Quartet, ‘Mishima’ alongside new works by Anthony Adams and Steve Crowther.

Premieres of works by David Lancaster and NCN composer Hayley Jenkins, performed at the Late Music Concert Series, York, have received superb reviews from Paul Conway, in Musical Opinion’s January-March 2025 issue.  The 2nd November lunchtime recital by pianist Jelena Makarova marked the centenary of Stravinsky’s Piano Sonata and the evening concert was given by the Amabile Clarinet Trio.   

We are delighted that House Composer Sadie Harrison has received a most positive review in Musical Opinion Quarterly Spring 2025, for the premiere of her work The Book of Stars and Sorrows by the fabulous pianist Lauryna Sableviciute. The concert took place on 10 August at Stoller Hall, Manchester, one of several events held during the 23rd Chetham’s International Piano Summer School.  

UYMP was pleased to hear David Lancaster's Swan broadcast on the RTE Lyric FM radio programme Vespertine hosted by Ellen Cranitch. The recording, made by the Delta Saxophone Quartet for their outstanding album Bowie, Berlin and Beyond, was played on Saturday evening (5th Jan).

"Thomas Simaku is one of the most distinctive voices in British music today" – Jim Samson.

Part of a compelling programme by the acclaimed British pianist Danny Driver, including ‘sublime works’ by Chopin and Ligeti’s ‘complex creation of 1951-3’, the world premiere of Catena IV for piano by Thomas Simaku took place in London at a packed hall of Wigmore Hall on 2 January 2025. British musicologist Jim Samson – a leading authority on the music of Chopin, and author of several books – wrote, in his programme note: “Born in Albania, but granted British citizenship in 2000, Thomas Simaku is one of the most distinctive voices in British music today. Catena IV, given its world premiere in this concert, is the fourth work of his Catena Cycle for solo piano. The composer stresses that, despite its nine self-contained sections and four interludes, it was conceived as a single movement, a linked chain of events rather than episodic form. Our programming here is strategic, given that its fourth section is a ‘Hommage à Chopin’ (built on the exact notes of the opening of First Ballade) and its fifth section a ‘Hommage à Ligeti’ (a re-working of Ligeti’s signature lamento motif). Fittingly, the eighth is titled ‘Ligeti meets Chopin’. Here the Chopin quotation is overlaid by different manifestations of the lamento motif, and at registral extremes.”

UYMP offers huge congratulations to composer Luís Tinoco, who has been awarded the Pessoa Prize 2024, the most prestigious award in Portugal in the fields of the sciences and the arts. Named after Fernando Pessoa, the prize was initiated by the Expresso newspaper, sponsored by Caixa Geral de Depósitos, and aims to recognize Portuguese people who play a significant role in the country's cultural and scientific life.

This is just the third time in 38 years of the Pessoa Prize that a representative in the Music profession has been honoured. Only pianist Maria João Pires (1989) and composer Emanuel Nunes (2000) have preceded Luís Tinoco. The choice was welcomed by the Minister of Culture who, in a statement, recognized Tinoco's “commitment to teaching and training young musicians and his ability to project Portuguese musical creation across borders, with a unique and innovative artistic language.” Musicologist Rui Vieira Nery, one of the members of the jury, explained that they reached a firm consensus on Luís Tinoco as winner of the prize.