people we’d like to thank Violinist Clemens Merkel is considered Frankfurt, received its UK premiere in a one of the most versatile interpreters of performance by the BBC Symphony contemporary music today. Integrating a Orchestra. twin/double was premiered in Holst Foundation large variety of different styles into his 2007 by the Bozzini Quartet and broadcast repertoire, he has performed at numerous by Radio 3. 2008 saw the first performances music

concerts and festivals throughout Europe of when air too still and Parhelion, in Clemens Merkel and North America. Pursuing a career as interpretations by Exaudi and Apartment chamber musician and soloist he is a House. Conseil des arts et des lettres founding member of the Bozzini Quartet www.bmic.co.uk/alias/markustrunk (Montréal). (b.1973) is an independent we’d du Québec Well known for his innovative and highly composer, based in London, UK since 1997. individualistic interpretations of such Music has been written for various groups Lutheran Church of St Anne contrasting composers as Bach and John and ensembles including Apartment House, and St Agnes Cage, Merkel has made a name for Reservoir, London Sinfonietta, [rout], himself for creating his own Chroma; and for various instrumentalists like unconventional style, often characterised including Stephen Altoft, Angharad Davies, as intense, precise and sensitive at the , Julia Eckhardt, Anton same time. Lukoszevieze, Tanja Masanti, Andrew Born in Freiburg (Germany), Clemens Sparling, Craig Shepard, Philip Thomas, Merkel has lived in Montréal (Canada) Stefan Thut. Music has been performed in to since 1999. He studied at the UK, Europe, USA, Armenia, New Zealand, Musikhochschule Freiburg with Joerg Japan. Broadcasts of music have been on Hofmann and Nicolas Chumachenco and Resonance FM, Wandelweiser Radio, BBC is a former member of Thuermchen Radio 3, and WDR Köln. Ensemble (Köln), Ensemble SurPlus www.untitledwebsite.com (Freiburg) and Kore Ensemble (Montréal). hear John Lely is a composer and performer He currently teaches at Concordia University in Montréal. based in the UK. He studied at Goldsmiths College, London with Roger Redgate and www.quatuorbozzini.ca , and privately with Michael Christian Wolff was born in 1934 in Nice, Parsons. In 2007 he was a resident France, but has lived mostly in the U.S. composer at Ostrava New Music Days. His since 1941. He studied piano with Grete music has been featured internationally at Sultan and, briefly, composition with John festivals such as MaerzMusik, Ultima, Cage. Though mostly self-taught as a Huddersfield Contemporary Music Festival, th composer, association with John Cage, Cutting Edge and Open Sound Systems 30 June 2010 Morton Feldman, David Tudor, Earle (Tate Modern, London). Broadcasts have Brown, Frederic Rzewski and Cornelius included BBC 4 Television, BBC Radio 3, Cardew have been important for him. DeutschlandRadio and Resonance FM. He church of st anne & Wolff has also been active as a performer performs in groups Apartment House and st agnes and as an improviser - with, among others, LelyWhite (electronic chamber music with Takehisa Kosugi, Steve Lacey, Keith composer John White). Three improvised gresham street Rowe, William Winant, Kui Dong, Larry CDs are available through Matchless Polansky and the group AMM. His writings Recordings. From 2007-8 he was on music, up to 1998, are collected in the responsible for the digitisation of the Daphne book Cues: Writings And Conversations, Oram Collection at Goldsmiths College. John published by MusikTexte, Cologne. is currently working on 'Words and Music', a £9 (£6) Markus Trunk was born in 1962 in two-year AHRC funded research project Mannheim, Germany. Studied composition about verbal notation, housed at Bath Spa in Karlsruhe (Mathias Spahlinger, Walter University. He also teaches a course in Zimmermann) and the United States (Alvin experimental sound at Chelsea College of Lucier). Resident in London since 1996. Arts. Hobbies include counting and balancing. On a clear day for large orchestra, a www.musicwedliketohear.com commission from Hessischer Rundfunk www.johnlely.co.uk

Christian Wolff Markus Trunk Tim Parkinson John Lely The Death of Mother Jones Four stills violin piece (1999) The Harmonics of Real violin solo (1977) for a bowed instrument Strings (2002/10) (2006) The Death of Mother Jones is the second of two solo violin pieces in the form of free variations on songs from the United States Labor movement (after Bread and Roses, 1976). The violin–fiddle– was the primary instrument of the musical culture which produced the song– Anglo-American folk and ‘country’ musics of Appalachia. ‘Mother’ Jones, who died in 1930 at the age of a hundred, “was,” as Edith Fowke and Joe Glazer say in their Songs of Work and Protest, “the most remarkable woman produced by the American labor movement,” devoting fifty years of her life (after losing four children and husband in an epidemic in 1867) “fighting The original conception-image for this fiercely on behalf of her ‘children’: the coal miners and the rest of the piece was a series of regular frames working class.” The song appeared with an irregular distribution of things anonymously shortly after her death. within them, like slabs on a pavement. The song’s four parts are reflected "Things" in this case means ideas, in four larger sections of variations containing five, five, four and three thoughts, or more specifically, subsections, the second generally constellations of notes. As far as I characterized by much use of tremolo, the third by running remember, having made all the ideas, I sixteenth note figures and the fourth picked them at random to form a by longer, more freely measured lines usually moving around a sequence, to subvert my anxieties about sustained sound. The music is beginning-middle-end, to make a non- “concert music.” But the rough The Harmonics of Real Strings edged process of composing it I doubt there is a way of producing linear progression. It was written with means to be in the spirit of the song Brian Lee in mind, who had just moved (2006) is scored for any bowed and its background. And the sound that is more satisfying than to London, who made the first extreme technical demands made string instrument, and is dedicated on the performer are intended also performance in a recording session in to evoke a sense of hard-working bowing a string. to . struggle. 2000.

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