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KATE WHITLEY KATE The Multi-Story Orchestra • Christopher Stark conductor • Choirs from Kender, Lyndhurst & John Donne Primary Schools • Shiry Rashkovsky viola • Ashley Riches bass • Sarah-Jane Lewis soprano 1 Eloisa-Fleur Thom violin • Asher Zaccardelli viola • Kate Whitley piano • Rolf Hind piano © Ambra Vernuccio KATE WHITLEY 2 Viola Concerto 1 I Recitative, Allegro impetuoso 4’43 2 II Intermezzo, moderato 2’46 3 III Aria, largo 4’11 4 IV Cadenza, vivace 3’23 Shiry Rashkovsky viola • The Multi-Story Orchestra Christopher Stark conductor 3 Pieces for Violin and Piano 5 I 3’48 6 II 4’32 7 III 2’22 Eloisa-Fleur Thom violin • Kate Whitley piano 5 Piano Pieces 8 I 0’42 9 II 1’10 10 III 0’56 11 IV 1’34 12 V 1’04 Rolf Hind piano 13 Duo for Violin and Viola 11’09 Eloisa-Fleur Thom violin • Asher Zaccardelli viola 14 I am I say 12’48 The Multi-Story Orchestra • Choirs from Kender, Lyndhurst and John Donne Primary Schools (JD Singers and Community Choir) • Ashley Riches bass Sarah-Jane Lewis soprano • Christopher Stark conductor Total timing: 55’33 3 3 INTRODUCTION BY KERRY ANDREW I fi rst heard Kate Whitley’s work in a car that aims to bring classical repertoire park. In the centre of Peckham lies a and new works to wider audiences dour, seven-storey building that for the in unusual spaces. I was at their fi rst last ten years has had its upper echelons performance in 2011, and can honestly transformed in the summer months say that listening to The Rite of Spring by art organisation Bold Tendencies. whilst sitting with a can of beer on the Sculpture, fi lm, classical music abound concrete fl oor about fi ve feet away from and a top-fl oor bar looks towards central the fi rst desk of ‘cellos, with the trains London’s skyline. One summer a couple rattling past and an outrageously bloody of years ago, I sat on a bench amongst sunset appearing to the side, was one a packed and excitable audience to of the best musical experiences of my watch a mass of local children perform life. The orchestra do not merely confi ne Alive, a new piece accompanied by themselves to the car park; I highly an orchestra. The experience was recommend watching the 2012 schools’ glorious. The kids, from around ten tour video on Kate’s website, where you different primary schools and music can see gobsmacked seven year-olds groups, were shoulder to shoulder, sang jiggling about to John Adams. Kate built enthusiastically, mouths and eyes wide, on this early programming by creating and young instrumentalists were dotted her own inclusive pieces, so that not amongst the professional orchestra, too. only the audiences were (at least in part) The music was rousing, spacious and local, but the performers as well. atmospheric, and I was confi dent that Alive won a British Composer Award in many of the family and friends beaming 2015 and was chased up with I am I say, in the audience had never been to a which, like its predecessor, is concerned classical concert before. It felt electric. with beauty in the world, and in this case, Kate, along with conductor Christopher the impact of humans on that natural Stark, co-founded and runs Multi-Story, beauty. There is something magical an orchestra and community project about the combination of not just the 4 children’s voices but their words, too – This is music that keeps you on your toes; Kate has a knack for enabling them to there is a lovely dynamism between the truly express themselves in this driving, violin and piano in her tightly-condensed invigorating musical context. The children three pieces, moving between knotty, are an integral part of the work, not just intertwined dialogue, little periods of an afterthought – they are the musicians refl ection and an ear-shreddingly high at the heart of the work, complemented moment. It’s a real tussle. Her solo piano by the heartfelt soloist lines and works distil this further – fi ve short energetic orchestration. pieces that veer from carefully-layered, refl ective harmonies to darkly vicious Kate is a dynamic, indefatigable stabs of sound. musician and part of a generation with a cheerful Do It Yourself approach. She I’m a big admirer of Kate’s style and often performs her own piano parts her passion for bringing her music, and and solo pieces, and I love that she the music of others, to a wider listening responded to the rejection of a proposed public, by any means necessary. I’m viola concerto by writing it anyway and looking forward to seeing how she moves getting it performed by friends. Her music forward, and know that it will be in is thoroughly engaging, and full of the unexpected and brilliant ways. animation that has so clearly inspired the © 2017 Kerry Andrew children who perform in her work. I love the Viola Concerto’s wildly expressive solo lines and sudden moments of Kerry Andrew is a London-based clarity, winnowing away to almost composer, performer, writer and nothing. My favourite moment is where educator. She has a PhD in Composition the viola comes to the foreground for a from the University of York and has won lyrical, unashamedly rhapsodic passage three British Composer Awards. before the piece rushes headlong into its ferocious conclusion. www.kerryandrew.net 5 5 Sarah-Jane Lewis with The Multi-Story Orchestra NOTES BY KATE WHITLEY Viola Concerto an orchestra of musician friends and Written for violist Shiry Rashkovsky when gave the first performance in autumn we were both students, this was the 2010. The piece is made up of four first orchestral piece I wrote. Shiry had short movements joined together by won a University Concerto competition, repetitions of the phrase that opens the and asked the panel if I could write her piece. This comes back 5 times in total, a concerto to play. They said no, but a each time in a slightly different form. friend of mine was brave enough to take The first movement develops dramatic on the idea instead! We put together elements of this opening phrase and 6 has the orchestra supporting the pieces in the set. The second is a song viola’s exposed, expressive lines. The with two verses, which is broken at its second movement is made up of busier climax by a coda of repeated sharp orchestral textures, with a promiment chords. This leads into the fast third solo for the glockenspiel. The third movement where the violin has repeated movement is slow and singing, with a tremolos which struggle against the repeatedly melody in the viola. The final piano, colliding only in the last few bars. movement has continuous fast notes in the viola with dramatic interjections 5 Piano Pieces from the orchestra, escalating until the I’ve played the piano since I was 4, and opening music returns for the last time. when I started writing my own music as a teenager it was to write pieces for myself 3 Pieces for Violin and Piano to play. I eventually moved away from the Commissioned as a set by violinist piano as I learnt how to write for other Beatrice Philips, we first performed instruments, and by the time I came to these pieces together at the 2013 write these piano pieces in 2014, it felt Lewes Chamber Music Festival. I had like re-discovering something familiar but played Janáček’s Violin Sonata with her from a new viewpoint. The 5 pieces are and wanted to write something with a written in a personal, expressive style. similar tense and fragmentary character, In a similar way to the 3 violin and piano which is what brought me to the idea pieces they are self-contained movements of 3 self-contained short pieces. In the made up of repeated sections. Each one first piece the opening muffled bars takes a different and distinct mood – (where the pianist dampens the piano titled declamatory, spacious, aggressive, strings by hand to match the pizzicato sad, and triumphant. sound of the violin) lead to an explosive middle section which dissipates almost Duo for Violin and Viola instantly. This short and self-contained My duo for violin and viola was written shape then repeats from the beginning. for a choreography by Malgorzata This feature, of the music ‘happening Dzierzon in 2015 and commissioned by twice’, is also used in the other two Kettle’s Yard in Cambridge. We took a 7 shared inspiration – a sculpture called two verses (the Sea and the Tree) and ‘Wrestlers’ by Henri Gaudier Brzeska – we then asked the children who were and created the dance and the music taking part to come up with their own separately. The sculpture – of two words for the final verse (the Sky). We figures interlocked in a ‘wrestle’ – could asked them to imagine what they might almost be a dance, it’s hard to tell say if they were the sky – what damage whether they are fighting or supporting humans might be causing to them and each other and their pose strikes an how they might be if left alone. The amazing balance between strength middle section, for two operatic soloists, and elegance. I chose to reflect the imagines this world – a place that ‘beats two dancing/wrestling figures with two with beauty’ – if it were free from the musicians, and the music is made of negative impact of human activity. The two lines which vie against each other, music is made up of simple, repeating poised and delicate but with a withheld phrases and the three verses use the inner tension.

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