Chester Music is delighted to announce that it has just signed an exclusive publishing agreement with the composer Helen Grime.
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| Helen Grime. © Jonathan Wrather |
Helen
has been commissioned by some of the most established performers and
organizations, including the English National Opera, London Symphony
Orchestra, BCMG, Britten Sinfonia, BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra and
the Tanglewood Music Center. Chester Music is making available 14
current works by Helen, including Virga for orchestra (2007), A Cold Spring (2009) for ensemble and Into the faded air
for string sextet (2007). The first new piece will be Helen’s
commission for the 75th Birthday of the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra
which is a 10-minute work, premiered in Glasgow on December 2. Other
forthcoming commissions include a work for the Santa Fe Chamber Music
Festival in 2012. James Rushton, Managing Director of Chester Music
said: ‘It is rare to find in a composer as young, such a mature,
confident and defined voice, as is the case with Helen Grime. We are
delighted to be working with Helen and look forward to the future with
much excitement.’
Born in 1981, Helen studied oboe with
John Anderson and composition with Julian Anderson and Edwin Roxburgh
at the Royal College of Music. She graduated from the B. Mus. course
with First Class Honors and completed her Masters with Distinction in
2004. From 2005-07, Helen was a Legal & General Junior Fellow at
the RCM. In 2003 she won a British Composer Award for her Oboe
Concerto, and was awarded the intercollegiate Theodore Holland
Composition Prize in 2003 as well as all the major composition prizes
in the RCM. In 2008 she was awarded a Leonard Bernstein Fellowship to
study at the Tanglewood Music Center where she studied with John Harbison, Michael Gandolfi, Shulamit Ran and Augusta Read Thomas.
The Music Sales group is also excited to announce the addition of two young composers to the Wilhelm Hansen catalogue: Britta Byström and Søren Nils Eichberg.
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| Britta Byström. © Ester Sorri, DN.se |
Britta
Byström was born in 1977 in the Swedish town Sundsvall. Her initial
musical education was as a trumpet player at the local music school. She
began composing as a teenager and in 1995 she began studies in
composition at Musikhögskolan in Stockholm. Among her teachers were
Pär Lindgren and Bent Sørensen and she graduated in 2001. Byström has
written pieces in almost every genre – chamber music, vocal music, even
an opera – but writing for the orchestra is her main focus. Her music
has been performed by the Swedish and the Norwegian Radio Symphony
orchestras and in 2007 Britta Byström became Composer-in-residence at
Västerås Sinfonietta. In April 2010 Konserthuset in Stockholm hosted a
Composer Portrait. New Stockholm Chamber Orchestra premiered Afskedsvariationer, Farewell variations, in 2005 and the work has become a signature piece for the composer. Sera
is an orchestral piece in which a lullabylike melody is heard in many
and very different musical settings. Byström herself describes the
piece as a bird of some sort flying over a musical landscape but
without changing. In general Byström likes to express her music in
pictures and continues: “I’m trying to make a music that at least to me
sounds beautiful and poetic – and hopefully give my listeners an
aesthetic experience.” Byström’s music is sound-oriented, and her
careful ear on musical qualities such as timbre and resonance could be
labeled "impressionistic."
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| Søren Nils Eichberg. © Henning Harms |
Søren
Nils Eichberg was born in 1973 in Stuttgart, Germany, grew up in
Denmark and today lives and works in Berlin. He studied piano and
orchestral conducting in Copenhagen and Cologne, but his break-through
came as a composer when winning the Queen Elisabeth Competition of
Belgium in 2001. Since then, he has risen to become one of the most
distinctive composers of his generation. His works have been performed
in most European countries as well as in Japan, China, Korea, Australia
and the US and have been radio broadcast in the US and Europe.
Eichberg has recently been appointed the first ever
composer-in-residence in the history of the Danish National Orchestra.
For three years he will thus put his mark on one of the leading
orchestras in Scandinavia. Eichberg has also been commissioned by
Ensemble Modern, Radio Symphony Orchestra Saarbrücken, the Opera House
of Münster and the Theatre of Stendal, Odense Symphony Orchestra,
Nordwestdeutsche Philharmonie, the International Festival in Bergen in
Norway, the International Piano Competition Ferruccio Busoni, the
International ARD Music Competition and the Japanese Viva Hall Cello
Competition. His output since 2001 includes more than 30 works, among
others a symphony; cello-, piano- and violin concertos; an opera as
well as solo-, chamber- and ensemble music. His prizes and awards
include the Composition Fellowship of the Tanglewood Music Festival, the
3-year Composition Grant of the Danish Ministry of Culture, the
Composition Stipend of the German Konrad-Adenauer-Foundation, the
Civitella Ranieri Fellowship (Italy / New York) and the Composition
Prize of the Onassis Public Benefit Foundation. As a conductor he has
worked with: Südwestfälische Philharmonie, Junge Münchner Philharmonie,
Danish Radio Symphony, Ensemble Kaleidoskop Berlin, Österreichisches
Ensemble für Neue Musik and soloists from the Munich and Berlin
Philharmonic.