City of Sounds: Showcase Concert
City of Sounds Festival
£7 (£5) (£3, BCU students). Free entry for open day attendees and their guests.
To coincide with the end of our June Open Day, the Chamber Music Festival presents a showcase concert with performances by students from most departments, and concluding with the powerful string orchestra arrangement of Shostakovich’s 8th Quartet. The Conservatoire’s Junior Fellows, the Gildas Quartet, will be taking part.
Free for Open Day attendees
This concert is free to attend for Open Day attendees and their guests, details of how to get complimentary tickets will be in the confirmation email when you register for the Open Day.
The Chamber Music Festival
The Chamber Music Festival provides a showcase for student ensembles from each department in the Conservatoire, as well as an opportunity to hear some of our superb Ensembles in Residence and teaching staff. This year the Strings students are taking on the challenge of presenting the cycle of 15 Quartets by Shostakovich. This is testimony to the breadth of talent and growth of experience in the arena of Chamber Music at the conservatoire in recent years.
The experience of listening to the Shostakovich cycle of quartets is extraordinarily powerful, revealing as it does the inner life of one of the 20th century’s great musical geniuses, as well as one of its most tormented. The dark side of these works is only part of the full spectrum of human experience they express, from childlike innocence, tenderness and playfulness to great exuberance and irrepressible energy.
Saxophones
The Nuance Quintet
Russell Peck Drastic Measures
Guitars:
Rowan McConkey
Jonnie Cumming
Hannah Woollacott
Berx Kockaya
Phillip Houghton Opals
Woodwind
Inventus Quintet
Jim Parker Mississippi Five for Wind Quintet
II. Blues for Johnny Dodds
V. Les Animaux
Conservatoire Brass directed by Chris Houlding
Tom Harrold Icebreaker
Chris Houlding Masque
Mark Anthony Turnage Set To
Gildas Quartet:
Cristopher Jones
Gemma Sharples
Kay Stephen
Anna Menzies
Shostakovich 2 Pieces for string quartet, Elegy and Polka
Naoko Senda violin
Ruri Kuroda cello
Yenting Wang piano
Shostakovich Piano Trio No 1:
Shostakovich Chamber Symphony (String Orchestra version of the 8th Quartet) Directed by Robin Ireland, Head of Chamber Music.
City of Sounds Festival
In a city recognised for its architectural transformations, the City of Sounds festival is an invitation to remember, to celebrate and to look to the future of Birmingham’s rich music scene.
In conjunction with:
