BCMG: Ideal & Flying Height
Frontiers + Ferneyhough
The Bradshaw Hall, Royal Birmingham Conservatoire
Royal Birmingham Conservatoire, 200 Jennens Road, B4 7XR
£15 general admission
£5 student (with valid NUS/student card)
All Conservatoire venues and spaces are accessible by wheelchair users and those with limited mobility. Accessible toilet facilities are also available. There are designated wheelchair spaces in every venue.

Coventry-born Brian Ferneyhough celebrates his 75th birthday this year - and to celebrate, BCMG are joined by the Arditti String Quartet to perform his music here in the heart of the Midlands.
Ferneyhough’s music is renowned for its interwoven lines and it hums with activity - it’s sometimes called ‘complexity’ but this obscures its humanity. In Dum Transisset I-IV we hear the composer’s tribute to Christopher Tye, a sixteenth-century composer and organist; La Chute d’Icare conjures Icarus’s stunning achievement of flight, thwarted by his hubris; and Funérailles reflects on pianist and composer Franz Liszt’s work of the same name written over a century earlier.
In addition to works by Ferneyhough, we thought we’d celebrate more home-grown talent with works by Jonathan Harvey (born in Sutton Coldfield), Charlotte Bray (Royal Birmingham Conservatoire alumnus and former BCMG Apprentice Composer in Residence) and Michael Wolters (Deputy Head of Composition, Royal Birmingham Conservatoire).
Birmingham Contemporary Music Group
Oliver Janes solo clarinet
Arditti String Quartet
Conductor Emilio Pomarico
Brian Ferneyhough La Chute d’Icare
Brian Ferneyhough Funérailles I & II
Jonathan Harvey Scena
Charlotte Bray Beneath the Dawn Horizon
Michael Wolters Funeral Concerto
In partnership with:
Frontiers + Ferneyhough
Events include:
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Brian Ferneyhough in Conversation with Howard Skempton
Frontiers + Ferneyhough -
Arditti String Quartet with NEXT Student Performers
Frontiers + Ferneyhough