Philip hits the right note
29 Oct 2013
Investing in Success is a £1 million initiative to boost staff development that has resulted in a fascinating array of projects which show just how passionate our people are about their work here at the University.
Professor Philip Grange has used his IIS funding to complete a CD of music that has been many years in the making.
Philip – a music industry award-winning Professor of Composition and Head of the Division of Art History, Drama and Music in the School of Arts, Languages and Cultures – has used the fund to record the third of three wind pieces and put the finishing touches to a CD performed by members of the National Youth Wind Ensemble of Great Britain.
This third piece, a wind quintet entitled Bacchus Bagatelles, is a divertimento inspired by the process of getting drunk – “something some wind players are renowned for!” It is performed by former members of the National Youth Wind Ensemble who are now fully-fledged professional musicians, and can command a fee. Chris Richards, on clarinet, is principal of the London Symphony Orchestra; Claire Robson, flute, now plays for the Northern Sinfonia; Verity Gunning, oboe, works in Sweden; Mike Kidd, horn and Lully Bathurst, bassoon, are both free-lancers.
The other two pieces are for full symphonic wind band. The first, Cloud Atlas, prompted by the David Mitchell novel given to him for Christmas by colleague Camden Reeves, who knew it would inspire him, was premiered in 2009. The second, Sheng Sheng Bu Shi inspired when Philip learned Chinese for a British Council exchange programme, was written in 2000.
You have to be committed to your art to keep the faith on such a long and winding journey, and Philip is thanks to the work ethic instilled in him by his mentor, Master of the Queen’s Music Sir Peter Maxwell Davies CBE, “intense, demanding but also very generous; he did not accept anything but the highest possible standard”.
“Composing is very hard because when you have written a piece that everyone says is a success that you can feel proud of, you have to move on to the next one,” Philip says. “And the next piece can’t repeat what the last piece did or you simply undermine it.”
The CD, entitled ‘Cloud Atlas: Wind Music by Philip Grange’, and has been released on the Prima Facie label (PFCD019).
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