Thursday 26 February 2015

Thursday 26 February 2015
Milton Court Concert Hall
17:00-18:30
Keynote session performance

Performance: 108
Images and sounds captured by Rolf Hind and Frances-Marie Uitti

 

Rolf Hind’s career has blossomed over twenty-five years in a multitude of directions – establishing him now as a major force as soloist, composer, recording artist, chamber musician, pedagogue, collaborator and concert planner.   His work as a recitalist has taken him to many of the leading new music festivals in Europe – by way of Carnegie Hall, Sydney Opera House and tours of Korea, Taiwan and Cuba.  He has worked with many leading conductors, including Ashkenazy, Knussen, Rattle, David Robertson and Andrew Davis, and appeared at the BBC Proms seven times.

Rolf’s compositions range from solo piano pieces to a piano trio, two string quartets, a piano quintet and a piano concerto,  Maya-Sesha, nominated for a British Composer’s Award. Much of his music is inspired by a fascination with the culture, mythology, philosophy and music of India, to which he has travelled often. At the same time it draws on the technical adventurousness of certain performers, including himself.  He is currently working on a new ‘Mindfulness opera’ for voices, instruments and audience, for Mahogany Opera Group, to be directed by Frederic Wake-Walker, entitled Lost in Thought, to be premiered in the 2015/16 season.

The roster of composers who have worked with Rolf or written for him reads like a Who’s Who, and includes Tan Dun, John Adams, Helmut Lachenmann, Unsuk Chin, Elliott Carter, George Benjamin and James MacMillan, amongst many others. Peter Maxwell Davies is writing a new solo piano work for Rolf, to be premiered at the Wigmore Hall in April 2016.

 

Composer/performer Frances-Marie Uitti pioneered a revolutionary dimension to the cello by transforming it for the first time into a polyphonic instrument capable of sustained chordal and intricate multi-voiced writing, using two bows in one hand.  György Kurtág, Luigi Nono, Giacinto Scelsi, Jonathan Harvey, Richard Barrett, Horatio Radulescu and Lisa Bielawa are among the many composers who have used this technique in works dedicated to her.  Collaborating significantly over many years with radical artists including Dick Raaijmakers, John Cage and Giacinto Scelsi, she has also worked closely with Iannis Xenakis, Elliott Carter, Brian Ferneyhough, and countless composers of the most recent generation.

 

She tours extensively as soloist throughout the world having played for audiences from New York City to Mongolia, and appears regularly in such festivals as the Biennale di Venezia, Strasbourg Festival, Gulbenkian Festival, Ars Musica, Holland Festival and on radio and television in Europe, Japan, and the United States. Her compositions can be heard on ECM records, Cryptogrammophone, JdKrecords, Seraphin, Etcetera, and BVHaast. The University of California Press has commissioned a major treatise from her on Contemporary Cello Techniques,  now in the final stages of completion.

As a teacher, Frances-Marie Uitti has given lectures and masterclasses at practically all the major European conservatories (Royal Conservatory in Copenhagen, Royal Conservatory of The Hague, Sweelinck Conservatory Amsterdam, Royal Conservatory Brussels, Santa Cecilia Roma, the Hochschule für Musik in Cologne, Hochschule Basel, etc.) and many music schools in the USA, including at the Juilliard School of Music, Yale University, and Northwestern University. She is regularly invited to sit on international composer and performer juries. She has travelled frequently to Bhutan and is founder of the Bhutan Music Foundation, a charitable non-profit organisation set up to promote the music of Bhutan, the musical education of the Bhutanese, and the preservation of Bhutanese indigenous music.