Champions Newsletter Winter 2025
Welcome to the Winter 2025 edition of the NMC Champions Newsletter!
Welcome to the Winter 2025 NMC Champions Newsletter. In this edition, we hear from former Creative Director at Schott Music and NMC Principal Benefactor, Sally Groves, about her experience working with Sir Michael Tippett and the excitment around NMC's upcoming release of his opera New Year
Also in this issue, Clare O'Connell provides an in-depth insight into her upcoming album entitled Light Flowing (released on 25 April 2025). There are also recommendations from our ‘Discover’ blog, as well as our recent and upcoming releases on NMC and information about our 2025 CD & Digital Annual Subscriptions.
We would also like to take this opportunity to highlight the success of award-winning Trombone Quartet Slide Action, who have been nominated in the Premiere and Newcomer categories for the BBC Music Magazine Awards for their Debut Album RE:BUILD RE:BUILD was released on NMC Recordings on 11 October 2024 and is available on CD and streaming. To vote for Slide Action RE:BUILD in BBC Music Magazine Newcomer and Premiere categories simply click the links below. Thank you.
BBC Music Magazine Premiere Award & BBC Music Magazine Newcomer Award
Best wishes,
Claire Wright, Stephen Balfour Head of Fundraising Office & Fundraising Co-ordinator
NMC Composer Q&A
In late November 2024, NMC hosted a composer Q&A featuring Freya Waley-Cohen and Tom Coult for NMC Producers' Circle, Ambassadors and Principal Benefactors supporters.
The evening was hosted by BBC Radio 3’s Tom McKinney, who posed a series of questions to Freya and Tom around their compositional process and the inspiration behind their recent Debut Discs. Interspersed within discussions, we heard several extracts from both albums which the composers had selected. It was a fascinating experience to listen to Freya and Tom discuss the similarities and differences within their own compositional processes and how collaborative experiences can alter their compositional output.
At the conclusion of the event, there was an opportunity to chat to both composers as well as Tom McKinney over an informal drink. We are incredibly grateful to Freya and the two Toms for their time and for the preparation they put into the evening. I would also like to thank all the supporters who attended.
Our Composer Q&A was such a wonderful evening and we hope to hold another similar event in late 2025. If you are interested in attending please do not hesitate to contact either me at stephen@nmcrec.co.uk or Head of Fundraising, Claire Wright at claire@nmcrec.co.uk – we are always delighted to hear from you. Stephen Balfour, January 2025
Freya Waley-Cohen, Tom Coult & Tom McKinney© NMC Recordings
Freya Waley-Cohen, Tom Coult & Tom McKinney © NMC Recordings
Michael Tippett's New Year - Sally Groves
NMC Principal Benefactor and former Creative Director at Schott Music, Sally Groves provides a personal insight into Michael Tippett's New Year. Sally writes:
New Year is a love story – for me, anyway. When you read Oliver Soden’s marvellously wide-ranging article for the CD you will find lots of other things it’s about and where all Michael Tippett’s ideas came from. (Oh, and please of course, if you haven’t already, read his wonderful biography of Tippett). But for me, Jo Ann is the centre of this opera. Michael loved women and formed deep relationships with two especially – so deep that he contemplated marriage. At the beginning of the opera, Jo Ann is trapped in her flat: she falls in love and at the very end finds a way back to her own strength. She is the bridge between the two worlds of New Year (“Somewhere and Today” and “Nowwhere and Tomorrow”) because her love is for a space traveller (from a galaxy far, far away). But, as Oliver says, ‘why should the realms of fantasy and science fiction be outside the boundaries of opera, which in its earliest incarnations dealt with the fantastic creatures of myth and the descent of Orpheus from one world into another?’
Knowing Michael was one of the great joys of my life, and working for him as his publisher was the greatest of responsibilities. I would go and stay for weekends at his house in Wiltshire (where he was looked after by two lovely
Sally Groves © RVW Foundation
housekeepers straight out of Cider with Rosie). He always worked for some hours in the morning, would break for a light lunch and then head out into the Wiltshire countryside. Sharing those walks, you had to summon all your curiosity, imagination and receptiveness. The libretto for New Year, as with all his operas, reflects the fecundity of his mind and its allusive nature, and exchanges (if you could keep up – Michael walked and talked quite fast) ranged from economics to Eastenders (television was his relaxation).
Back to Oliver again: ‘New Year is an attempt, musically and dramatically, to ask whether lyrical beauty can be clawed back in the face of metropolitan chaos. The music encompasses this journey, from city-sprawl to the rose-canopied dreamscape of another world’. So musically it will remind you at times of his first opera, The Midsummer Marriage (dance is a crucial element in both), at other times of The Ice Break. The music has huge energy and the orchestral writing is breathtaking. Michael pours his love of Jo Ann into her music and gives her a beautiful sarabande. For her foster-brother Donny he writes reggae and ska. Pelegrin the space traveller sings radiant Monteverdi.
Approach this opera with curiosity, imagination and receptiveness, as I’m sure as a firm NMC supporter you will! We are so lucky that NMC have included it in their series of amazing British operas.
Michael
Tippett:
Sally Groves, December 2024
New Year
The first commercial recording of Michael Tippett's opera New Year, featuring a stellar cast, BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra conducted by Martyn Brabbins.
Soloists, BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra, BBC Singers, Martyn Brabbins. NMC D291. New Year will be released on NMC Recordings on 14 March 2025.
Recommended on Discover
Click on the headshots to read the articles below!
NYC Young Composer, Cameron BilesLiddell
27th January 2025
Hear from Cameron Biles-Liddell on jumpstarting the creative process and his experience composing for the National Youth Choir. Cameron features on NYC Volume 6, released on 31 Jan 2025 on NMC.
Áine Mallon: A Year in Composition
with the National Youth Choir
17th January 2025
In this essay, NYC Volume 6 composer Aine Mallon discusses her reflections on process, vulnerability, and creativity as an emerging professional artist.
Cathy Graham awarded an International Citation of Merit
13th December 2024
We all congratulate Cathy Graham, our Executive Director, who has been awarded an International Citation of Merit by the International Society for Performing Arts (ISPA).
Clare O'Connell: Light Flowing
Cellist Clare O'Connell provides an in depth preview into her upcoming album entitled Light Flowing. Clare writes:
The body of work contained in my new album, Light Flowing, was inspired and tied together conceptually by ideas of light, depth, simplicity and the search for a perfect line, and aims to capture an otherworldly beauty that six wonderful composers represent within their different sound worlds: Edmund Finnis, Natalie Klouda, Nick Martin, Emily Hall, Alex Mills and Emilie Levienaise Farrouch.
Its starting point lay in the work of Edmund Finnis, from whom I cocommissioned with the bassist Elena Hull a duo for cello and bass, inspired by Brother and Sister, the duos he had already written for violin and viola and violin and cello respectively. I discovered his Three Solos (commissioned by London Sinfonietta) during lockdown and was deeply honoured when he gave me permission to record them. It is utterly compelling music inspired by Bach and which approaches the cello in the most naturalistic way, allowing the instrument to speak as is was designed to.
I had already commissioned a piece for cello and harp by Alex Mills for my concert series Behind the Mirror, which explores the higher registers
© Clare O'Connell
of the cello in its depiction of the midsummer sun at its highest point and provides relief in the sound of the harp; the next person I approached was Nick Martin, a composer who’s music speaks to me profoundly. This is highly emotive, moving music which tries to express the inexpressible at the deepest level. We had a long conversation, him sitting on a bench in Copenhagen where he lives, me in my practice room, discussing the notion of light, which I was hoping he would find a way to represent, and over the course of the next few months, two extraordinary movements found their way to me, multi layered, music so powerful I felt compelled to record it at home immediately.
I’m extremely grateful to NMC for taking this project on in its early stages, questioning my choices and encouraging me to look to three female composers for the rest of the music.
I chose Natalie Klouda, Emily Hall and Emilie Levienaise Farrouch, three wonderful composers with very different styles of
Clare O'Connell © Clare O'Connell
writing, all of whom I hugely admire and whose work I wanted to champion. Natalie’s stylish writing creates a polyphony of sound acoustically - ŪhtĊeare is inspired by the faint but rising midsummer sun and the overall structure mirrors the emotional rollercoaster of a looming and yet enchanted midsummer’s day. In contrast Emilie Levienaise Farrouch uses loops and layering to refract the sound world of each open string into individual elements, ranging from textural to melodic; from woodland dark greens to rich feminine textures with resonant depth. Emily Hall’s You Sail to the Sky is a piece of perfect minimalism; inspired by Nick Drake’s Cello Song, its undulating harmonics and slowly modulating double stops take us all the way to heaven.
Flowing © NMC Recordings
It has been a huge privilege to explore with them all, and I’m enormously proud of what has been created.
Clare O'Connell, December 2024
Clare O'Connell: Light Flowing
A radiant body of newly commissioned work for solo and layered cello, with harp, double bass and electronics, by six leading British composers including Edmund Finnis, Emily Hall, Alex Mills, Nick Martin, Emilie Levienaise Farrouch and Natalie Klouda.
Clare O’Connell. NMC D287
The Light Flowing will be released on NMC Recordiings on 4 April 2025.
Light
Annual Subscriptions
Keep your finger on the pulse of new music and discover new favourites with our Annual Subscription offer.
In 2025 NMC will release a total of 11 albums (8 CD & Digital, 3 Digital only), including music by Michael Tippett, Simon Emmerson, Hannah Kendall, Liza Lim, Zoë Martlew, Harrison Birtwistle, Edmund Finnis and many more! CD Subscribers will receive a code that enables them to order the newly released CD from the NMC online store for free (postage and packaging will be charged at checkout), making savings of more than 20% overall. Digital Subscribers will receive a code which allows them to download the album for free.
As part of your subscription, we will send you regular information about new releases and codes to redeem your free copy. Click on the images below to head to our website and purchase your subscription now!
Annual Digital Subscription: £80 11 albums Available as MP3, FLAC16 and FLAC24 Annual CD Subscription: £85 8 albums
Available as CD only
Recent & upcoming NMC releases
Recent releases
Tom Coult: Pieces That Disappear
Tom Coult’s music has been championed by many of the UK’s major orchestras and ensembles, resulting in a series of acclaimed large-scale works which form the basis of his debut album.
BBC Philharmonic Orchestra, Daniel Pioro, Anna Dennis. NMC D261
National
Youth
Choir: Volume 6
Now in its sixth year, the Young Composers series is a collaboration between the National Youth Choir and NMC Recordings. The works featured on the recording are by Jamie Powe, Crystalla Serghiou, Áine Mallon and Cameron Biles-Liddell, the four National Youth Choir Young Composers for 2024.
National Youth Choir, National Youth Choir Fellows. NMC DL3058
Upcoming in 2025
Michael Tippett: New Year
Sir Michael Tippett’s Space Age fairytale opera New Year. The BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra, BBC Singers and an internationally renowned team of solo singers assemble to record a live, public performance of the complete opera, marking 35 years of NMC Recordings and its support of great titans of British contemporary music. BBC Scottish Symphony Orhcestra, Martyn Brabbins. NMC D291
Martin Iddon: Hesperides
Lampades - for tubist & fixed media (2021 Ivor Novello Award, solo composition) • in’ei • Hesperides
Quiet Music Ensemble. NMC D295
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This quarterly Newsletter is written and edited by Stephen Balfour.
To get in touch with me:
t: 020 3022 5836
e: stephen@nmcrec.co.uk
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