About the Artists

conductor and harpsichord

Jonathan Cohen has forged a remarkable career as a conductor, cellist and keyboardist. Well known for his passion and commitment to chamber music Jonathan is equally at home in such diverse activities as baroque opera and the classical symphonic repertoire. He is Artistic Director of Arcangelo, Music Director of Les Violons du Roy, Artistic Director of Tetbury Festival and Artistic Partner of The Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra. The 21-22 season sees Jonathan direct a number of baroque masterpieces: Messiah with Rotterdam Philharmonic and Les Violons du Roy and St Matthew Passion with Arcangelo (BBC Proms) and with Netherlands Philharmonic Orchestra. He returns to Glyndebourne Festival Opera for Alcina and to Budapest Festival Orchestra for a programme of Scarlatti, Vivaldi and Handel. In the USA, he returns to conduct Handel and Haydn Society and Philharmonia Baroque. With Les Violons du Roy, he directs projects with Avi Avital and an all-Mozart programme with Sandrine Piau. Jonathan founded Arcangelo in 2010, who strive to perform high quality and specially created projects. He has toured with them to exceptional halls and festivals including Wigmore Hall London, Philharmonie Berlin, Kölner Philharmonie, Vienna Musikverein, Salzburg Festival and Carnegie Hall New York. They made their Proms debut at the Sam Wanamaker Playhouse in 2016 and returned to the Proms in 2018 to present Theodora to a sold-out Royal Albert Hall. Their recent recordings of Magnificats by members of the Bach family and Charpentier’s Leçons de ténèbres, both attracted critical acclaim. Their latest release for Alpha Classics is Handel’s Brockes Passion.

Keiran Campbell violoncello

Keiran Campbell was drawn to the cello after he stumbled across one in his grandmother’s basement and was baffled by its size. Once he turned 8, he began taking lessons—on a much smaller cello—in his native Greensboro, North Carolina. After studying extensively with Leonid Zilper, former solo cellist of the Bolshoi Ballet, he received his Bachelor’s and Master’s at The Juilliard School, working with Darrett Adkins, Timothy

Eddy, and Phoebe Carrai. Keiran also spent several springs in Cornwall, England, studying with Steven Isserlis and Ralph Kirshbaum at Prussia Cove. Now based in Toronto, Keiran is principal cello of Tafelmusik Baroque Orchestra. Keiran has performed with orchestras including The English Concert, NYBI, Philharmonia Baroque, The Boston

Early Music Festival Orchestra, and Mercury Baroque. He recently performed with Le Concert Des Nations under

Jordi Savall, touring Europe performing Beethoven Symphonies before recording them on Savall’s new

Beethoven CD. During the summer, Keiran plays in

NYC with Teatro Nuovo, an opera company dedicated to performing bel canto opera on period instruments, and he also performs at Lakes Area Music Festival in

Minnesota. Keiran has given lectures and masterclasses at UNC Chapel Hill, RNCM Manchester, Western

University, and the National Academy Orchestra of

Canada. Concerto appearances this season include performances with Tafelmusik and Philharmonia Baroque Orchestra. Keiran is also fascinated by instrument making, which he studies with the maker of his cello, Timothy Johnson.

composer

Paul Stanhope is a Sydney-based composer, conductor and educator. His compositions have had prominent performances in the UK, Europe, Asia as well as North and South America. After studies with Andrew Ford, Andrew Schultz and Peter Sculthorpe in Australia, Paul was awarded the Charles Mackerras Scholarship which enabled him to study at the Guildhall School of Music in London in 2000. In May 2004 Paul’s international standing was confirmed when he was awarded first place in the prestigious Toru Takemitsu Composition Prize. He has been awarded four APRA/Australian Music Centre Art awards in Instrumental, Orchestral, Choral and Vocal music categories and was also the first composer to receive a Sidney Myer Creative Fellowship in 2013 and 2014. In 2010 Paul was Musica Viva Australia’s featured composer, receiving nation-wide performances by the Pavel Haas Quartet, the Choir of Trinity College, Cambridge and the Atos Piano Trio from Berlin. Paul’s music has also been featured at the Vale of Glamorgan Festival (Wales) in 2009, The City of London Festival in 2011 and at the Australian Festival of Chamber Music in 2016. In 2018 a new Piano Trio was premiered by eight competing trios from around the world as part of the Melbourne International Chamber Music Competition. 2014 saw the premiere of Jandamarra: Sing for the Country, a music-drama based on the life of the Western Australian Indigenous resistance hero in collaboration with librettist Steve Hawke and members of the Bunuba nation in North Western Australia. Written for large choral and orchestral forces as well as singers, actors and dancers from the Bunuba Community, it was premiered by the Sydney Symphony Orchestra (SSO) and Gondwana Choirs and has since had a return performance in October 2019, presented by the Sydney Conservatorium of Music. Jandamarra has been recognized as a ‘milestone in Australian composition’ (The Australian). Paul’s Piccolo Concerto was featured in performances by the Melbourne, Adelaide and Tasmanian Symphony Orchestras in 2013 and was released on an ABC Classics recording the following year. This work was followed by a Cello Concerto ‘Dawn and Darkness’ composed in 2016 for the Sydney Symphony and an award-winning Trombone Concerto premiered by the West Australian Symphony Orchestra in 2017. In 2021, Paul’s new Requiem, written for Sydney Chamber Choir, was premiered to great acclaim with the Sydney Morning Herald describing it as a ‘major contribution to Australian choral music.’ Paul Stanhope is an Associate Professor of Composition at the Sydney Conservatorium of Music, The University of Sydney and Artistic Chair of the Australia Ensemble, University of New South Wales. 18 PHILHARMONIA BAROQUE ORCHESTRA & CHORALE

How did this project begin?

The Australian Chamber Orchestra (ACO) asked me to write a piece as a companion work to the Geminiani ‘La Folia’ and to add a bit of ‘spice’ to an all Baroque program. Philharmonia Baroque agreed to co-commission the piece, which I am thrilled about. My home town of Sydney has been in lockdown since June 2021, and a regional tour by the ACO in which the La Folia program was supposed to feature was cancelled. So I’m very pleased that the premiere will now be in San Fransisco—a city which has a similar vibe to Sydney, I think!

What is the most exciting part of this project?

I find the idea of relating a new piece to an old one very appealing. I’ve used this sort of territory often before and it was a joy to explore its potential again. That and composing for amazing players, of course!

What does the title “Giving Ground” mean to you?

It has a few meanings, which drew me to it. Firstly, it relates to the fact that in the piece one texture gives way (gives ground) to another one in a series of shifts that I’ve tried to make seamless. Giving Ground is also an act of ceding something, giving in or giving an idea away. Covid has forced realities upon us that we have had to cede freedoms, for example, to get on top of a pandemic. And there are frictions there with people who don’t want to give up individual freedoms—there’s tension there! I guess the last one is a wry look at marriage: in the end you don’t always get your own way. Giving ground is an inevitability for a long and happy relationship. Wow—a lot to unpack there!

What do you hope for listeners to take away from this composition?

I’d like them to take or leave what they want! I’ve tried to explore the potential of the ‘La Folia’ chord progression through a series of textures and episodes in a way which relates to the original but takes the material into some more other-worldly atmospheres. I’d like the audience to consider its playful elements.

Who are your biggest influences?

In the early part of my career, my teachers Peter Sculthorpe and Andrew Schultz were a big influence, along with Ross Edwards whose music I studied in detail in my Master’s degree. Since then, the music of Scottish composer James MacMillan has also been influential. Early music composers such as John Dowland and Claudio Monteverdi find their way into my music in significant ways as well.

What kind of processes do you use when composing?

A boring, 9-5 business-like approach where I force myself into the process on a daily basis. This is the way I manage creative flow. I also like to put a new piece aside for a few weeks once a draft is completed and come back to it. I tend to hear it afresh when I do this and I become more objective and critical in order to refine the ideas to their final stage. Ultimately, the first rehearsals and performances are the test as to whether all that speculation works! I start with pencil and paper and thereafter will go over to music notation software to do more detailed drafts. There’s nothing exciting or romantic about the process at all. Just grinding hard work. The fun happens in the rehearsal process, as far as I’m concerned!