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Guardian interview with James MacMillan

Here’s an interesting interview with the composer James Macmillan. Having worked with him recently, I can tell you that he’s a lovely man; after we played his Quartet No 2 (Why is This Night Different?) to him in rehearsal, his comments were, “Fantastic…There was only one wrong note, in the second violin…” (I’m sure I played many more wrong notes than that, never mind…

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St Andrews Opera and Lentfest 2012 with James MacMillan

A couple of exciting things have come my way recently which I wanted to share:

• St Andrews Opera, run by the Michael Downes, the director of the music centre at St Andrews, will be staging a version of Tchaikovsky’s Eugene Onegin at the Byre Theatre in St Andrews from June 14th-16th, and Michael has asked me to play in the orchestra (which will include single strings – effectively a string quartet). The production will be directed by Kally Lloyd-Jones (who has worked for Scottish Opera among others) and include singers from St Andrews and Bloomsbury Opera. More details can be found here

• Secondly, I have been asked to play for an event in Glasgow University’s Memorial Chapel on 7th March, in which I will be part of a string quartet playing James MacMillan’s string quartets. This event is part of Lentfest 2012 and will consist of an introductory talk from the composer himself illustrated with musical examples, followed by a concert including the first movement of quartet No. 1 ‘Visions of a November Spring’ , and Quartet No. 2, ‘Why is this night different?’ Details of the event can be found here, and the facebook event is here
  

Other than that, I will be helping out this wednesday at a local community orchestra in St Andrews called St Andrews and Fife Community Orchestra (StAFCO) which is run jointly by the Music Centre and the SCO, so that should be fun!