John McLeod - Press
John McLeod - premieres and commissions
Scottish Music Centre1 Feb 2008
John McLeod's new orchestral work The Leopard Dances (commissioned by Aberdeen City Music School) will be performed on Sunday 9 March at 5 p.m. in the Music Hall, Aberdeen conducted by the composer.
This follows on from John's big success last year with his BBC Radio 3 commission FLING which he wrote for the combined forces of the BBC SSO and the Highland Region Youth Orchestra.
Also, McLeod's Chinese Whispers (nominated for a British Composer Award in 2005) receives its London premiere on 10 April at St Bride's Church, Fleet Street by the award-winning ensemble Onyx Brass.
They will play the work again the following evening 11 April in Canterbury Cathedral as part of a BBC Radio 3 broadcast. McLeod's piece takes the form of a series of imaginary conversations between the players only here it's music that tells the tale - apart from a few shouted words in Cantonese! Conrad Wilson of Glasgow newspaper The Herald described the work as 'witty and imaginative music'.
Johns next commissioned work is Haflidi's Pictures - a series of 12 aphorisms for piano based on drawings by composer Haflidi Hallgrimsson. This will receive its premiere at London's Wigmore Hall on 24 July by pianist Mark Tanner and will subsequently be recorded by him for a new CD of contemporary piano music.
The Ragnarok Ensemble have taken John's A Moment in Time for violin, clarinet, cello and piano into their repertoire and have been playing it in this country and abroad and his recent Clarinet Concerto has proved a popular MP3 download on the Chandos record site www.chandos.net.
To find out more about composer John McLeod please visit:
www.scottishmusiccentre.com/john_mcleod