Name: Voles by Ed Zanders Music
Duration: 3 min 25 s
Description: Performed by Alex Young. From the musical 'Bluff'. Book by Matt Cavendish, Music & Lyrics by Ed Zanders

Composed in 1993
Commissioned by Trevor Stuart for his interactive installation 'The Information Tango'
Performed by Laurence Crane (electronic keyboards, electronic percussion, voice and tapes)
Recorded and produced by John Miller at Millersound in July 1993

492 Telecom Announcements

Flute Concerto (Summer 2013)
Performed by students from the Guildhall School of Music
Soloist- Taylor Irelan
Performed in the Milton Court Concert Hall

Flute Concerto- 'Shameless'

In the spring of 1990 Stephen Sondheim was visting tutor in Musical Theatre at St. Catherine's College, Oxford. This is a question and answer session he gave, along with playwrights Arthur Laurents and John Weidman, to a public audience on Friday 8th of June. 

I was doing some research for a dissertation at college in 1997 and was given permission to sit in a little room for an afternoon and make a copy of the only cassette recording the college made...so this might be the first time it's been heard since then! 
It's quite long but there are some fascinating comments about through-sung musicals and loads of great anecdotes. Sondheim and Weidman were in the middle of writing 'Assassins' so this is discussed at length...Laurents is brilliant throughout and has loads to say on 'Gypsy'.
(Apologies for the sound quality - Arthur Laurents sits annoyingly far away from the mic and the questions are sometimes hard to pick up.)

Sondheim/Laurents/Weidman Q&A St. Catherine's College, Oxford 8th June 1990

Pin-Up Broad (From the new musical 'Forbidden Fruit')

Singer: Shamariah Bennett
Piano: Colm Molloy

Recorded at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama

Pin-Up Broad (from 'Forbidden Fruit' - 2016)

Workshopped and recorded with musicians from the Guildhall School of Music and Drama

Actor: Bex Sian-Jane Evans

Orestes' Trial, A Concerto For Actor (Excerpt)

London Euphonia Orchestra and Dario Peluso
4/11/17
Recorded by Chris Howard

SERIOUS MUSIC

On the eve of The Twilight Zone's first preview, Almeida Associate Director Robert Icke talks to playwright Anne Washburn about adapting the cult TV show for the stage, the writer/director relationship and the meeting point between a new play and an adaptation.

Anne Washburn and Robert Icke

This piece, composed for orchestra in 2018, A Hero Passes was commissioned by the University of Kent, and received its World premiere in Canterbury Cathedral in March 2018. Written for the orchestra of Beethoven’s Eroica (with three horns) it is composed in the ‘heroic’ key of E flat major but my piece explores the idea of heroism in a very different way, having been composed a few months after the death of my father, James King. Consequently the music is slow and reflective, with a sort of ‘distanced’ Romanticism and a main theme consciously reminiscent of Elgar’s Nimrod (also in E flat major) partly because Dad was fond of it, and partly because the evoking of ‘noble English’ characteristics seemed an appropriate symbol in commemorating the life of a kind and much-loved man. In the background hover ghosts of other composers my father admired like Sibelius and Mahler, and of course Beethoven, whose descending 3-note ‘Lebewohl’ (farewell) horn-call motif can be heard throughout the score, as if heard from under-water – Dad was a passionate swimmer - and I wanted to try to give the orchestral sound a kind of aquatic sonority. The score has a prominent part for off-stage trumpet.

Some people prefer to listen to a new piece without reading too much information first, but the following description may help to follow the journey of the music: A Hero Passes is in a slow Rondo form, which means that the main theme appears three times, with two episodes in between. At the beginning, a mist-like drone with quiet horns herald the emergence of the main theme, after which the music floats upwards leading to the first episode: the 'Lebewohl' horn call can be heard at different speeds from different sections of the orchestra. Solo violin and trumpet (located above the orchestra) play in dialogue while the strings pluck the ‘farewell’ motif in a slow treading figure. The mood turns increasingly mournful as the ‘farewells’ become dissonant and plaintive. We hear sliding effects on brass instruments and timpani. 

Eventually this sorrowful cascade subsides with the welcome return of the slightly prolonged main theme. A somber second episode follows in A flat minor: low strings and bassoons play a murmering accompaniment, while slow melodies, in canon, fall from above. This builds to a considerable climax with soaring solo high trumpet, and horns playing with their bells raised. The main theme returns again, more passionately than before, and subsides, for the final time, to the sound of low trumpet and muffled drums. 

Matthew King 

https://www.matthewkingcomposer.com/music

James King’s obituary may be found on https://www.theguardian.com/society/2017/apr/16/james-king-obituary

Matthew King's Album

A Hero Passes Premiere (Premiere) Canterbury Cathedral, March 2018

Performed by Alex Young. From the musical 'Bluff'. Book by Matt Cavendish, Music & Lyrics by Ed Zanders

Voles

Here’s Mayoress Cora Hoover Hooper’s PARADE IN TOWN sung and performed by the wonderful Julia McKenzie from the forthcoming Complete Recording of ANYONE CAN WHISTLE.

ANYONE CAN WHISTLE

Parade In Town

A PARADE IN TOWN (from Anyone Can Whistle)

Composer & Lyricist 

Currently living and working in London, with a primary interest in Musical Theatre. 

Graduate of the Guildhall School of Music and Drama.

Voles

Ed Zanders Music

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