1st performance programme note:
Operatic composers such as Janáček and Britten often based their vocal lines on speech patterns whilst the American Steve Reich samples speech and loops it into his work. The recently formed Size Zero Opera tackles tough subjects often using unedited texts from national newspapers. The National Theatre has taken ‘verbatim theatre’ even further with ‘London Road’ where transcribed news footage and interviews are musicalized. ‘The Listening Project Symphony’ feels part of a Zeitgeist but differs in that the text is hyper-real – actual untreated voices, actual conversations. And this was both the challenge and the joy of the commission.
I have avoided Reich’s sampling technique but never the less the lilt of many of the voices has sometimes provided contour as well as context. I have tried to live up to the honesty, warmth and affection the conversations evince without over-emphasing or resorting to overtly cinematic devices. I have tried to travel in tandem with the words - perhaps more as a musical observer, commentator, sympathiser: highlighting a little here, spotlighting there. The conversations that the producer Cathy Fitzgerald has assembled are deeply rich and evocative. It is a privilege to have composed this piece. It is dedicated ‘to everyone within…’


The Listening Project Symphony

Intro (Fi Glover)

1) When I saw you first

3) Never take away the memories

4) Wish I could have said 5) We are together

Applause and Outro (Fi Glover)

2) Can't be lovey-dovey all the time

Gary Carpenter studied composition at the Royal College of Music with John Lambert. He has lived in Holland and Germany and has written operas, musicals, ballets (mostly for Nederlands Dans Theater) and a radio music-drama - The One Alone with Iris Murdoch - as well as a substantial amount of concert music. Musical director and/or arranger-orchestrator on many stage shows and films (including The Wicker Man), he won the British Clavichord Society Composition Competition in 2004 (Van Assendelft’s Vermeer) and a 2006 British Composer Award with his harp trio Azaleas. A portrait CD - Die Flimmerkiste is available on NMC.
Recent works include The Listening Project Symphony (Radio 4, BBC Philharmonic Orchestra,– nominated for Prix Europa 2013), Fred and Ginger (LSO, Daniel Harding) Bassoon Concerto (Alan Pendlebury, RLPO, Vasily Petrenko, Piano Trio [Fournier Trio, Wigmore Hall, RPS Prize Nomination 2012)], SET – Concerto for Tenor Saxophone and Orchestra [Iain Ballamy (tenor sax)/BBC Philharmonic Orchestra/HK Gruber, Bridgewater Hall, Manchester], The Food Of Love – a sequence of 12 Shakespeare songs in four books for choirs and piano commissioned by the Shakespeare Birthplace Trust to celebrate the anniversaries of the Shakespeare’s birth (1564/2014) and death (1616/2016) and Dadaville for The First Night of the 2015 Proms. 
Gary is Professor of Composition at the RNCM, Manchester and a professor of composition at the Royal Academy of Music, London. He was elected an Honorary Member of the Royal Academy of Music (HonRAM) in 2013.
