Name: I: Chant and Overtones (SONGS) by James Garner • Composer
Duration: 3 min 53 s
Description: SONGS for solo piano, live workshop performance by Joseph Havlat

Richard Baker 'To Keep A True Lent'

Richard Baker 'The Tyranny of Fun' (Movement II - excerpt)

SONGS for solo piano, live workshop performance by Joseph Havlat

I: Chant and Overtones (SONGS)

A seminal clarinet and piano piece from the late 1960s. Reid Concert Hall, Edinburgh College of Art, 30/6/2025.

Peter Maxwell Davies: HYMNOS

For 8 singers and 8 instrumentalists, this opera is about Arnold Schoenberg's final years in Hollywood. 

Schoenberg in Hollywood

https://cassandramiller.wordpress.com/2010/05/14/bel-canto/

Bel Canto

Commissioned by Ensemble Kore with the support of the Canada Council for the Arts

Recipient of the 2011 Jules-Léger Prize for New Chamber Music (Canada’s highest honour for composition)

Marie-Annick Béliveau, mezzo-soprano
Geneviève Déraspe, alto flute
Xavier Brossard-Ménard, clarinet
Jonathan Barriault, guitar
John Corban, violin
Pemi Paull, viola
Yegor Dyachkov, cello

The piece is above all a portrait Maria Callas. It’s based on the opening statement (the opening sighs) of Puccini’s Vissi d’arte – Maria Callas’ live version of it, with all the full generosity of her vibrato, swoops and portamenti (all the things outside of notation). At the beginning, it’s as if we hear her young voice, and towards the end, the voice of her later years.

The path of the piece through time is not only about the ageing of an extraordinary woman, but also about the listener. Time slows down to allow for an engagement with detail, for a closeness or submersion in the sound, and possibly for clarity or meditative stillness.

Two simultaneous ensembles perform here without coordinating with each other. This makes for layers of melody, creating a sonic depth of field – echoing perhaps the depth of the Greek landscape in which I felt the warm revelation that originally inspired this piece. Moreover, to separate the ensemble into two smaller groups, without conductor, enables an intense chamber-listening between the players. This intimacy allows them to carry out with great musicality all of the non-notatable things I mentioned earlier – the swoops and vibrato, and all the unnamable subtleties of vocality.

Bel Canto

Bel Canto, Ensemble Kore with Marie-Annick Béliveau (2010)

https://cassandramiller.wordpress.com/2011/03/13/warblework/

https://itunes.apple.com/ca/album/warblework-swainsons-thrush/id475163576?i=475163593

À chacun sa miniature

Warblework: Swainson's Thrush

Warblework: Swainson’s Thrush - Quatuor Bozzini (2011)

Pieces About Art was commissioned in 2014 by EXAUDI vocal ensemble supported by Britten-Pears Foundation and is dedicated to James Weeks, EXAUDI's director, and to all the singers in the ensemble. The work consists of two movements of roughly equal duration, which in this recording are performed without a break.

In my previous music for voice I had always written or compiled the texts myself but for this work I decided that I wanted to set words that had been written by someone else. A friend drew my attention to a text by a famous American artist, written in 1968; the artist had engraved the words directly onto a steel sculpture. I liked the repetitive and minimal nature of this text and I also liked the fact that the words had been written specially for use on a sculpture. I thought that the text would work well in my piece, so in July 2014 I set about trying to get permission from the artist to use the text. After several false starts, I ended up contacting the Artists Rights Society in New York, who handle these matters for the artist. Eventually I received an email refusing me permission to use the words. I then decided to write a text loosely based on the email received from the Artists Rights Society; this is what I set in Artist Refuses Request, the first movement of Pieces About Art.

Later that month I had lunch with the writer Michael Bracewell, a friend of many years. He alluded to some of the problems of writing about art. I asked Michael if he would allow me to set a piece of his prose writing and he agreed. A substantial proportion of the words that I set in the second movement of Pieces About Art - which is titled Writing About Art - are taken from Michael's essay on the work of the British artist John Stezaker. Originally written for the catalogue of Stezaker's 2011 retrospective at the Whitechapel Gallery in London, the essay is also reproduced in Michael Bracewell's collection 'The Space Between', published by Ridinghouse.

Both movements of Pieces About Art have a narrative about some sort of struggle. In Artist Refuses Request it is about the quest to get permission to set a text. In Writing About Art, the words that I have written myself, and which I set alongside extracts from Michael Bracewell's essay on John Stezaker, hint at a loose narrative about the struggle to write effectively about art. 

This performance was one of four given over the course of two weekends in July 2017, in Hull and London, which comprised the 2017 New Music Biennial, presented by the PRS Foundation. 

EXAUDI, conducted by James Weeks
Hull
1 July 2017

Pieces About Art

Richard Baker ‘Written on a Train’ (excerpt)

Richard Baker ‘Angelus’ (excerpt)

James Garner is a composer whose music has been described as “utterly accomplished in all respects” (Dame Judith Weir) and praised for its “warmth, sincerity and tension” (Bachtrack). His works have been performed in the UK and internationally.

James has a deep affinity for vocal and theatrical music, having written multiple pieces for the stage. In 2017, his first chamber opera, East o’ the Sun, West o’ the Moon, received its North American premiere in Montreal, and in 2020 he collaborated on The Opera Story’s digital series Episodes, which won an RPS Inspiration Award. He has previously been commissioned by English Touring Opera (for whom he wrote his second opera, Dust Child), The Opera Story, and Tête à Tête. His next major work and first full-length opera, Much Ado, is based on Shakespeare’s original play and was previewed for the Association for Opera in Canada. It is commissioned by Opera McGill, who will give its world premiere in 2026/27 at the Monument-National in Montréal.

James’s music has also been performed at festivals and series, including the Kings Place Festival, Borough New Music, Richmond Concert Series, and Song in the City. Much of his recent output has consisted of solo and chamber music, including a new work for the guitarist George Tarlton, and a chamber commission from the Orchestra of Opera North. In 2024, he curated a programme of new and devised music at the historic Old Church Stoke Newington, in collaboration with Owen Spafford, Alex Lyon, Hania Woźniak and Carla Huhtanen. Future projects include a song cycle for the soprano Elisabeth Boudreault, and a new collection of solo piano pieces for Joseph Havlat.

James is in regular demand in the UK as a composer for participatory and outreach projects, and has mentored students in music facilitation and opera-making at institutions including the Royal Academy, Royal College of Music, Guildhall School and Oxford University. He has also worked as a conductor and music assistant for the Barbican Centre, Royal Opera House, Royal Festival Hall and BBC Four. He is a regular guest artist on McGill University’s opera programme.

This Spring, James is composing a film opera short with the Canadian novelist Lisa Moore for Opera on the Avalon’s New Commission Series, and leading participatory projects for Turtle Key Arts in association with the Royal College, Oxford University, and the V&A Museum.

James graduated from the Guildhall School with the Muriel Dawson/Mary Ryan Award for Composition. He is also a recent graduate from the Royal Academy, where he studied with David Sawer and additionally with Hans Abrahamsen, supported by the Munster Trust. Previously, James was co-founder and music director of workshOPERA, who were nominated for a New British Music Theatre Award.

His work has been generously supported by the Arts Council and the Maria Björnson Fund.

I: Chant and Overtones (SONGS)

James Garner • Composer

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