Beautiful Ed - very much looking forward to the next 25 with hopefully lots more from Michael Wood! And I couldn't agree more with Thomas Hodgson's remark about 'working within the social and technological constraints of our time.'

The Illusionist's Magic Box - for piano, toy piano and electronics (2024)

The Yi Sun (彝)
Lyrics and Composition by Yijia Tu
 Traditional Phrase from Yi - Adu dialect
English Lyrics:
 Hey hello, is anyone home?
 I’ve been gone for too long.
Hey, hello, can anyone hear me now?
 (I heard strange things went down.)
I’ve just come to spread on,
 Hope, that we have now found.
I’ve just come to spread on,
 Hope, that we are now found.

The Yi Sun 彝

New Horizons - Concerto for Trumpet and Chamber Orchestra (2022)
Dedicated to John Wallace CBE with the hugest gratitude and admiration and warmest affection
Bede Williams (solo Trumpet [Trumpet in C, Piccolo Trumpet & Flugelhorn])
St Andrews Chamber Orchestra
Michael Downes (conductor)
Recording of World Premiere, 12 March 2025, Laidlaw Music Centre, University of St Andrews, Scotland
Recording made by Fife College
Film of complete concert available on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_uCzykyfmH4&t=7s

I was about to move country, to new horizons, and this work grew out of a shorter earlier work as a result. The short piece I wrote for Alison Balsom and the London Chamber Orchestra in celebration of the LCO’s 100th birthday had much further to go. It does so in this concerto. Cast in a single movement but in an almost symmetrical form of seven sections, complete with a cadenza, the work was composed between England and Italy, as I was travelling backwards and forwards from country to country. It strikes a new path in its style, and is, dare I say it, more ‘open’ in its musical language. I have no doubt that the openness of the Italian people and the landscape I knew I would be moving to had an impact on the music’s overall impression. And, of course, being a trumpeter, I wanted to write a solo concerto that responded to the instrument I know most of all, and reflect many of the works and styles I have worked with as a trumpeter. The soloist plays three different trumpets, a standard trumpet in Bb or C, a piccolo trumpet and flugelhorn, which has the most mellow and beguiling of sonorities. 
This work and this performance are dedicated to John Wallace, who was mentor and guide to Bede Williams and to me, and who has done so much to improve the lives of so many through his immense gifts and incredible generosity of spirit. 
© Paul Max Edlin 2025

New Horizons (2022) - live premiere

Edward Nesbit (composer)

St. Aldhelm was a 7th-century English bishop, scholar and author. Among his literary output is a collection of 100 Latin riddles with a wide variety of solutions ranging from a sieve to a unicorn via a pregnant sow. I am attracted to the riddles’ unusual subject matter and to the vividness of their imagery, and am currently setting 26 of them for voice and piano.

The present riddle is about a nightingale, and the text is as follows:

Vox mea diversis variatur pulcra figuris;
Raucisonis numquam modulabor carmina rostris.
Spurca colore tamen sed non sum spreta canendo,
Sic non cesso canens fato terrente futuro.
Nam me bruma fugat sed mox aestate redibo.

The English translation (by Judy Nesbit) is:

My beautiful voice is varied with many different melodies.
I shall never sing my songs with a harsh-sounding beak.
Though my colour is dark I am admired for singing lightly.
So I shall not stop singing, though the future is frightening,
For winter may chase me away, but soon, in the summer, I shall return.

The riddle, set to music in East London during the early days of the lockdown, has, I think, a special resonance in the context of the current global pandemic. The fourth line tells of how the nightingale 'shall not stop singing, though the future is frightening’ – as we continue to create music in this time of uncertainty.

Thomas Hodgson (arrangement, piano, recording/mix engineer)

I live in central London and as the lockdown began I was particularly struck by the birdsong outside my window. The idea behind the arrangement was to leave the noise of the news behind and follow the birds outside. 

Being in lockdown meant I had to make use of the limited equipment available in my apartment. The melody was sung and recorded by Michael Wood - a countertenor at St Mary’s Cathedral in Edinburgh - using an iPhone. There is something creatively interesting about working within the social and technological constraints of our time. It is the product of a particular moment and I think that comes through in the song.

Acalantida

Acalantida (feat. Michael Wood)

Edward Nesbit and Thomas Hodgson, a composer and an ethnomusicologist respectively, are colleagues in the Music Department at King’s College London. Along with countertenor Michael Wood, they initiated a musical collaboration soon after the lockdown began. Called 'Aenigmata', the project draws upon Latin riddles by St Aldhelm to create a commentary on the new, uncertain world that we all live in.

For more information contact: nesbithodgson@gmail.com

Acalantida (feat. Michael Wood)

Edward Nesbit & Thomas Hodgson

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