2010-09-06T10:51:00.000-07:00

SMALL SCALE ACOUSTIC WORKS

music can be bought or hired through the Scottish Music Centre

Lylat

(any instrument - Grade 1 standard with electronics)

download an instrumental part and backing electronics for free!

(3 mins)

Octet
written in response/as a partner to the Stravinsky Octet

flt, clt, 2bsn, 2tpt, tbn, bass tbn

(5 mins)

listen

songs for the M8

string quartet

(10 mins - 5 x 2 mins)

...Meredith, the maverick soundsmith who is still convincingly blurring the boundaries between types of music – her fans have her Beatbox Concerto to look forward to next month. Songs for the M8 is her response to pieces of public art to be seen on the motorway between Edinburgh and Glasgow. On the evidence of these five miniatures, there is no doubt that she has a fantastic ear and off-beat imagination, conjuring up some fine effects with glissandos and harmonics, and with a particularly rewarding viola solo in the third piece – and the content of the pieces suited their scale. There’s a version for string orchestra, but its quirky, pithy wit seems made for the immediacy of a small ensemble.

www.classicalsource.com

...made a lugubrious impression, unlike Anna Meredith’s typically punchy Songs for the M8, five strongly characterised miniatures — lurching, scuttling, soaring, pounding, hovering — inspired by the motorway between Edinburgh and Glasgow (and why not?).
The Times

flex
solo percussion (5 metal sounds)
(6 mins)

charged

solo violin

(5 mins)

Flowering Scotland
electronics with optional live bagpipes
(5 mins)

fin like a flower

counter tenor and harp - words Philip Ridley

(3 mins)

listen

Camberwell Green

piano

(3 mins)

fly by night

sop,vln, vcl and pno

(3 mins)

axeman

solo Bassoon with electric guitar pedal and amplification

(3 mins)

Highlights? Anna Meredith's axeman gives the Sinfonietta's principal bassoon a chance to

come on like Slash: sounds unlikely, works wonderfully.
The Wire

et puer nobis natus est
Christmas Carol - SATB a capella voices
(5 mins)

2010-09-06T10:00:00.003-07:00

LARGE SCALE ACOUSTIC WORKS

music can be bought or hired through the Scottish Music Centre

Four Tributes to 4am
3(picc)/2(C.A)/2/2 2/2/3/0 2perc strings
electronics (tape and sampler)
to be performed with accompanying visuals (by Eleanor Meredith) - available on request
(12 mins)

Left Light

2 Pno Solist

2/2/2/2 4/2/3/0 Hp T 3p Strings

(10 mins)

barchan

solo tbn/a.flt/C.A/2xB.Cl/2Bsn/C.Bsn
3Hn/2xFlg/Tbn/B.Tbn.Tuba timp 3perc 2hp cel. strings (with no violins)

(10 mins)

As an interlude, there was the premiere of Barchan, written for the BBC SSO's principal trombonist Simon Johnson by the inspired young Scottish composer Anna Meredith. It might have been a birthday present for Osborne, but it sounded more like marvellously rethought Sibelius, an update, perhaps, of the Seventh Symphony or a vision of the mysteriously vanished Eighth
The Herald

froms

multiple orchestras

(5mins)

BBC Proms 2008: exuberant, irreverent romp proves a Last Night to remember. Technology triumphed at this year's Last Night of the Proms. For several seasons past, there have been video link-ups between the Albert Hall and the Proms in the Park, fostering a sort of nationwide camaraderie, but this was the first time that a piece of music had been specially written for ensembles playing simultaneously in the hall and elsewhere in country. Anna Meredith's froms - short and sweet but sparky, too - was the work in question, only four or five minutes long but a feat of split-second coordination. It was a risky project, but the alfresco percussion, brass and chorus seemed to make their entries on cue, creating with the chorus and orchestra in the hall an exuberant and irreverent romp in which various Proms tics - the statutory cry of "Heave, ho!" at the raising of a piano lid, the audience's bobbing up and down in the arena - were playfully lampooned.
Daily Telegraph

There was a commissioned piece played composed by Anna Meredith called Froms that was performed musicians joined together from the four Proms in the Park and the Royal Albert Hall over the satellite feeds. It was brash and loud and confusing and wonderful and throbbing and oh! I was in tears. It was magnificent. I loved it. My mum and brother, however, hated it. They talked through it or started to and then must have caught the murderous look in my eyes.
www.outofmytree.co.uk

a dreadful din/inspired/An assault on the eardrums/amazing /discordant monstrosity...
various comments from BBC Proms Reviews

It was all the more incredible then that a new commission by Scottish composer Anna Meredith should succeed in uniting the ensembles in each location (the others being Belfast, London and Swansea). Her work paid homage to Sir Henry Wood without stifling the disparate revellers - a distant dream for the divisive Rule, Britannia!
The Scotsman

Concerto for Beatboxer and Orchestra

solo beatboxer/5 beatboxers within ensemble

ob/clt dbl Eb/B.clt/sax/C.bsn Hn/Tpt/B.Tbn 3xPerc Hp/E.Gtr/Mandolin/ 3vln/2vla/2vcl/db

Whole Ensemble is amplified

(12 mins)

More information or download the score

a gimmick the collaboration is not. In fact, overlook the strangeness of this man with the microphone and this taut, effective 15-minute piece is almost Romantic in its structure and mood: a bristling orchestra confronted and transformed by a lone Orpheus. Meredith’s orchestration is bold and deft (pepped up with prominent parts for mandolin and bells), but she saves her wittiest touch for the end, as Shlomo — finally allowed his own cadenza — incites a mini-round of beatboxing from the players that he has finally tamed.
The Times

downhaul

1/1/1/b.cl/1(dbl c.bsn) 1/2/1/0 2/1/2/1 2xperc 2x pno

(8 mins)

fringeflower (& butterflyflower - partner piece)

2(picc)/2/2/2 4/2/0/0 timp strings

(5 mins each)

...the diverse responses to the four pictures were fascinating. Anna Meredith detected in Charles Rennie Mackintosh’s Butterfly Flower an eerie mood in which separate musical events little flecks of woodwind, for instance, or smeary string glissandos co-existed without ever coalescing, just like the variously coloured flowers in the painting.
The Times

flak

ob/sop.sax/e.gtr/b.gtr/hn/b.tbn/vln/vla/vcl/db 2tpts

Live electronics and amplification throughout

(12 mins)

buy/download a recording

Finishing off the evening was Anna Meredith's flak, which looked promising before it had even begun with spiralling green lighting, smoke and darkly pulsing ambient electronics. This rich, deeply funky piece was essentially one big crescendo: the chamber ensemble began with a unison melody line, which slowly lengthened and then splintered as instruments developed their own voices. The use of electronics was the most complementary of the night and the visuals by flat-e, which focused on a single light bulb, the most lucid. Meredith clearly had a blast giving a classical concert the stage design of a deranged metal gig. As the brooding music swelled, we had everything thrown at us: the percussionists were lit up like rock gods in their solo spot as strings of fairy lights pulsed above our heads; suddenly trumpets punctured the mass of sound from the rear corners of the hall, punctuated by hell-like red lighting, and stage lights blazed in our faces. Though not subtle, this is what new music should be if it wants to be noticed: visceral and unabashedly in your face.
spnm

..thank goodness for the young composer Anna Meredith. Not that many heard her short, sharp, and thrilling Flak... But back inside, the place finally throbbed to her fascinating manipulations of instrumental textures, fizzing with a real pulse that put Meredith's elders (and her backers) to shame.
The Times

... far more exciting was Anna Meredith's Flak, which began sedately but built to a pulverising, Louis Andriessen-like climax in which the instrumentalists were mercilessly auto-tuned until the brass broke free with a triumphant fanfare that sounded like humanity reasserting itself over an evil robot empire.
The Guardian

Meredith’s flak is a superb alignment of electronic and instrumental sounds.
The Wire

Tarantula in Petrol Blue (Libretto by Philip Ridley)

Opera/Music Theatre

Chorus 2vln dbl mandolin/vcl/db flug/tbn/ 2 e gtr/b gtr/ drumkit/perc piano electronics

(80 mins)

More Information
Even More Information
DVD of Premiere performance at Snape Maltings available on request.

Anna Meredith - Works