10 Composers from Wales, 10 Commissions

Swansea born John Metcalf is a leading Welsh composer of his generation. A joint UK/Canadian citizen, his composing career embraces a large variety of work including seven operas – two to commission from Welsh National Opera. His most recent opera, Under Milk Wood, was produced by an international consortium led by the Taliesin Arts Centre for the 2014 Dylan Thomas Centenary Festival. It received great critical acclaim, and is recorded on Tŷ Cerdd Records.
He also has an extensive catalogue of works for solo instrument and orchestra, including Paradise Haunts, Mapping Wales and Cello Symphony, and has written a significant amount of chamber music. His solo piano work Endless Song has been widely performed and broadcast. His music is well represented in a growing catalogue of recordings.

John Metcalf has been Artistic Director of the award-winning Vale of Glamorgan Festival since its inception in 1969. He has led creative music projects in more than 150 schools across Wales, reflecting his belief in an active, participatory role for the composer in society.

In 1999 his music was played during the signing, by Her Majesty the Queen, of the Act bringing into being Wales's first elected Assembly for 500 years, and in the 2012 New Year’s Honours List he was awarded an MBE for services to music.

Steph Power is a composer, writer and critic living in mid-Wales. On graduating from York University in 1987, she freelanced as a performer for several years specialising in contemporary and 20th century music (guitars/percussion/narration); a founding member of Icebreaker and Jane Manning’s Minstrels, she also performed with Gemini and Lontano, Innererklang, Northern Music Theatre and more.

Her music has been performed by Xenia Pestova, Yfat Soul Zisso, Explorations in Sound, Llŷr Williams, the Bridge Duo and PM Ensemble among others. 2017 saw the world premiere of a commission by the Vale of Glamorgan Festival of and / ante by the Marsyas Trio.

Steph also writes widely on music; sleeve notes for NMC Records; articles, reviews and poetry in diverse journals from Opera Magazine and TEMPO to Poetry Wales and, as a contributing editor, Wales Arts Review. She is a critic for The Independent and The Stage, BBC Music Magazine and Opera Now. October 2017 saw the publication of The Music of Simon Holt (Boydell & Brewer), a major study to which she contributed two chapters.

Gareth Moorcraft is a composer from Cowbridge, Vale of Glamorgan who read music at Worcester College, Oxford where he studied composition with Robert Saxton. He was later awarded an AHRC scholarship to study with Gary Carpenter at the Royal Academy of Music. He is currently working on his PhD with David Sawer and Simon Bainbridge.

His music has been performed widely in the UK and Europe by the BBC National Orchestra of Wales, the CHROMA ensemble, Endymion, and the Philharmonia Orchestra. In 2012, his work Rondo for wind trio won a British Composer Award. He has since been awarded the Tŷ Cerdd Composition Prize (2013), the Theodore Holland Prize (2016), and the prestigious RPS Composition Prize (2016). Last year, his work Reflections (after Gibbons) was released on NMC records.

Andrew Lewis studied composition with Jonty Harrison at the University of Birmingham, where he was one of the founding members of BEAST. He is currently Professor of Music at Bangor University, Wales, where he teaches composition and directs the Electroacoustic Music Studios. His music is concerned with the phenomenon of sound as compositional material, and often uses technology in its realisation and performance.

Notable prizes, awards and mentions include Bourges ‘Euphonie d’Or’ (France), PRS Prize, Stockholm Electronic Arts, Prix Ars Electronica, Noroit (France), Hungarian Radio, ARTS XXI (Spain), CIMESP (Brazil), KLANG (France), Destellos (Argentina). Recent projects include ‘Lebenslieder’, a large scale work for orchestra and electronics featuring the voices of people with dementia and their partners who care for them. It was composed as part of a Leverhulme Research Fellowship, and in 2018 a chamber version was premiered by members of the BBC National Orchestra of Wales.

Carlijn Metselaar is a Dutch composer based in Cardiff. She recently won a Young Talent Award from the Prins Bernhard Cultuurfonds to start a PhD in Composition at Cardiff University. Carlijn studied composition, musicology and choral conducting in Utrecht, the Netherlands. In 2017, she completed a postgraduate degree in composition with distinction at the RWCMD.

In 2016, Carlijn received a composition grant for her opera ‘Martine&Martinus’, performed in the Dom cathedral of Utrecht. Her orchestral miniature ‘Leap’ was performed by BBC NOW as part of Composition Wales. Recently, Classical Movements commissioned ‘Well, Actually’, a cabaret song about mansplaining for Olga Vocal Ensemble.

New compositions include the brass quintet ‘Roof’ for Stockholm Chamber Brass Academy and a commission for UPROAR, Wales’ new contemporary music ensemble. Carlijn is a participant in the LPO Young Composers’ Scheme 2018-2019, led by James MacMillan.

Michael Parkin’s music has been broadcast and performed in Britain, Europe and the USA. He studied with William Mathias and has won many prizes including the Yorkshire Arts Young Composers’ Competition, MidNAG award, and Match TM Award.

His Elegy for solo flute, was selected for the 1984 Gaudeamus International Musicweek in the Netherlands and in 1994 he was one of the featured composers at the Vale of Glamorgan Festival. In 2006, he received the prestigious Creative Wales Award to enable him to write orchestral music, and recent works such as Still Life and Srebrenica have been premiered by the BBC National Orchestra of Wales. CD recordings are available on the Prima Facie (ASC), Meridian, Metier and Composers of Wales labels.
Michael lives in Pembrokeshire and was a founder, and now retired chair of Young Composers of Dyfed, the foremost annual scheme for young composers in Britain.

Driven by a keen interest in the ability of music to alter our perceptions of time and space, Maja’s work as a composer aims primarily to explore the physical, physiological and spiritual aspects of music. Her Master’s thesis (Bristol, 2013), presented evidence that music, used as a method of interrogation, amounts to torture, due to its capacity to affect the body as well as the mind.

She has been commissioned by Canolfan Gerdd Willam Mathias for the 2016 Wales International Piano Festival, by Progressive Art Agency for the 2016 Hearing Art Seeing Sound Festival in Yerevan, Armenia and by Bangor Music Festival. In Autumn 2017, she represented Wales at ISCM World Music Days in Vancouver, Canada. She was awarded the University of York Department of Music’s Sir Jack Lyons Scholarship to support a PhD in composition commencing in autumn 2017. Her works have been performed in Armenia, Israel, Canada and the UK.

Sarah Lianne Lewis is influenced by her native Welsh landscapes, Japanese poetry, and the architecture of performance spaces, and her music has been described as 'quiet and delicate' (Matthias Roth, Rhein-Neckar-Zeitung, 2016), and 'full of imaginative sonorities' (Steph Power, Wales Arts Review, 2016). She studied at Cardiff University receiving a BA 2:1 (Hons) in Music and History, and an MMus in composition. Since graduating, she has received several commissions and performances from UK and European festivals.

Sarah has recently worked with Quatuor Bozzini through Sound and Music’s Embedded/Composers’ Kitchen residency, and with the Orchestre Philharmonique de Radio France (ManiFeste Academie 2017). She is currently working on commissions for UPROAR ensemble, and a Violin Sonata for Mary Hofman and Richard Ormrod.

Guto Pryderi Puw read Music at Bangor University under composers John Pickard, Pwyll ap Siôn and Andrew Lewis, gaining his PhD in Composition in 2002. He was appointed as a lecturer in 2006, concentrating mainly on Composition and Contemporary Music and was appointed as Head of Composition in 2015.

Puw first came to prominence after winning the Composer’s Medal at the National Eisteddfod in 1995 and for the second time in 1997. His music has been featured in many festivals around the UK and broadcast regularly on Radio and television. In February 2006 he became the inaugural Resident Composer with the BBC National Orchestra of Wales, with his Concerto for Oboe winning the Listeners’ Award category at the British Composer Awards in 2007 and ‘…onyt agoraf y drws…’ (‘unless I open the door’) being premiered at the Proms during the same year, later to be chosen as the 2nd finest orchestral work by a Welsh composer in the Gramophone magazine in 2015.

In 2013 He received the Sir Geraint Evans Award by the Welsh Music Guild for ‘his significant contribution to Welsh music’. His first opera commission, Y Tŵr (‘The Tower’) based on the play by Gwenlyn Parry and with libretto by Gwyneth Glyn, was successfully toured by Music Theatre Wales to critical acclaim throughout the UK in 2017.

For many years Puw has been active in the promotion of new music in north Wales through his involvement with the Bangor Music Festival, being one of its founding members and Artistic Director since 2000.

Lynne Plowman composes music which ranges from delicate instrumental solos to dramatic large-scale vocal, theatrical and orchestral works.
Commissioners and collaborators include Welsh National Opera, Glyndebourne, the Royal Shakespeare Company, the London Mozart Players, The Presteigne Festival, Piano Circus, Okeanos, the BBC National Orchestra of Wales and the BBC Singers.

Awards include a British Composer Award (2003) for Gwyneth and the Green Knight, described in the Times as “One of the most brilliantly accomplished new operas I have heard in many a year”. A ‘Creative Wales Award’ in 2012 enabled Lynne to develop her orchestral writing - Catching Shadows was premiered by the BBC National Orchestra of Wales. “The result is a thrilling muscularity and sureness of design.” (Wales Arts Review, 2016)

Lynne Plowman is a composition tutor at the Royal Welsh College of Music and Drama, and a resident composer for the Dyfed Young Composers scheme. In 2017/2018, the PRSF/Esmee Fairbairn Composers Fund is supporting the international promotion of Lynne’s work and the development of future projects.