New Music Players: Ed Hughes at 50

The New Music Players
Nicholas Smith conductor

Ed Hughes: Media Vita (1991, 10’)

Susanne Stanzeleit (violin), Joseph Giddey (cello), Richard Casey (piano)

Ed Hughes: Sinfonia (2018, world premiere, 20’)
The New Music Players conducted by Nicholas Smith

Followed by drinks at c.8.15pm

Tickets: £12 (includes free drink plus NMP CD or DVD subject to availability)

Students: £5 (on the door with ID)

Ed Hughes founded the New Music Players in 1990 after leaving university to bring together some of the UK’s finest and most versatile musicians, with backgrounds in chamber, orchestra, contemporary, jazz, Baroque and early music performance. NMP has given numerous premieres and made CDs, DVDs and recordings for London Independent Records, Tartan Video, BFI and BBC Radio 3.

Media Vita (1991) for piano trio is a fluid, contrapuntal work with expressive harmonies influenced by John Sheppard’s great vocal work of the same name.

Ed’s Sinfonia for 17 instruments is a modern instrumental fantasia that will explore how the structures and sounds of polyphonic notated vocal music from 14th- 16th century England – especially Cooke, Dunstable and Gibbons – can inspire new music today. A particular interest is in the harmonies arising from some of these composers’ love of movement in thirds and sixths, but the music will also have rhythmic and polyphonic aspects that are Ed’s own. Blog here: https://edhughescomposer.blogspot.com/

Nicholas Smith OBE is the Artistic Director and Chief Conductor of the Peking Sinfonietta and the International Festival Chorus, both based in Beijing, China.