From Errolyn Wallen’s ballet Horseplay exploring the anthropomorphic facets of one of our species’ most enduring companion animals, to the existential crisis at the heart of a foundational religious story in Darren Bloom’s Eve, this concert is ultimately about relationships and the human condition. To conclude, we celebrate Prof. Richard Causton’s 50th birthday with his The Persistence of Memory, a rich and beautiful tapestry of instrumental colours and handmade percussion that chronicles an illness-induced experience of time decaying whilst on travels in India as young man. Causton’s The Persistence of Memory, written in his early twenties, awoke audiences to a new and powerful voice in contemporary music and we are thrilled to present it here in Cambridge for the first time.
more about Cambridge University New Music Group
The New Music Group is currently directed by Richard Causton and designed to offer some of the best student instrumentalists the opportunity of working on performances of the ‘classics’ of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. At the same time, the ensemble is intended to give student composers the chance to have their works performed by musicians experienced in playing new music.