Britten Pears Chamber Futures Residency
In March 2024 we were thrilled to attend the ‘Chamber Futures’ residency as part of our year as Britten Pears Young Artists. We spent eight days in Snape Maltings, Aldeborough with an intense focus on contemporary repertoire, led by world renowned contemporary music specialists Melida Maxwell and the Bozzini Quartet. We were also paired with Omri Kochavi, an early career composer who was commissioned by Britten Pears Arts to compose a short work for us to premiere at the residency’s closing concert.
During this time we spent many hours rehearsing and receiving coaching from Melinda Maxwell and the Bozzini Quartet. We focussed our work on the following repertoire: Michael Oesterle - String Quartet No.3 ‘Alan Turing’, Ben Nobuto ‘Playtime’, Cassandra Miller ‘Warblework’, and Omri Kochavi ‘Anafim’. Over this period we were delighted to refine the difference in approach that is necessary when working in contemporary repertoire, as well as working intensely on broadening our horizons regarding the colours and sounds we can achieve through extended techniques, and deep diving into microtones and alternative notation. It was incredible to witness and learn from how expertly specialised Melinda and the Bozzini’s are in these topics.
We were joined on the residency by fellow Britten Pears Young Artists, the string quartet Calathea Quartet, and two wind quintets Ensemble Renard and Lumas Winds. From working and performing alongside our peers we learnt a lot from their experiences too, particularly from the relatively foreign (to us) world of wind quintet playing. We were very proud to perform alongside them, and also Melinda and the Bozzini’s in a performance of one of Chrisitan Wolff’s ‘Exercises’ for open instrumentation, where we utilised live improvisation and experimental staging.
Working with Omri on our commission piece was a much longer process that began before we arrived for our residency. From our first meeting with Omri, half a year before our residency, we began the collaborative process of working together on this commission. We started by learning about Omri’s style as a composer and by listening to his other, brilliant compositions. We then discussed the repertoire which we enjoy the most and found a common ground in our appreciation for works by Caroline Shaw, and works in the folk style, as well as works that center around themes within nature. From here Omri created the concept for his work ‘Arugot’ which reflects upon the theme of nature, more specifically trees and their branches. It was really exciting receiving Omri’s first few sketches and getting a glimpse in the soundworld that was being created. We spent many weeks recording clips for Omri of his sketches and sharing our thoughts on how things sounded and the best ways to achieve and notate what we were trying to create. It was really special for us to have such an active part in this process, allowing us to feel that this work was really ours. Over the course of several workshops with Omri we were really proud to craft ‘Anafim- עֲנָפִים’ together. The work received really high praise from both Melinda Maxwell and the Bozzini Quartet. We enjoyed this process so much that we arranged with Omri to extend this composition once we had completed our residency. We worked together with Ormi to expand the piece into a multi-movement work named ‘Arugot - עֲרוּגוֹת’, which we premiered in Manchester in November 2024 and now lies at the core of our repertoire.
You can watch the world premiere performance of ‘Anafim- עֲנָפִים’ here.
