Composer
Violinist Fenella Humphreys has been streaming concerts live from her living room during lockdown, showcasing a wide variety of music old and new. Her 8th Homemade Concert, broadcast on 6th May, included a beautiful premiere of Sarah’s piece A Viking Farewell alongside Adrian Sutton’s Arpeggiare Variations.
Fenella’s YouTube channel is linked here – do have a listen to more of her wonderful concerts.
Sarah is delighted to have won the inaugural Jesus College Composition Competition. The competition, launched in November 2019 with the support of the choir’s alumnus Max Hadfield, invited composers to set a prayer by John Henry Newman:
O Lord, support us all the day long of this troublous life, until the shades lengthen and the evening comes, the busy world is hushed, the fever of life is over and our work is done; then Lord, in thy mercy, grant us safe lodging, a holy rest, and peace at the last. Amen.
Judges Richard Pinel and Grayston Ives chose Sarah’s piece and runner-up Isaac Adni’s to be performed by the choirs of Jesus College in Michaelmas term 2020.
From Jason Overall’s review of the first releases in Selah Press’ Sarah MacDonald Choral Series:
‘This setting of the evening canticles quickly establishes an imaginative, adventurous compositional voice. Cattley’s harmonic language is comfortable in ambiguity, and many phrases attain a weightless feel that has little tonal gravity. Despite this lack of strong pitch center, the music is never harsh or dissonant. Vocal lines are mainly diatonic and even conventional, even as the accompaniment undermines some expected harmonic implications. Of even more interest, however, is the complex rhythmic organization. Cattley contrasts 6/8 organization against 3/4, employing creative use of hemiola, and she explores unconventional beat subdivisions. These rhythmic hijinks will challenge singers, yet they infuse the music with a spirited vitality that is nothing short of bewitching. The Magnificat is written for two-voice choir with only a handful of divided notes in the lower voice, while the Nunc dimittis is cast more consistently in three voices. Where the first canticle dances, the second one sings lyrically. Expansive lines that outline wide intervals gain intensity from a similar rhythmic intricacy, yet restrained within a gentle pacing. Whereas the first Gloria Patri exults, ending fortissimo, the concluding Gloria Patri maintains the expressive flow of the preceding canticle. The organ part throughout is interesting, affording players ample opportunities for interesting solo colors, and of only moderate technical difficulty. This extremely effective service will be useful for adults and children, and while it may require some careful rehearsal, choirs are sure to welcome it into their evensong repertoire.’
Jason Overall
The Journal of the Association of Anglican Musicians
Volume 29, Number 3 – March 2020
The Ernest Read Symphony Orchestra is looking for ‘A Fanfare for Ernest Read’ in a composition competition leading up to the orchestra’s 90th birthday. Sarah’s fanfare Leviathan has been selected as one of the shortlisted compositions to be workshopped by ERSO with composer Emma-Ruth Richards, conductor Christopher Stark and leader John Crawford in Camden on 15th March.
January 2020 saw the first release of Selah Press’s Sarah MacDonald Choral Series, a series of church music by women composers, curated by Sarah MacDonald. Eight composers were represented in this first batch of pieces, with more to come in subsequent collections. The upper voices version of Sarah’s Fitzwilliam Service came out in this first release, and the SATB version will follow it shortly.
In May, Sarah’s piece Meeting in the Fields will be one of six pieces workshopped by the London Klezmer Quartet and Judith Weir in Benslow Music’s Young Composers Competition 2020. The competition invited composers to create a piece for violin, clarinet, piano accordion and double bass that responded to the celebratory and soulful colours of the rich tradition of klezmer music.
Ivy, Chief of Trees It Is was written for Granta Chorale’s 2019/20 Christmas concerts to fit with this year’s theme, A Christmas Garland. The first performance was in the chapel of Corpus Christi College, Cambridge on 12th December, alongside lots more music about Christmas greenery. The programme included seasonal favourites by Rutter, Britten, Warlock and Henry VIII (!) (Green Grow’th the Holly) and newer works by Janet Wheeler (including The Christmas Life and God Bless You Brother) and Andrew Bruce (There is No Rose). The concert will be repeated on 3rd January in Newport, and the collections from both concerts will go to Jimmy’s, a charity supporting the homeless in Cambridge.
The two winning pieces of the National Centre for Early Music’s Young Composer Award 2019 were broadcast on Radio 3 on 24th November on The Early Music Show. Sarah’s Dream Fever and Derri Joseph Lewis’s Walls of Brass were performed by virtuoso viol player Liam Byrne alongside 17th- and 18th-century music by Marin Marais and Carl Friedrich Abel.
Ely Cathedral Girls Choir sang Sarah’s Fitzwilliam Service in evensong on Wednesday, conducted by Sarah MacDonald and with Aaron Shilson at the organ. This was the second performance of the canticles in their original upper voices version. Sarah MacDonald will be conducting the Fitzwilliam Service again next week when it is sung by the choir of Selwyn College.
Sarah’s piece Four Seascapes has been shortlisted for Yorkshire Late Starters Strings‘ New Music Commission 2019-20. The four shortlisted pieces will be played by the orchestra on 27th October in a workshop with conductor Stuart Hazelton and composer Howard Skempton. Howard Skempton will also be giving shortlisted composers a tutorial session on their pieces.
