The concert starts at 3pm and is happening at The Hunt Museum in Limerick, Ireland (map below).

Want to get an idea of what they’ll be playing? Here’s a recording of me singing the Three Whitman Songs:

Can’t make it to Limerick today? In London next weekend? Come and hear the world premiere of my brass quintet, Knots and Mirrors!

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22 April sees my first performance in Ireland – CoMA Limerick are performing my Three Whitman Songs at the Hunt Museum in Limerick. I don’t have full details yet, but will post updates here when I know the time and what else is on the programme. This will be a world premiere performance.

27 April is the premiere of my recently completed fanfare for brass quintet, Knots & Mirrors, which will be performed by Riverside Five in London at St Michael’s Church, Chester Square, SW1W 9HH at 7.30pm. Tickets at the door £12/£8 (concessions for students, LCF members). Advance tickets £8. Full booking details are on the London Composers Forum website, under Concerts.

In other news, Carrion Comfort was workshopped by London Contemporary Chamber Orchestra on Saturday, which was a very helpful and enlightening event. It was lovely to meet up with the other composers and hear everyone’s work and the feedback from the orchestra.

I’ll be blogging about the experience of writing 10 pieces for 10 different performers in a (short!) month soon – it’s been incredible and I’ve learned a vast amount from this project which I’m sure will affect the music I write for weeks and months to come.

For everything about the project – to find out more, to listen or download – go to the Lucky Dip page at http://caitlinrowley.com/projects/luckydip

I’m also thrilled to report that my commission project for RPM2012 seems to have met with a great reception and is now fully subscribed. I’ve even written and sent off the very first piece!

I want to write you a piece of music. Just a little one, but for whatever instrument you play.

The only thing I ask is that you only sign up for this if you can commit to sending me a recording of the piece by the end of February.

Interested? Read on for the details:

1. Most pieces will be under a minute long. There may be some technical challenges but I’m aiming to keep them feasible within the limited time frame you’ll have for learning & recording.
2. If I write a piece for you that requires an accompaniment, I will provide a MIDI-generated recording as well as all parts, in case you don’t have a pianist or harpist or whatever lounging around with nothing to do.
3. Recordings don’t have to be studio-quality but they should be at least pretty clear. I don’t much care what you record on, but the higher quality the happier I’ll be. iPhone/iPad recordings are fine. Cassette tape isn’t because I don’t have anything to play them on. If you’re thinking of using your phone or computer mic but haven’t tested the quality, please test before you sign up to make sure that you can deliver at least a reasonable-quality recording.
4. Recordings will be made public, on SoundCloud, my website and the RPM website, so please make sure you’re happy with your performance and recording before you send it. It will have your name on it.
5. If you can’t commit to getting a recording to me by the end of Feb, but you’d still like me to write for you, we can talk about scheduling something. I’m ALWAYS happy to write for people, but the aim of this project right now is to end up with 10 actual recordings by the end of the month.
6. I reserve the right to not manage to get around to writing you a piece – it’s entirely possible I’m biting off more than I can chew here. First come, first served, up to 9 people. If you’re within those 9 and I don’t manage to fit you in during February, I’ll try to write you something anyway when I have a moment later this year.
7. In the interests of variety and experimentation, I will write no more than 2-3 pieces for any given instrument. Don’t want to end up only writing for piano!
8. If you play the sort of instrument that has a number of different ranges – e.g. Recorder, tin whistle – please specify which one you want me to write for, e.g. Tenor recorder, whistle in D
9. If you ask for a piece which isn’t a typical member of the orchestra and therefore unlikely to be found in a standard orchestration text, I may need you to provide additional info such as range, special considerations, effective techniques, recommended recordings. I will try to ask for these early on.
10. If you are open to the prospect of a graphic score or free form elements, let me know. I will only include these if you are interested in dealing with them. Other pieces will be fully notated
11. And finally… I reserve the right for some of these to possibly not be terribly good. As mentioned in the blog post, the idea is to experiment with writing quickly and using some techniques and approaches that I don’t usually use, so there’s no guarantee of a quality result. But I will do my best and if there’s something you feel I could use some advice on, I will be extremely happy to receive any gentle feedback you may care to give.

Still keen? Then sign up! Leave a comment on this post with your name, instrument and any other details, then join the mailing list or update your details if you’re already on there – that way I can easily keep everyone updated on progress. You can always unsubscribe later if you’re not enjoying the experience

OK, so not the orchestral piece – it’s still not quite done, but I’m super-excited about this performance anyway because this is the graphic score of Carrion Comfort! The one that I talked about in the latest work in progress post – the intensity map I created to help me understand where I wanted my fully-notated  orchestral piece to go that became this piece by Stuart Russell. And I’m super-excited that it’s going to be performed by Midnight Llama because I just know they’re going to come up with something totally unlike anything I’d have notated and I can’t wait to see where they take it.

So it’s going to be an awesome night – come along! It’s FREE! All you need to do is RSVP via the Facebook event (everyone’s on Facebook, right? You’re not? Well, just let me know how many will be in your party and I’ll tell the powers that be).

So what’s the event about? Well, lots of exciting shiny new and exciting new music – acousmatic, electronic, live and a mixture of all of the above. Midnight Llama are the headline act:

“we specialise in doing stuff that other people often shy away from or think is too loud or weird for them.
We will hit cheap fiddles with paintbrushes, we will put acoustic instruments through rock guitar pedals, we will involve the audience and we will put on a show instead of just sitting around staring at dots while playing”

As well as Carrion Comfort, there’ll be music by Stuart Russell, Lauren Redhead, Alan Parsons, Norah Lorway, Sam Grinsell (who’s doing a set based on the music of Bach, Ornette Coleman and Bill Drummond) and Chrissie Caulfield, the Llama’s electric violinist.

Chrissie is also going to be holding a composers’ workshop on writing for 5-string and electric violins at 2pm on the day of the concert, so we can learn all about writing for mad distortion pedals and hearing exactly what can be done with and to these instruments. Read more about the workshop on Chrissie’s blog.

Where and when?

It’s called New Music Against the Grain and it’s happening in Colchester, at Slackspace: St James House, Queen Street, CO1 2PQ Colchester, United Kingdom

7.30pm this Saturday, 3 December

Read more and RSVP on Facebook!

Did I say it’s FREE?

Other improvements:

• ‘Recent posts’ has been replaced by ‘Popular posts’ – this is because I figured the recent posts were easily found in the category pages, but it’s not always so easy for new visitors to tell what content has been most interesting for other people.
• Using SoundCloud’s new experimental HTML5 code, released this week, all the sound files in the site should now be playable on your iDevice, whether iPad, iPhone or iPod – hope you enjoy it! SoundCloud is working on some issues with older versions of IE and I’ll keep an eye on what they’re doing, but in the meantime, if you can’t play a file, and for some reason can’t access it on SoundCloud, please let me know
• I have implemented a new plugin for comments which will (should!) allow users to log in to the site using their social network of choice rather than having to type in their name and other details every time. I’m hoping that this will make commenting easier and encourage more discussion on the site rather than just on the individual social networks where I publicise posts – let me know what you think of it, please? Perhaps by leaving a comment!

To celebrate the new SoundCloud code, I’ve also put up another recording onto SoundCloud. It’s not a new one, I’m afraid, but it may still be new to you unless you’ve explored the depths of the Music section of this site.

Pieces of Eight (piano version) by caitlinrowley

This will be a world premiere performance of this version of the piece.

The concert starts at 1pm at St Mary’s Church in Putney – get the full details from Facebook or the London Composers Forum website.

I hope you can come (did I mention it’s free?!) – and do say hello if you do!

Until then, I hope you enjoy this one!