Kate Honey-‘Stay Together, Learn the Flowers, Go Light’-World Premiere Kettles Yard 27 4 14
Peter Sheppard Skaerved-Violin, Roderick Chadwick-Piano
The composer listens. Kate Honey at rehearsal in the ideal surroundings of Kettles Yard. Photo Malene Skaerved
Working session with Roderick Chadwick and composer Kate Honey (Extract) 24 4 14
It’s always a great pleasure to come across a lovely new voice, and the music of Kate Honey is definitely that. We will premiere her ‘Stay Together, Learn the Flowers, Go Light’ on Sunday 27th April at Kettles Yard <a href=”http://www.kettlesyard.co.uk/music/newmusic/”>LINK</a>
<a href=”https://www.sheppardskaerved.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/04/IMG_1993_Edited.jpg”><img class=”size-medium wp-image-17742″ alt=”Extract from my performing score of Kate Honey’s new piece” src=”https://www.sheppardskaerved.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/04/IMG_1993_Edited-300×140.jpg” width=”300″ height=”140″ /></a> Extract from my performing score of Kate Honey’s new piece
This is music of great refinement and grace, with lovely references to hymnody (the ‘Coventry Carol’ appears in the texture at one point). A valuable element of this collaborative extract is a moment where the composer and performers puzzle out a harmonic solution to a cadence. This happens very often, and good composers know that it’s a good thing, to ask their collaborators to help solve problems. I experienced this as a teenager, working with Hans Werner Henze, and I am always happy when that compositional door opens! It you listen, you can hear Kate being as demanding as when she wrote the piece, rejecting solution after solution, until, between the three musicians, a solution emerges.
Posted on April 29th, 2014 by Peter Sheppard Skaerved