PROGRAMME:

Song for Tony                                                    Michael Nyman

Saxophone Quartet                                        Richard Rodney Bennett

Blue Cell                                                            Joby Talbot

Suite                                                                  Will Gregory

(High Life, Doppler’s Hornpipe, Scintillation & Hoe Down)

Interval

Journey Across the Impossible: ASQ Music for Silent Films (as already advertised)

Carnival & Greek Dance                Barbara Thompson

Today’s programme draws its inspiration from the moving image – all of the composers whose works are featured here are widely known for their work in film and television. Michael Nyman for his distinctive music for among other the Peter Greenaway films of the 80s, and Jane Campion’s “The Piano”; Richard Rodney Bennett for scores to films such as Tender is the Night, Murder on the Orient Express, Four Weddings and a Funeral to name but a few; Joby Talbot, who’s distinctive music features in The League of Gentlemen, The Dying Swan, and The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy; Will Gregory (former Apollo member) Black Mirror, numerous BBC Wildlife documentaries, Nowhere Boy, and Goldfrapp, and Barbara Thompson, A Touch of Frost, Paraphernalia etc. All of these works were commissioned, recorded and premiered by the Apollo Saxophone Quartet.

The “Journey Across the Impossible” sees the members of the quartet as composers themselves, writing quirky and individual scores that bring a through provoking, imaginative and often hilarious series of early black and white films to life in new and unexpected ways.