Contemporary musicians end on a high

BCMG end their 2014-2015 season with Fantasmagoria.


Birmingham Contemporary Music Group draw their 2014-2015 season to a close this May with a late addition to the programme: Fantasmagoria, an evening celebrating the brilliance of the British composer David Sawer.

The Stockport-born composer is perhaps best known for his critically-acclaimed Rumpelstitskin, a theatrical piece commissioned by BCMG and premiered in Birmingham in 2009, and his opera Skin Deep, on the theme of plastic surgery with a libretto by Armando Iannucci.

BCMG has commissioned and recorded a number of works by Sawer, however it is three pieces new to the Group that feature in this concert.

The most substantial of these, Cat’s-eye, takes its inspiration from a simple device (a ‘l’oeil-de-chat’ – hence the title) in a Fantascope, a Victorian magic lantern, to look at ideas of illusion and changing perspective. Between is a short, beautiful solo piece for Harp, and Good Night is a continuous train of musical thoughts that transform when inspected more closely.

The performance closes what has been an exciting season for BCMG. Highlights have included Crowd Out, the mass-participation performance at Millennium Point, recently nominated for a prestigious Royal Philhamonic Society award, and Raga Fields, a performance fusing traditional Indian and contemporary classical music, and featuring master sarod player Param Vir.

Fantasmagoria takes place on Saturday 9th May 2015, 7.30pm at the CBSO Centre. For ticketing and more information, visit www.bcmg.org.uk