BCMG announce 13 world premieres for 2015-16.

Birmingham Contemporary Music Group will perform a record-breaking 13 world premieres of 21st century classical music between October 2015 and June 2016.

The 2015-2016 season, announced today, also includes a number of UK-first performances and a special trip to Mexico.

The world premieres include a new work by Howard Skempton based on the epic Coleridge poem The Rime of the Ancient Mariner. Skempton, who lives in Leamington Spa, has received international acclaim for his compositions and this piece, commissioned for BCMG, is his most substantial work to date. It will be performed by renowned baritone Roderick Williams, another Warwickshire resident.

The verses of Shakespeare and AE Housman – author of A Shropshire Lad – will also be set to music, this time in a new commission by BCMG for the composer Dominic Muldowney and premiered in Birmingham this December.

BCMG will travel to Mexico in October to perform at the internationally acclaimed Festival International Cervantino, a special event that marks the UK-Mexico Year of Culture.

The season begins this September when BCMG perform a new piece at Birmingham Weekender, the city’s biggest arts festival. Requiem to Let will be performed in an empty shop unit created especially for Birmingham Weekender by the composer Michael Wolters.