Howard in line for music award (From Salisbury Journal)

Howard in line for music award

3:34pm Thursday 19th November 2009 in Entertainments

MOVING Music, the title of Howard’s commission by the Scottish Chamber Orchestra, has been nominated under the heading of community or education project.

And while the work was first performed in Scotland, he would love to perform it in Salisbury, especially as Sarum Orchestra has established a reputation for its work with schools, young people and community groups, as well as giving public performances.

“It is nice to write a piece of music that then gets a chance of having another life, and I would love to perform it down here,” he says. “At the moment Sarum Orchestra is involved in The Ring Cycle, a four year project with Exeter House School and The Valley Unit at Woodford Valley Primary School, which is very exciting.”

Moving Music was written for a mixed ensemble of orchestral players combined with programmed soundbeams, for use by special needs’ pupils from Ashcraig School in Glasgow. Howard explains the use of soundbeams: “A soundbeam is a way of programming information into a computer. Physically, it is like playing a musical instrument.

“If you have disabilities, you do not have the strength and co-ordination to play an acoustic instrument, but you can get involved with the piece by controlling the beam. The idea of the piece was to push technology forward in terms of live music-making. It is also a way of enabling special needs children and is incredibly powerful.”

Birds and their song play an important role in the piece: “You don’t normally associate puffins with their song, but they make an incredible sound. “The nightingale is not particularly beautiful to look at but sounds incredible. It is all about looking inside a façade and searching for what we all have inside ourselves regardless of any disability you may have,” explains Howard.

Howard has just returned from Georgia where, with violinist Ken Aiso, the duo gave a recital, as well as masterclasses in Tbilisi’s central music school and created a pro-ject in the Temi community for socially vulnerable people.

As well as his work with Sarum Orchestra, Howard has worked with many well-known figures, from jazz and classical musicians to artists as diverse as Marianne Faithfull and Marc Almond (including orchestrating and arranging their songs). He is also in demand as a keyboard player, (piano, organ, harpsichord and synthesiser).

But whether Howard is composing, playing or conducting, his message is simple: he simply wants to share his passion that “live music is such an astonishing thing”.

The British Composer Awards take place on December 1 in London and will be broadcast on BBC Radio 3. Radio 3 is also running a week-long series of programmes in the run-up to the awards.

Sir Harrison Birtwistle, one of Britain’s leading classical composers and who lives in Mere, has also been nominated in three separate categories. For his chamber work, String Quartet: The Tree of Strings; for his instrumental work The Message and for his stage work The Minotaur, a retelling of the Theseus legend which premiered at Covent Garden in 2008. Sir Harrison has lived in Mere since 1996, was knighted in 1988 and was made a Companion of Honour in the 2001 New Year’s Honours.