August 2020 Updates — Matthew Sear Composer

August 2020 Updates

Finally, after months of uncertainty, things have begun moving forward. In July, I played my first guitar gig since the March lockdown, (in a local Mediterranean restaurant) and since, I have been given the green light to do three ‘in person’ concerts. With so much time at home, I have been busy also, wrtiing several new pieces. These include; Go To Hell, for brass quartet, several piano miniatures and a large scale project, based on the Torah’s story of the seven days of creation. More on this shortly…

The Ms!…

Maria Marchant

The letter M seems to be very important with these three collaborations and the first person I’d like to introduce is Maria Marchant. Maria is a British pianist/conductor and BBC Music Magazine Rising Star. She has performed at numerous leading venues around the UK, Europe and Asia.

Maria’s debut SOMM CD ‘Echoes of Land & Sea’ was released to critical acclaim and featured on both Radio 3 ‘In Tune’. Maria, since the lockdown, has hosted an online show broadcast weekly, called ‘7 Notes in 7 Days’, calling for young (I just about made the cut!) composers to submit a short piece for solo piano. The show gained prominence very quickly featuring in Gramophone Magazine and Classic FM, so I was delighted after submitting, to hear back from Maria that she would be premiering my work ‘Homage To Beethoven’. Maria’s performance captured everything in the score.

The piece, soon to be released (2021) on a new album of compositions I have written, attempted to pay homage to the sense of drama in Beethoven’s piano sonatas, especially the type of thick textures in the build up of the first movement of the Pathetique sonata. Maria captured this strength of the opening reoccurring motif, while also giving the higher registered sections a type of poignancy. I hope to work with this amazing musician again. But for now, please check out her show ‘7 Notes in 7 Days’, which is on every Monday at 1900.

Marisa Munoz Lopez

Marisa Muñoz-López is a Spanish award-winning pianist and composer with interest and experience in conducting and singing. Maria enjoys collaborating with soloists and ensembles as well as with visual artists, dancers and actors and recently graduated with a First Class (Hons) BMus degree in performance and composition, from Trinity Laban Conservatoire of Music and Dance, (where I am currently an Artist Diploma student).

Having worked as a guitarist for Maria, recording sections of a piece she had written, I was already an admirer of her style and with Spain being my favourite country (I have visited over forty times in my life), I loved how Maria’s piece entwined her own modern harmonic language with aspects of traditional Spanish harmony.

Over the lockdown, Marisa has been busy. Aside from her studies, she has also been collaborating with other composers and artists releasing these weekly on her weekly show ‘Monday Miniatures’. Our own collaboration, involved me as a composer Marisa as performer and her colleague and friend Maya, as an animator.

The piece itself, was informed by a feeling of freedom of entering a beautiful garden, but with an air of something sinister which I look back in hindsight as a type of reaction to the lockdown. So the piece it could be said, explored the contrast of freedom and incarceration. Maria performed this beautifully. My first feeling hearing her interpretation and seeing the animation in the style of someone drawing a journey, was ‘wow, that is chilling’…end meant very much in the more older fashioned meaning of the word. It was ghostly, but also very sad…lonely.

Maria will soon begin her MMus Performance at Royal Academy of Music. Marisa believes in the importance of art in, and for, society and is currently working on a novel presenting some questions that she hopes will motivate interesting discussions. I hope to collaborate with Marisa again in the not oo distant future.

Keep up to date with Marisa here…

www.marisaml.com

Mina Kupfermann

Mina Kupfermann is an award-winning artist and photographer whose work has looked at conservation, social issues and, most recently, antisemitism in British society. Her monumental piece Witness, which she completed in 2019, was the first in the series on antisemitism. Standing at nearly 3 metres tall, its message is a powerful reminder of both the scale of the issue and of our collective responsibility to fight it.

During lockdown, Mina has been working on a number of commissioned portraits. We were put in touch on social media through a mutual friend, and her work with its rich use of texture immediately grabbed my attention. Like my own music, Mina’s art is informed by occurrences/stories as well as world events, but more importantly, there is a strong connection through Judaism. My idea that I pitched to Mina, was for us both (as composer and artist), to respond to the story of creation, both creating a piece based on each day, as described in the Torah (Genesis, in the Old Testament). The artwork and music will be performed together, with a large cinema screen featuring Mina’s visual of each day of creation and music performed by live performers at each side of the screen.

At the time of writing, this project is very much behind the scenes. It will be premiered June 2021 either at Trinity Laban Conservatoire itself, or at the Blackheath Halls. More updates will follow in due course, but what I can promise is that this is the biggest project I have done to date. I have sketched out seven pieces that rely on an ensemble of seven musicians and the work Mina is producing is very powerful and inspiring.

To see Mina’s work, visit www.minakupfermann.com.