Gabriel Jackson to write 2008 commission(s)
The award-winning composer Gabriel Jackson has agreed to write two pieces for JAM in 2008. The Spacious Firmament will be a piece written throughout 2008, in two parts. The first will be premiered on 10th April and the second in December. The first part will be a setting of Joseph Addison's famous Ode and the second a contemporary reflection of the Addison.
Gabriel comments, "I am very honoured and excited to be asked to write this year's John Armitage Memorial commission. The text we have chosen, Joseph Addison's well-loved 18th-century ode The Spacious Firmament, is full of vivid imagery which invites the kind of kaleidoscope of textures and colours a choir, brass quintet and organ affords. Akin to the large-scale motets of 17th-century Venice, the piece is built from antiphonies of variegated scoring - fanfaring trumpets...a hushed choral chant over deep organ pedals...dancing chorales for the brass... brazen, clanging tuttis...a whooping horn...glistening, corruscating organ figuration...all seeking to give vibrant voice to Addison's celestial, ecstatic vision."
December 3rd marks the ten-year anniversary of John Armitage's death, in 1998. JAM intends to comemorate John with a retrospective concert, looking back over the first eight years of the Trust. The second part of The Spacious Firmament will be premiered in this concert.