Paul Patterson to write 2005 headline piece
Following the success of John McCabe's Songs of the Garden, commissioned for 2004, Jonathan Dove's The Far Theatricals of Day, commissioned for 2003, and Timothy Jackson's No Answer, commissioned for 2002, the John Armitage Memorial has commissioned Paul Patterson to write the headline piece for 2004's concert programme.
As with all John Armitage Memorial headline commissions, the piece will be written for soprano, alto, tenor and bass soloists, brass quintet, organ and choir. The piece will be approximately twenty minutes long and will receive its world premiere in March 2005 at the first performance of the John Armitage Memorial's 2005 programme.
Paul Patterson has been one of Britain's most important music voices since the mid-1960s and is one of the most prominent and widely-respected figures on the British compositional scene.
Paul Patterson
Paul Patterson, one of today's most-performed composers, studied trombone and composition at the Royal Academy of Music and was Head of Composition and Contemporary Music there for many years. In 1997, he became the Academy's Manson Professor of Composition. He has also held positions with South East Arts, the University of Warwick and the London Sinfonietta and is currently Composer-in-Residence for the National Youth Orchestra of Great Britain and Visiting Professor at Christchurch University in Canterbury.
Since his arrival in the mid-1960s, Paul Patterson has been one of the most prominent and widely-respected figures on the British compositional scene.
Patterson has built a sizable and diverse corpus of works, ranging from chamber and orchestral music to choral and vocal works, alongside educational works of various shapes and sizes. Most prominent amongst these is the phenomenally successful Little Red Riding hood for narrators and orchestra (1992), which has been performed all over the world.
Amongst his orchestral works, the Concerto for Orchestra (1981) and the Violin Concerto (1992) stand out, alongside his orchestral seascape White Shadows on the Dark Horizon (1988) and the Sinfonia for Strings (1982).
But it is in the field of choral music that Patterson has made his most notable contribution. Patterson's choral repertoire stands out, and his flair in producing works which are both challenging and accessible for both performers and listeners has resulted in a series of highly regarded large-scale choral works which have spread his name all over the world, notably the Kyrie for chorus and piano (1972), the Requiem (1973), Voices of Sleep (1979), Mass of the Sea (1983), Stabat Mater (1986), Te Deum (1988), Magnificat (1993) and, more recently, Hell's Angels (1998) and the Millenium Mass (1999).
Patterson's music has been performed by many orchestras in the UK and abroad, most notably the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra, the Philharmonia Orchestra, the London Philharmonic, the Orchestra of St. John's, Smith Square, the London Sinfonietta, the BBC Symphony Orchestra, the BBC Philharmonic, the BBC National Orchestra of Wales, the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra, the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra, the Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra, the Royal Scottish National Orchestra, the Academy of St. Martin-in-the-Fields, the European Community Chamber Orchestra, the Gothenburg Symphony Orchestra, the Royal Stockholm Philharmonic Orchestra, the Hague Residentie Orchestra, the Toulouse Chamber Orchestra, the Polish Chamber Orchestra, the Albany Symphony Orchestra, the St. Paul Chamber Orchestra, the Toronto Symphony Orchestra, the Calgary Philharmonic Orchestra, the Edmonton Symphony Orchestra, the Caracas Symphony Orchestra, the Tokyo Symphony Orchestra and the Adelaide Symphony Orchestra.
Conductors who have championed his music include Norman del Mar, Klaus Tennstedt, Franz Welser-Most, Yan Pascal Tortelier, Jerzy Maksymiuk, Richard Hickox, Barry Wordsworth, Nicholas Cleobury, Owain Arwel Hughes, Geoffrey Simon, Richard Pittman, Elgar Howarth, John Lubbock, Howard Williams and Ronald Spigelman.
His instrumental and chamber music has enjoyed the advocacy of innumerable committed exponents, most prominently Tasmin Little, Kenneth Sillitoe, Bradley Creswick, Erich Gruenberg, Grigori Zhislin, Kostanty Kulka, Maurice Hasson, Rivka Golani, Yuri Bashmet, Mstislav Rostropovich, Osian Ellis, Nicholas Daniel, Linda Merrick, Ifor James, Michael Thompson, John Wilbraham, the Delme' String Quartet, the Varsovia String Quartet, the Vega Wind Quintet, the Galliard Ensemble, the King's Singers, the London Gabrieli Brass Ensemble, London Brass Virtuosi and the Black Dyke Mills Brass Band.
Stravinsky and Hindemith were early influences, later during an avant-garde period, the Polish school of Penderecki and Lutoslawski, and more recently, thanks to a growing number of large-scale choral commissons for the likes of the Three Choirs' Festival, the 20th century English choral tradition. In this latest phase, he has found the most fulfilment yet in terms of audience and performer response to his music, which he values.
Patterson is a tireless advocate for contemporary music in general and founded the Royal Academy's prestigious annual composer festival, which has brought Ligeti, Henze and Pärt among others to London. His championing of Penderecki and Lutoslawski earned him the Polish Medal and in 1996, he received the Leslie Boosey Award from the PRS and the Royal Philharmonic Society for services to contemporary music.
His 50th Birthday, in 1997, was marked by a Composer of the Week feature on Radio 3.