new work
a round up of notable activity
“Resound!”, for clarinet, string quartet and piano was commissioned by the Five Churches Festival and received its premiere performance on Sunday 14th July 2024 in Blakeney, Norfolk.
Mountain Airs for ‘cello and piano will be recorded by Catherine Wilmers and Jill Morton for a CD of works by women composers on the Divine Art label early in 2024.
Sarah has been commissioned for the 2023 BBC Proms season to write a new work for the BBC Concert Orchestra. The performance took place on Friday 8th September at the Hippodrome in Great Yarmouth.
Concert Programme
Cambridge Clarinets have commissioned a new piece from Sarah in memory of one of their long-standing members. “A Little Dream of Iona” was performed in Cambridge in October 2023.
Sing out loud! Ring out loud! has been composed especially for the Gressenhall Singers, conductor Jane Roberson, as part of their Jubilee Beacon Lighting Celebrations. It was first performed on Thursday 2nd June 2022 in Gressenhall and received a further performance on 23rd July.
Music for Body, Mind and Soul has long been a passion and Sarah is now working on four videos commissioned by ‘home-stage’ for release either at the end of 2021, or at the start of 2022. These will be an exploration, largely through her existing work, of deep istening or whole-person listening.
Sarah has been commissioned to write a new work for the Spitalfields Festival for performance in June 2020. The music will be for violin, viola and piano. Due to the pandemic, the performance took place in December 2020, live streamed.
A new CD of The Roaring Whirl was released in September 2019 on the Metier label, part of the Divine Art Recordings group. Recorded in 1992, the master was not at the time processed to commercial recording. An hour-long work illustrating a journey across the North Indian Punjab as described in Kipling’s Kim, the instrumentalists are Geraldine Allen, clarinet, Timothy Walker, guitar, Baluji Shrivastav sitar, tabla and pakhavaj and the narration is by Bhasker Patel. The CD was launched in London on 18th September. Listen here
Toccata 47 (solo piano) was performed by Natalie Bleicher at St James’ Church, Bushey WD23 1BD on Sat 22 June 2019 at 12.00.
Also, at St Cuthbert’s Church, West Hampstead, London NW2 3TN on 6 July 2019 at 6.30 pm.
Mountain Airs was performed by Catherine Wilmers (cello) and Jill Morton (piano) at the Letchworth Festival on Saturday June 22nd, 2019.
Publishers, Stainer&Bell have commissioned Sarah to provide settings to four new hymns by the renowned hymn-writer, Marjorie Dobson. These have been included in a new publication in 2019.
The King of the Golden River was performed by Richard Edgar Wilson and the Coull Quartet at the Royal Academy in London In February 2019 as part of the Ruskin bi-centenary celebrations, together with some newly-commissioned settings of Ruskin song sketches.
A commission for the Paston Papers project sees Sarah creating a pocket oratorio on the writing of Agnes Paston for the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment which was performed on July 1st 2018 in the Paston Church, St. Nicholas of North Walsham, Norfolk. Follow Sarah’s blog on the Orchestras Live website
Sarah has been commissioned by UK ensemble, Piano40 to write a new work for 8 hands 2 pianos. Labyrinths was premiered at their Purcell Room recital on Monday 21st May 2018. FIND OUT MORE
The King of the Golden River for tenor and string quartet was performed at the Scarab Club in Detroit in May 2016 by Drake Danzler.
Skylark for pedal and non-pedal harp, composed in 2012 was published by Stainer & Bell in the Spring of 2016.
Bega’s Ballad (doublebass), Spanish Sonata (clarinet) Surfing (alto saxophone) Interactive (alto saxophone) are all on current Associate Board or Trinity Guildhall examination syllabuses.
Contemporary ensemble, Sounds Positive, performed Ramayana at The Warehouse, London on 29 May 2011.
In 2010, Sarah made a programme for German television about her Purcell heritage.
Sarah has contributed a setting of See Amid the Winter’s Snow to the OUP’s new edition of Flexible Carols, published in 2009.
Sarah’s setting of Matthew Arnold’s poem Dover Beach, for Chorus (SSATB), String Quartet and Harp received its first performance at St Augustine’s Highbury on Saturday March 15th 2008 and was performed a second time as part of the Choir’s summer season on 4th July 2009.