| Jonathan Dove is best known as a composer of operas and choral music. He has written a dozen operas, including the successful airport-comedy Flight, which premiered at Glyndebourne, was broadcast on Channel 4, and has recently been performed to great acclaim in Holland and Belgium. This year Flight receives its US premiere at the St Louis Opera. |
Last summer his chamber opera L'altra Euridice received its UK première at the Almeida Theatre, and nearly a million people in the UK watched his television opera When She Died, broadcast by Channel 4. Much of his choral music has been performed in Christ Church, Spitalfields, including The Passing of the Year; Ecce Beatem Lucem; In beauty may I walk; I am the day and Run, shepherds, run!
Since 1994 Jonathan has lived in Bethnal Green and his commitment to working in the community has so far resulted in Palace in the Sky, a community opera produced at the Hackney Empire by English National Opera and Hackney Music Development Trust, and The Hackney Chronicles, an opera for primary school children. He is a graduate of East London Common Purpose and has been involved in the Spitalfields Festival Education & Community programme since 1999. Work has already begun on a community cantata for the 2004 Spitalfields Festival. Recent instrumental works include a string quartet, a saxophone quartet, a flute concerto, a trombone concerto and a work for narrator and orchestra. He has written scores for over thirty plays, and has been Music Adviser to the Almeida Theatre since 1990.
Jonathan spoke to the PRS Foundation about some of his favourite new music in the run up to the Spitalfields Summer Festival (9-27 June 2003)
"It's always exciting to hear new music live, and a lot never makes it to CD, but I'm glad I can keep returning to these pieces for ear-opening inspiration".
George Benjamin: Three Inventions (Nimbus: NI 5505)
This always makes me think of someone imagining music for the very first time: completely new and strange and inviting.
www.fabermusic.co.uk/serverside/composers/Details.asp?ID=BENJAMIN,%20GEORGE
Judith Weir: A Night at the Chinese Opera (NMC DO60)
Startling by daring to be simple and clear and yet completely fresh and unpredictable.
www.schirmer.com/composers/weir/bio.html
Thomas Adès: Asyla (EMI Classics 7243 5 56818 2 9)
This piece ranges from dark and awe-inspiring to impish, mischievous and wild - an adventure in sound!
www.emiclassics.com/artists/biogs/ades.html
Harrison Birtwistle
One of the extraordinary things about his music is that it can sound ugly and primitive the first time you hear it, then you go back years later and it sounds beautiful and lyrical - and so full that you're always noticing something new in it.
Links for Jonathan Dove
www.edition-peters.com/php/artist_details.php?artist=DOVE§ion=composer