Wednesday, September 28, 2011

Meet "Max" next week at Kings Place

Kings Place from 7-9 October is hosting a festival entitled Notes and Letters, a super example of the type of event that has really put this doughty venue on the map. Music and words meet and mingle ina panoply of intriguing events - you can see the full programme here.

On Sunday 9 October at 12.30pm I will be in the interviewer's chair to talk to Sir Peter Maxwell Davies, aka "Max", about the focus on myth and madness in his music. Come along and meet this astonishing composer (pictured above), whose output as listed on his website runs to a cool 54 pages and ranges through everything from Classic FM favourites such as Farewell to Stromness to the stunning inventions of Eight Songs for a Mad King, operas, masses, the series of Strathclyde Concertos, heaps of chamber music and a slew of symphonies, including an Antarctic Symphony that is still waiting to be recorded.

Here's an extract from Eight Songs for a Mad King...the sort of piece that can make you feel like a child with a clock, itching to take it apart and find out how it works and how it fitted together in the first place, without necessarily having a clue about how you might build it yourself.