So this became my central section.’ As the infection takes hold, timbral differences reveal themselves. ‘I discovered the death bite of an ant tends to happen around noon during the day, when the sun is at its strongest. Form flowed from research on the exact spread of the infection.

A stem grows a sack emerges a new set of parasitical spores explode into the air, floating towards their next victim. The possessed ant sleepwalks to a leaf, bites one of the veins and dies. The fungus infects the ant, scrambles its brain and sends it packing down to the forest floor, where the parasite has a chance to take root and grow. The dead ant had a stem sticking out of its skull. The inspiration for her latest work was an image of a dead ant that had succumbed to a fungal parasite, 'ophiocordyceps unilateralis s.l.', which she came across in a scientific journal.‘It was quite grotesque and shocking,’ she explains. Recently she’s turned her attention to the goings-on of the natural world, where processes can be even more bizarre. The result is intense – a music of the hospital ward. (BBC commission: World Premiere).īodily functions are to Shiori Usui what sonata form was to Haydn. Recent projects have included concertos for piano and flute, and a String Quintet ‘Emily’s Electrical Absence’ for members of Aurora Orchestra.With Birmingham Contemporary Music Group, conducted by Franck Ollu. 2015 saw Mark Simpson, Jean-Guihen Queyras and Tamara Stefanovich premiere Visiones (after Goya)at the Aldeburgh Festival. Six Speechless Songs, Suckling’s first work as Associate Composer with the Scottish Chamber Orchestra, was premiered in 2014. In 2011 Candlebird for baritone and ensemble, based on texts by Don Paterson, was premiered by the London Sinfonietta, who subsequently released it on CD. Championed by the likes of Ilan Volkov, François-Xavier Roth, Robin Ticciati, Nicholas Collon and Pierre-André Valade, his music has featured at festivals including Cheltenham, Ultraschall, the ISCM World Music Days 2007 (Hong Kong), and Oxford Lieder. Suckling has been commissioned by the London Symphony Orchestra, BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra, Deutsches Symphonie-Orchester Berlin, London Sinfonietta, and Scottish Ensemble. He is currently Senior Lecturer in Composition at the University of York. He has won numerous awards, including a highly sought-after Philip Leverhulme Prize. His teachers include George Benjamin, Robin Holloway, Martin Bresnick, and Simon Bainbridge. He was a Paul Mellon Fellow at Yale University (2003-5), undertook doctoral research at the Royal Academy of Music, and became a Stipendiary Lecturer in Music at Somerville College, Oxford.

After spending his teenage years performing in the National Youth Orchestra and in ceilidh bands around Scotland, Suckling studied music at Clare College Cambridge and King’s College London. Martin Suckling was born in Glasgow in 1981. Recent highlights include premieres of MacMillan’s A European Requiem, Stabat Mater for The Sixteen and a Trombone Concerto for Jörgen van Rijen with the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra. His recordings can be found on BMG/RCA Red Seal, BIS, Chandos, Naxos, Hyperion, Coro, Linn and Challenge Classics. His interpreters include soloists Evelyn Glennie, Colin Currie, Jean-Yves Thibaudet and Vadim Repin, conductors Leonard Slatkin, Sir Andrew Davis, Marin Alsop and Donald Runnicles, and choreographer Christopher Wheeldon. He was featured composer at Edinburgh Festival (1993), Southbank Centre (1997), BBC’s Barbican Composer Weekend (2005) and Grafenegg Festival (2012). Other major works include the cantata Seven Last Words from the Cross (1993), Quickening (1998) for soloists, children's choir, mixed choir and orchestra, the operas Inès de Castro (2001) and The Sacrifice (2005-06), St John Passion (2007) and St Luke Passion (2013). His percussion concerto Veni, Veni Emmanuel (1992) has received over 500 performances worldwide by orchestras including London Symphony Orchestra, New York and Los Angeles Philharmonics and Cleveland Orchestra.

He first attracted attention with the acclaimed BBC Proms premiere of The Confession of Isobel Gowdie (1990). James MacMillan is the pre-eminent Scottish composer of his generation. Posted by Tectonics Glasgow on Wednesday, 7 June 2017 Edinburgh-based composer Shiori Usui introduces her work 'From Scratch'

Shiori usui