PGS Composers' Music featured

Solem Quartet workshop

On Thursday 28 January, composers Benedict (year 12) and Liberty (year 11) took part in an online Zoom concert workshop featuring new music written for string quartet. One of the most innovative and adventurous quartets of this generation, the Solem Quartet champion new music and Benedict and Liberty’s scores were chosen out of 100s submitted to them to workshop and discuss during the evening live stream. https://www.solemquartet.co.uk/about/ Liberty writes “people had the opportunity to send in their compositions and the quartet picked some extracts to play during the workshop. Benedict and I were lucky to have our compositions chosen and played, we were the youngest on the zoom. It was an amazing experience to hear my own piece being played by a professional quartet and to hear their feedback on it. I also loved having the opportunity to hear other people’s work and it has inspired me to try something new in my music writing.”

Reflecting on the experience, Benedict writes: “It was an amazing opportunity to hear my own composition “Cuckmere Haven” for strings , being played by the Solem Quartet. This was a valuable workshop experience to hear real feedback from real performers on real instruments; an opportunity which has given me a unique insight into the way a quartet approach a new piece of music, deconstruct it and ultimately put it back together again through performance. Just in that two hour workshop, I learned so much from other composers (and the quartet of course) about how to improve my music; I now have been exposed to new musical styles and tools that I can utilise in the future.”