Thomas S. Allen News
Composer, manager and violinist
- violin
- United States of America
- composer, violinist
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2024-04-24
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2024-04-11 04:00:00
Bach: Magnificat; Jauchzet Gott (John Eliot Gardiner, English Baroque Soloists)
2024-04-10 06:36:00
Music Theatre Wales' New Directions programme is devoted to re-imagining opera and in an age when the funds for commissioning and presenting new opera live are getting harder to come by, the company has released a pair of Digital Opera Shorts. The idea is that these short, digital pieces bring together all the elements that make opera so powerful – a continuous musical arc that conveys the inner story; an impactful human message; image; performance; and the operatic voice.This year, four artists were invited to collaborate in opera for the first time. None of them had previously met, but all were excited by the potential of this multidisciplinary artform, and by the prospect of creating something in which music, story and image work as a single entity. In March 2024, two Digital Opera Shorts were released.GRIEF explores the physical and emotional impact of loss and features music by British Ghanaian-Nigerian composer, musician […]
2024-04-06 08:42:00
Spell Book, Witch & Stone Fruit: composer Freya Waley-Cohen on the power of ritual and spells
Freya Waley-Cohen: Spell Book - Héloïse Werner, Manchester Collective - Barbican (Photo: César Vásquez Altamirano)On 1 February 2024, Manchester Collective, Héloïse Werner (soprano), Fleur Barron (mezzo-soprano), Katie Bray (mezzo-soprano) and Céline Saout (harp) presented the world premiere of Freya Waley-Cohen's complete Spell Book at the Barbican in advance of the song cycle's release on NMC Recordings in October 2024. Setting feminist spell-poems from Rebecca Tamás' 2019 collection WITCH, the cycle mines a vein that Freya Waley-Cohen also explored in her 2020 opera WITCH. In a totally different vein, February 2024 also saw the premiere of Freya's Stone Fruit at Wigmore Hall performed by the Colin Currie Quartet.Freya Waley-Cohen (Photo: Patrick Allen)When Freya first read Rebecca Tamás' poetry, it caught her imagination and expanded her way of looking at the world. Freya loved the idea of witches and spells, the poetry was fantastical, playful and powerful. She also felt that the […]
2024-04-03 06:35:00
A wondrous snapshot of British singing: Ralph Vaughan Williams' Serenade to Music and the sixteen singers chosen for the first performance
Ralph Vaughan Williams: Serenade to Music - exploring the sixteen singers chosen for the first performance; Isobel Baillie, Elise Suddaby, Eva Turner, Stiles-Allen, Muriel Brunskill, Astra Desmond, Margaret Balfour, Mary Jarrod, Walter Widdop, Parry Jones, Frank Titterson, Heddle Nash, Roy Henderson, Robert Easton, Harold Williams, Norman Allin, Keith Falkner; Albion RecordsReviewed 2 April 2024A remastering of the iconic 1938 recording along with a solo track from each of the sixteen soloists (plus one extra) providing a wondrous snapshot of British singing in the 1930sRalph Vaughan Williams' Serenade to Music has become rightly become iconic and on this disc from Albion Records the original 1938 recording is explored from a different angle. We hear that original recording with Isobel Baillie, Elise Suddaby, Eva Turner, Stiles-Allen, Muriel Brunskill, Astra Desmond, Margaret Balfour, Mary Jarrod, Walter Widdop, Parry Jones, Frank Titterson, Heddle Nash, Roy Henderson, Robert Easton, Harold Williams, and Norman Allin conducted by […]
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