Finishing 2021
It has been a big year. A year of premieres, cancellations and coming together with amazing artists to make new work in this extremely tough pandemic environment. I am truly grateful to all the people who have supported by work, from the performers, administrators, funders, organisations and audiences. It has been amazing to see the love that people have for new music and the passion with which they have formed a can do community to keep the music going in 2021.
It has been a really special year for my work across the UK festival scene. In May my collaboration with writer/singer Jessica Walker, The People’s Cabaret, premiered at the Brighton Festival and the Norfolk and Norwich Festival. It was the first time my music was heard at these wonderful festivals and Jess and I had the pleasure of building and sharing our work with communities in both regions, especially the close development work with the Brighton People’s Theatre. That was a real bright light out of the early 2021 darkness. I’m thrilled that this project will continue in 2022 and 2023.
I had been in talks with Nova Music Opera and the powerhouse musician and all round maker-of-things-happen George Vass for a number of years about a new opera, a revision, re-imagining, rejuvenation of my first chamber opera, into what has become, Awakening Shadow. The commission is a co-commission between Nova Music Opera and the Cheltenham Festival, where it premiered in the summer, before going on to the Presteigne Festival in Wales. Again it was a thrill to be part of these two festivals, a first for me at Presteigne and both festivals had to really hold their nerve with something as complex as opera to navigate all of the pandemic challenges and remain positive that the opera would be possible to present to the public. It was and I was thrilled. The opera is a real lead forward for me in how I construct an abstract form of storytelling within a developing dramatic arch. I can’t wait for the second production of this opera in 2022.
“I’ve been blown away by Luke Styles’ premiere of Awakening Shadow.” Camilla King (director of the Cheltenham Music Festival) in Classical Music
On the other side of the world, around the same time as The People’s Cabaret was being performed, my first brass quintet, Solder, premiered at the Canberra International Music Festival. I had been wanting to write a brass quintet since hearing Elliott Carter’s brass quintet as a student. My wife was once a horn player and hearing her years of practice, along with the sound of brass chords is a sound that often comes into my ears. Being able to focus on this sound and explore it in a chamber format was a real joy and allowed me to experiment further with my harmonic thinking. Shortly after the piece premiered at CIMF with the Golden Gate Brass Quintet it received a second performance in Melbourne by the Lyrebird Quintet, who have also recorded the work for their upcoming album.
Moving into the European autumn and winter I was able to travel to two more festivals for performances and premieres. These were the Sound Festival in Aberdeen and the Huddersfield Contemporary Music Festival. At both festivals my latest chamber work, Five Phase Sphere was performed by the Red Note Ensemble. The piece is a trio for low strings (viola, cello, double bass) and like my brass quintet, it is a work I have been thinking about since my student days. I heard Wolfgang Rihm’s trio for Trio Basso and the sound was cemented in my ears. (After my undergraduate studies I went on to become a postgraduate student of Rihm’s). This combined with being a bass player (long ago) was driving me to express a chamber music sound that is rooted in the low frequencies and string techniques. The piece is in five phases and comes to about 20 minutes. It is challenging and takes huge concentration from the players. Red Note did an amazing job and I was really thrilled to have the piece performed twice within a few weeks, at these two cutting edge contemporary music festivals. Both performances of the piece will be broadcast on BBC Radio 3’s New Music Show in the coming months.
Outside of the festival performances two significant concert performances of my music took place. One was in March in Australia, of a large symphonic song cycle called No Friend But The Mountains, you can read about it HERE, but it was an emotionally big and consuming work, which has been broadcast twice and is the subject of a documentary film.
The other work was the first movement of a three movement duo for piano and double bass. The work is called Embers and was premiered by the Riot Ensemble at London’s premiere chamber music venue, Wigmore Hall. The work is very current, as I just today finished the final movement. It is part of an even larger cycle of double bass and piano works called FIRE (funded by the PRS Foundation, The Marchus Trust and an individual donor). The cycle has numerous double bass and pianist partners around the world and will continue to be played/premiered through 2022 and 2023, with an album of the full cycle coming soon as well.
Thanks again to everyone who has supported me and worked with me this year. The music goes on. Art is developed and flourishes even when the outlook is bleak. 2022 and beyond will see more new music and great performances and I can’t wait to be a part of it.