Last year Kristin School commissioned a piece from me for their amazing award-winning choir, Euphony, to include in their 2010 repertoire. They premiered it at the Auckland Town Hall on Wednesday 16th June 2010. See the video below:
It uses the text from Bub Bridger’s poem, Wild Daisies.
The choir was once again successful in getting through to The Big Sing Finale, along with many other choirs from around New Zealand. You can see the full list of these choirs at The Big Sing website.
Wild Daisies is notated for SSA choir and if anyone is interested in buying a copy please let me know.
(written for, and published at ERUPT Festival blog, 22 December 2009 – image courtesy of www.taupofest.co.nz)
The SOUNZ Community Commission (www.sounz.org.nz) is supporting a new piece from me for the 2010 ERUPT Lake Taupo Festival. This is a fantastic project which I am very happy to be involved with. The piece is written for the community and they will perform it. It also involves text written by those in the community.
The piece is currently being written and although I don’t want to give much away … it will certainly be a celebration of Taupo. I have always loved Taupo and have stayed there many times. Recently when I visited Taupo to meet many of the musical groups there, I was completely blown away by the amount of musical activity. This alone is reason to celebrate.
The lake and the river will help to characterise the work, which will involve numerous groups from the community, who will be announced publicly later.
I have been involved with several projects writing for community groups and so I have enjoyed hitting this one with full force. Writing music is what I do full-time – as well as copying and arranging other peoples music. I also conduct several groups in Auckland. For any more info, or for my blog, see www.ryanyouens.com.
I look forward to this project evolving further, and for it to explode into ERUPT 2010!
Well as I’m sure many of you know, a few weeks ago I got married. For the occasion, along with some arrangements, I wrote a piano piece called “This Day”, for the arrival of my bride, now wife … Wendy. It was played live by one of my groomsmen, Andrew Cochrane. It is a great little piece, only about three minutes long, and because it was something pretty unique, here is a link so you can listen to the full version online.
Ryan’s string quartet In Their Light was premiered in Athens today. It was received extremely well by both the quartet and the audience. New projects together are on the horizon. Photo of the premiere below:
Gruppetto String Quartet
Galina Bratuska (violin I), Marouso Kydonieos (violin II), Lilia Giousoupovac (viola), Eygeni Bratuska (bass) – all members of major Greek orchestras
Ryan Youens (New Zealand) – In Their Light (world premiere)
C. Carsavassilis (Canada) – Baroque Revisited (European premiere)
Alexey Kurtijian (Brazil) – La Componessa
Also music by Filip Tsalaxuris (Greece), G. Matzafleris (Greece), Alex Pappas (Greece), Franz Schubert, Dass Dreimeadelhaus.
Artistic Director – Alex Pappas, Administrative Director – Dimitris Tsoutsos
6 Gravias Street, Agia Paraskeyh Pierce Theatre, 8:30pm, 10 November 2008, $18Euro
Hey everyone, well on the 29th May was The Committee’s 2008 Bangers and Mash concert. The point of these concerts is to have composers write music which doesn’t use any conventional notation or instruments … as well as no computers and can be playable by non-musicians. It was great to be involved and it was a fantastic success.
Initially I was completely stuck as what to actually do. I mean there are so many options … using anything that makes a cool sound. An obvious one would be doing something to vegetables. (lol) One night as I was traveling down to Wellington, Wendy (my partner) and I stopped to help a lady change her car tyre. Afterwards we got back in the car and soon after I said “I’VE GOT IT!!”.
So my piece was using five players, their spare car tyre and a pair of drum sticks. There was a set beginning and end, but then in the middle was much more freely organised. There were about six different sounds (or techniques), such as bouncing the stick on the tyre, rubbing it against the tyre to get a “squeaking” effect, and so on. There was a leader and they lead through each of these techniques. Overall creating these wonderful textures. It worked really well and was very well received.
The other pieces were fantastic as well, see below. Looking forward to doing more with “The Committee”.
Posts on my music and work in the music industry. Also on Apple, Sibelius, online music marketing and music technology. I look forward to your comments and feedback.
