Howard Skempton and Matthew Harris Field Notes, BCMG, Wem Town Hall, Shropshire, 8 March 2014

Extract

Howard Skempton's natural habitat is outside the box. Since the late 1960s he has flown in the face of the most fashionable trends in music, initially producing small, spare, almost inscrutable pieces often covering less than a page. He has never stood still, always gently subverting the listener's conception of his music. A major shift came in 1991 with his orchestral work Lento, where not only the size of forces used, but timescale as well, moved into a new area without compromising his own personal voice. More recently he has developed a relationship with Birmingham Contemporary Music Group (BCMG) resulting in Only the Sound Remains for viola and ensemble (2010), lasting more than 30 minutes. With a seemingly quite traditional surface, the piece's ability to hold a series of seemingly unconnected episodes together whilst retaining a sense of continuity disguised a highly radical structure (see Calum MacDonald's review in TEMPO 253 for more details).