Music of Our Time is the opening concert of the 2020 John Armitage Memorial season, and proudly celebrates its 20th anniversary with an outstanding programme:
Since 2000, John Armitage Memorial Trust has performed over 130 pieces of new music including 30 commissions, which have been performed in New Zealand, America, Canada and all over the UK. This commitment to enabling new music remains at the heart of JAM. With a competitive 106 submissions to this year’s anonymous Call for Music, five exceptional pieces were selected for this programme. Christopher Best and Richard Peat have been successful submitters in previous calls whilst William Harmer, Philip Lancaster and Kathryn Rose make their first appearance in JAM.
Revisiting works from our past is also a core value. For this concert, we return to three substantial JAM commissions: Paul Mealor’s Now sleeps the crimson petal (2010), Julian Philips’s Body of Water (2012) and Daniel Saleeb’s Soliloquy (2019) which was premiered last year in JAM on the Marsh and receives its first London performance. One of our favourite submissions from yesteryear is Hannah Kendall’s Nativity, which we are pleased to revisit.
An important part of JAM’s success over the last 20 years is because of the mutual loyalty shared with our performers. This concert highlights 20 years of collaboration with JAM: Onyx Brass have been involved every year since 2000; the Chapel Choir of Selwyn College, Cambridge since 2002; Simon Hogan, organist, since 2009; Michael Bawtree, principal conductor of JAM, since 2010; Philippe Durrant, tenor, makes his JAM debut, and is a welcome addition to our performers. This longstanding continuity enables JAM to create and perform a programme like this with confidence.