BINGHAM String Quartet’s programme for tomorrow’s York Late Music concert at the Unitarian Chapel, St Saviourgate, York, will be a tale of two promoters.
The 7.30pm concert at features two first performances: Anthony Adams’s String Quartet No. 2 and Steve Crowther’s String Quartet No. 4 in a celebration not only of two composers but also a friendship spanning more than 40 years of these co-founders of Soundpool and York Late Music.
Here is Anthony Adams’s take on the historical journey, but bear in mind that the story begins in a pub, so perhaps not all details can be guaranteed as factual.
“Soundpool was conceived at a meeting in a pub in York sometime during 1981, between me, Michael Parkin, Ian Taylor and Steve Crowther (still one of the main driving forces behind Late Music), who by that time had met Mike Parkin and was a student of his,” recalls Anthony.
“Soundpool was initially conceived as a vehicle for the performance of our work and for the promotion of contemporary music in general. We planned to form ensembles using York musicians, most of whom at that time we did not know and had not met.”
These included Barry Russell and Nick Williams (composers, conductors), Edwina Smith (flute), Tim Brooks (trombone and piano), Christopher Fox (composer, conductor), Tom Endrich (composer, conductor), Amanda Crawley (soprano) and Barrie Webb (trombone, conductor). Ian Taylor was a regular on both classical and electric guitar too.
“In 1991, Tony and Mike Parkin decided they had taken Soundpool as far as they could and invited Steve Crowther and David Power to take the project forward. In 1995, at the suggestion of Martin Pople at York Arts Centre, it was renamed Late Music. And there we have it.”
Adams’s 15-minute String Quartet No. 2 falls roughly into two parts. “The first part is constructed of many overlapping layers,” he says. “The second half is compositionally simpler, acting as a ‘foil’ to the first half, in some ways a second movement, a long-drawn-out coda.”
Crowther’s String Quartet No. 4 has the dedication “Slava Ukraini!”, which has been a “symbol of Ukrainian sovereignty and resistance … since 2018” (Wikipedia).
“This is the subjective, political driver of the piece, a response to Putin’s barbaric land grab,” says Steve. “The abstract narrative, however, is a soundscape of fast musical moments, often repeated, the potential energy of the work, and release, the kinetic.
“Counterpoint in the form of canonic dialogue can be heard throughout the one-movement piece. Yet there is song, and harmony in the form of symmetry.”
Haydn’s String Quartet in F, Op.77 No.2 and Philip Glass’s String Quartet No.3, Mishima, book-end the two world premieres to complete a hopefully innovative programme.
Mishima was written in 1985 for the soundtrack to the film Mishima – A Life In Four Chapter, a biopic about the life of Yukio Mishima (1925-1970), a quirky Japanese author, poet, playwright, actor and model, who attempted a coup and committed ritual suicide by seppuku in 1970.
Steve Bingham will give a pre-concert talk at 6.45pm with a complimentary glass of wine or juice for all attendees. Box office: latemusic.org/product/bingham-string-quartet-tickets-1-feb-2025 or on the door.
Anthony Adams: the back story
IN an attempt to address the existential questions of “Why are we here? What is the meaning of it all?”, composer Anthony Adams was drawn to science, studying Biochemistry and Bacteriology at Liverpool University.
He and fellow student Tom Burke (later director of Friends of the Earth and other environmental organisations) found common purpose in philosophy.
Disillusion with science resulted, eventually, in a rejection of academic study at Liverpool and, during five years working as a bus conductor and driver, Adams resumed his piano studies and developed a consuming interest in music. He then enrolled at Bangor University to study music composition.
“By the time I went to Bangor, I already had quite a strong background in music and had made many compositional attempts,” he says. “I was totally ready for William Mathias’s composition teaching methods.
“He would usually analyse a piece of music at the piano, discussing it with us as he went along, which I found an ideal way to learn as I already had an extensive background in many genres and periods of music.
“He would then set us a compositional task to be completed in a week. That discipline I found really helpful. Concurrently with weekly composition lessons, there were weekly lectures on 20th century music with Jeffrey Lewis.
“These were seriously helpful, as Jeffrey was also a composer and had an extensive knowledge of current trends in contemporary music as well as a deep knowledge of the music of the first half of the 20th century.”
Adams met fellow composers Michael Parkin and Ian Taylor and, along with lecturers John Hywel and Jeffrey Lewis, formed a strong bond of friendship.
As a composer, Adams flourished in this supportive and creative environment. Notable works written at this time were: La Morte Meditata for Soprano and Orchestra (1976); a large ensemble piece Changes, Modes And Interludes (1977) and The Closing Of Autumn for String Quartet and Soprano (1980).
He moved to York in early 1981, meeting up again with Michael Parkin and Ian Taylor. However, at university there had been plenty of opportunities for performance and those did not now exist. They decided to create an organisation to address this need. Soundpool was duly born.
In 1984, as part of that year’s York Festival, Soundpool staged its last completely “homegrown” concert, an evening of music theatre, comprising Cheap Tricks by Michael Parkin and Adams’s Mishima: Part One, as well as a work by Christopher Fox and one or two other pieces. Many weeks of rehearsals were held with a considerable number of performers. “It was quite an achievement for all involved and the whole evening was a success,” he says.
“Over the next few years, I recall some memorable concerts: the Delta Saxophone Quartet, and Michael Nyman and Alexander Balanescu (violin) with an evening of Nyman’s music (mainly from The Draughtsman’s Contract) among them. This latter was, at the time, the best attended concert that Soundpool had promoted.
“Three other short-lived ensembles were formed in the mid-1980s as spin-offs from Soundpool and gave performances at Soundpool concerts and elsewhere: Commedia (flute, trombone, cello, dancer), Ancient Voices and Firebird.
“Barrie Webb (still on the staff at the University of York as a trombone teacher) was involved in Commedia (trombone) and Firebird (conductor). Alan Hacker and Karen Evans were involved in Ancient Voices.”
During the Soundpool years in the 1980s, Adams wrote mainly for small and medium-sized ensembles. Notable pieces included Six Winter Haiku (soprano and ensemble); Nine Summer Haiku (soprano, flute, guitar); The Reflective Mirror (clarinet and piano); 2 + 2 for saxophone quartet; Five Pictures (large ensemble) and Arabesque (large ensemble).
During the mid-1980s he started drawing and painting and Five Pictures (1986) was a musical response to coloured drawings he had done.
In 1991, Tony and Mike Parkin decided they had taken Soundpool as far as they could as invited Steve Crowther and David Power to take the project forward. In 1995, at the suggestion of Martin Pople at the York Arts Centre, it was renamed Late Music.
By 1992 Adams had divorced and remarried. He had two teenage children, a baby, and the responsibility for three other children under ten. That did not leave much time for composing, although in the 1990s he wrote two more pieces: Dace, a celebration of the birth of his third child, Candace (1993); and Lewis, solo violin (1994). Both works were commissioned by Late Music and premiered as part of the Late Music Festival.
In 2011 he started to think more again about composition and over the next three years produced 40 electronic works totalling around 30 hours of music. “Apart from exploring a new sound world, I used them to investigate ways of structuring compositions which were very difficult using conventional instruments, especially in small ensembles – in particular working in ‘layers’.”
“The 2nd String Quartet was begun at the close of this period of creating electronic works, sometime in 2014. I started it with the idea that the material would be manipulated electronically as in the works of the previous period,” he says.
“However, possibly because I had exhausted my interest in electronics at that point, nothing came of what I had started, and it was abandoned for a couple of years. After writing a set of piano studies in about 2017, I had the idea that the string quartet material could be turned into a piano piece and I spent about three years, on and off, working at that.
“By 2020, it was obvious that that wasn’t going to work, and I returned to the idea of a string quartet, this time without any electronic input. Without any pressure to finish it and with no performance in view, I worked on it for about three years until I was satisfied with it; it was finished in early 2024.”
Tomorrow, the world premiere will be performed by the Bingham String Quartet.
