- FANFARE
MAGAZINE CRITICS CHOICE 2008 (USA)
- MUSICIANS BENEVOLENT FUND
PROFESSIONAL DEVELOPMENT AWARD 2009 (UK)
- ASCAPLUS AWARDS
FOR CONCERT MUSIC 2006/07/08/09 (USA)
Press Kit:
http://myPPK.com/get/jonathanlittle
YouTube:
http://www.youtube.com/Musicalia65
The atmospheric and evocative music of ASCAP
award-winning composer JONATHAN LITTLE is characterised by its beauty,
intensity, and richness of material.
After initial studies at the
University of Melbourne, where he won the Wright Prize in
Instrumental Music and Lady Turner Exhibition for overall excellence, he
completed the degree of Doctor of Philosophy at Monash University
by research into the development of "exotic" orchestration in 19th-
and 20th-century music.
As
a member of the Australian Youth Orchestra from 1986 to 1988, he
participated in the orchestra's Bicentennial European Tour, and while
still an undergraduate student, Jonathan performed with the Melbourne
Symphony Orchestra, and also played for the annual New Music workshops
of the Australian Opera Company.
Jonathan
moved to the UK in the mid 1990’s, and was appointed Lecturer at
Buckinghamshire New University on their pioneering Music Industry
Management course (the first such degree course in Europe) – where he
specialised in the workings of the British and international recording
industry, and taught songwriting analysis.
From 2004 to 2007 the US-headquartered
French contemporary music label ERM (Editions de la Rue Margot) became
the first record company to release a selection of his compositions
within their prestigious “Masterworks” series – a multi-volume CD set
showcasing international contemporary composers. On ERM, his works are
performed by the Czech and Kiev Philharmonic Orchestras, with vocal
soloists of the Sofia Opera (Vols. 3, 5, 8, 10 & 11). Other important
musical premieres include Jonathan’s
Kyrie for double choir and
soloists, first given by the Thomas Tallis Society/Philip Simms at
Waltham Abbey, Essex, and St. Alfege,
Greenwich, at the historic Tallis 500th
Anniversary Concerts in 2005.
Kyrie was memorably performed at the Easter Tenebrae Concert at
Wells Cathedral in 2007 conducted by Nigel Perrin, and in the same year
poignantly
featured in Thierry Donard’s French DVD release, "Nuit de la Glisse" (Uppercut
Entertainment).
In America,
Jonathan has been the recipient of 4 successive ASCAPlus Awards for
Concert Music and 5 Masterworks Recording Prizes. Recordings have been
supported by the Kenneth Leighton Trust (UK) and the Foundation for New
Music (USA), and in
2009
Jonathan became the first composer to receive a Professional Development
Award from the UK music
business’s own charity, the Musicians Benevolent Fund. Studies
of some of his prize-winning compositions will be published in the major
American reference series, Masterworks of
the New Era: Music of the 20th and 21st Century.
Jonathan is also a member of the Society of
Authors, and continues to write and edit works on a variety of
music-related topics, ranging from historical works discussing
instrumentation and orchestration, to more topical writings on popular
music performance and the future of the music and entertainment
industries. In 2001, he co-founded
Music Business Journal, and was for five years its joint Managing
Editor. In a seminal series of articles commissioned for
American Outlook magazine,
published by the Hudson Institute (2001-02) – a US scholarly
think-tank which helps shape government policy – Jonathan assessed the
state of contemporary songwriting, the phenomenon of the “celestial
jukebox”, and the implications of the rise of digital cinema. Jonathan
was Series Editor of the Academy of Contemporary Music’s
definitive 36-volume guide, The Academy Popular Music Tuition Series (2003-05), and, at the
request of the British
Academy, he contributed to
Heart & Soul: Revealing the Craft
of Songwriting, published by Sanctuary to coincide with the 50th
anniversary of the Ivor Novello Awards. In 2005 he was appointed first
Consultant Editor to A&C Black’s flagship volume of musical reference,
the Musicians’ and Songwriters’
Yearbook, and is presently engaged in
writing four new book titles:
Theory and Practice of Songwriting for Robert Hale, two major
academic studies on 19th and 20th century
orchestral music for Edwin Mellen Press, and
On Musical Composition for
Wirripang.
Jonathan appears in the UK Music
Publishers’ Association Register of Expert Musicologists, and is a member of the Fellowship
of Australian Composers, the
British
Academy of Songwriters,
Composers and Authors (BASCA), the American Society of Composers,
Authors and Publishers (ASCAP), and of the Los Angeles Chapter of
America’s National Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences (NARAS).
From
2001-2006, Jonathan was Principal of the Academy of Contemporary Music
(ACM) in Guildford, England – Europe’s largest specialist academy for
students of contemporary music, and the first education institution to
win the Queen’s Award for Enterprise (Innovation category). He also
helped establish the first contemporary music degree course in Italy (in
Bologna), and in South Africa (at COPA), and has worked as Curriculum
Consultant to the Brighton Institute of Modern Music, and as Visiting
Lecturer in Media Music Composition at the University of Surrey.
Currently, Jonathan is Senior Lecturer and Director of Commercial Music
at the University of Chichester, and recently helped to establish the UK’s first
postgraduate contemporary music performance course at ACM.
In
2008 Dilute Recordings (UK) released on CD a selection of compositions
published by Wirripang, entitled “TERPSICHORE AND OTHER WORKS”.
This disc includes:
Kyrie, Sacred Prelude,
Fanfare,
Terpsichore, Duo Sonata
and That Time of Year.
Cambridge University Press’s Tempo
magazine hailed it as a
“ground-breaking tour de force”, while in
America,
Fanfare Magazine admired its
“music of tremendous power”.
The disc was subsequently selected to join
Fanfare’s elite “Want List
2008” as one of that year’s most striking new worldwide releases.
Jonathan’s second major disc, “POLYHYMNIA”, is to be issued in America in ERM’s
“Prestige” series in 2010, supported by the Musicians Benevolent Fund
and ASCAP.
For
further information, and for scores and recordings, Jonathan may be
contacted via his publishers.
WORLDWIDE criticAL OPINION:
-
“a major new, original and quite brilliant classical voice”
– Lynn René Bayley, citation in “The Want List 2008”,
Fanfare Magazine (Nov-Dec 2008, USA)
***
A FANFARE MAGAZINE RECOMMENDED
RECORDING FOR 2008 ***
-
“this heart-rending panorama with an exceptionally hypnotic array of
musical colour … immensely poetic – almost otherwordly”
– John Wheatley, in Tempo
(Cambridge University Press, July 2010,
UK)
- “An inspired
creation ... beautifully expansive ... voluptuous sonorities” –
Patric Standford, Music & Vision
(May 2009, UK)
- “This is music that brings to mind so much else but at the same time
isn't quite like
anything you've heard before. …
[a] whirling kaleidoscope of sounds. …
An extraordinary range of sensations.
... This is certainly
novel stuff and I suspect time will prove it to be a good deal more than
that.”
– Simon Thomas,
Music OMH (November 2008, UK)
- “Little’s music sounds like no one else’s. Not anyone’s. ... to put it
into words degrades the astonishing range of colors and moods he
creates. … Trust me, once you’re about halfway through the title work,
you won’t be able to take it off. … Mr. Little is quite a talent indeed.”
– Lynn René Bayley, Fanfare
(May-June 2008, USA)
- “innovative music … incandescent … a positively dynamic musical
palette … moving the listener irrevocably onward to a brightly
illuminated plain of poetic splendour, rhythm and ecstasy”
– John Wheatley, in
Tempo (Cambridge University
Press, January 2008,
UK)
- “immense creativity and innovation while
remaining accessible to new listeners” –
ASCAP Playback Magazine (Summer, 2006) (New York, USA)
-
“innovative and accessible to both musicians and audiences”
– Keith Lowde, former Deputy Managing Director and Company Secretary,
Music-Copyright Protection Society [MCPS] (London,
UK)
-
“Here, Little
demonstrates his command of orchestration ... lush and at
ease with the tropes of modernist tonal music
… the crafting of orchestration is finely honed”
– Helen O’Brien, Music Forum
(May-July 2009,
Australia)
-
“touching music … a unique voice”
– Maestro Robert Ian Winstin, Executive Director of the Foundation for
New Music (Virginia,
USA)
