My Concerto for Piano and Loudspeaker Orchestra, written for the wonderful French pianist Marie Vermeulin, had its first performances in April 2024. In this talk, I’ll explore some of the motivations and processes of making. For starters, why a ‘concerto’? And why loudspeaker orchestra? Composing is often a very private process, but I will share elements of the sketching and working documentation. I’ll examine the unusual pitch system of the work, and my approaches to handling this on paper and with ad hoc computer aids. 

An appeal of the loudspeaker orchestra is its capacity for sound spatialisation, and I wanted to explore what ‘orchestration’ might mean for this medium. I chose to experiment with new Dolby Atmos tools, with their promise of flexibility for the end user or venue, testing their creative possibilities and constraints against our several decades of technical and aesthetic research in the electroacoustic world. For the talk, we’re hoping to set up a spatial audio system, to show the outcomes in sound. 

This Concerto is fed by many strands of my creative practice: as composer for acoustic forces, fixed media, and ‘live electronics’ hybrids; as orchestral player and conductor; and as performer of electroacoustic work in concert sound diffusion. The result has resonances of all of those but isn’t like quite anything I’ve previously made. 

Bio 

Neal Farwell composes music for instruments and voices, for electronics alone, and for their combinations and collisions. As a conductor he works regularly with the Bristol University Symphony Orchestra. Neal’s repertoire includes composers as varied as Brahms and Birtwistle, Read Thomas and Takemitsu, Stravinsky and Vaughan Williams, and he has directed many first performances both within the University and outside including local groups such as Contemporary Music for All and Bristol Ensemble. Neal joined the University of Bristol in 2002, and is Professor of Composition in the Department of Music.