A few weeks back I wrote to three music colleges to ask if any of their students would be interested in writing a piece for us. This was going to be a serious commission and a piece that will be featured in our promotional launch on the 24th October. We are very lucky that our plea to invite new composers to write for us has had such a brilliant response!
Out of the many who offered to write for us and after much deliberation, we decided to commission someone who is both accomplished and charismatic to write our first ANIMO commission. It has been an incredible experience to listen to everyone's music. So many new ideas, so much depth and strength of feeling, interpreting sounds, people, facts, ideas. There is so much creativity out there!
So, we are now in a position to joyously announce that our LAUNCH composer is Joseph Howard https://www.joseph-howard.com/ a PhD student of composition at the Royal Academy of Music (my alma mater). This is our first commission of a piece that involves pre-recorded material played by ANIMO against us performing live. Our first face-to-face rehearsal with Joe is in July and we hope to be able to "crack" the initial ideas together and give him as much material as he needs to proceed with the creative process.
Being part of something so magical as the start of a composition, and having it written for our sensitivities and strengths, is truly wonderful. In the process, we've met many more composers that we would love to work with in the future... watch this space as there are more commissions to come. I can feel a CD filled with new composers' works coming on...
