Young Person’s Guide to the Contemporary Music Ensemble

Hilda Paredes is composing a new work for the Birmingham Contemporary Music Group based on Benjamin Britten’s famous work The Young Person’s Guide to the Orchestra. The commission to Hilda Paredes for Birmingham Contemporary Music Group is made possible by the Ernst von Siemens Music Foundation. With her work Young Person’s Guide to the Contemporary Music Ensemble, Paredes aims to introduce a young audience to contemporary music, the instruments, performance aesthetics and techniques, and the sounds and musical languages of our time.

In doing so, the composer is inspired to treat the instruments like characters in a play. She intends to apply this approach to the structuring of the score for her Young Person’s Guide to the Contemporary Music Ensemble by giving each instrument a special significance at different stages in the course of the piece. This creates separate sections for each instrument or group of instruments and a musical dramaturgy that helps the young audience to recognise the different instruments and instrumental techniques and to awaken their own creativity.

During the performance, some instrumentalists move around the stage at different moments of the play to highlight different sections of the musical drama, which in turn emphasises the consideration of the ensemble and the instruments as characters of a play or a play. This makes the music much clearer and easier to follow for young audience, allowing them to absorb and learn more from what they see, hear and experience. To further enhance the exploration of space and music in this way, Birmingham Contemporary Music Group will perform the world premiere of Young Person’s Guide to the Contemporary Music Ensemble at Birmingham Town Hall, giving audiences a 360-degree seated experience so that the performance can be viewed from all angles, providing a unique experience for the audience.

Further information:
bcmg.org.uk

Date

April 20, 2023
Birmingham Town Hall