‘After Avedon’ & Simon Holt ‘Joy Beast’, New Music Biennial

****

“The mainstream classical strand was more or less defined by two brand-new works involving Mark Simpson. First, he was the astonishingly unflappable soloist in Simon Holt’s Joy Beast, a clarinet concerto inspired by a Cecil Collins lithograph. Full of typically fragile Holt sounds, it breaks through the fourth wall between audience and orchestra in the final movement for a four-way dialogue between Simpson’s basset clarinet and a trumpet, bassoon and piccolo stationed around the auditorium. Two days later, Simpson was in his role as a composer for the first performance of After Avedon, written for the Gould Piano Trio – four powerfully expressive movements inspired by an exhibition of Richard Avedon’s photographs.”

Guardian – Andrew Clements