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New Music Players, Orchestra of Sound and Light, Ed Hughes, Andrew Gourley, Rachel Farago
Biography New Music Players, Orchestra of Sound and Light, Ed Hughes, Andrew Gourley, Rachel Farago
New Music Players
was founded by Ed Hughes in 1990
New Music Players was founded by composer and artistic director Ed Hughes in 1990. This contemporary classical group comprises world-class musicians who individually perform a wide range of music, from jazz, to chamber, orchestral and experimental, to Wagner and Schumann, to authentic Baroque and other classical and early music styles.
Their musical intelligence, instrumental skill and multiple interests produce amazingly vivid performances and premieres, and give the New Music Players its distinctive edge. The ensemble has been featured in festivals at the ICA, Huddersfield, Brighton; performed and worked with students at York, Bristol, Sussex, Royal Holloway, Oxford, Nottingham universities, and broadcast regularly on BBC Radio 3. UK and European tours include Ed Hughes’s scores for Eisenstein’s silent films Battleship Potemkin and Strike; works by Ligeti, Hughes and Harvey; Xenakis at the Huddersfield Contemporary Music Festival and Hughes's opera When the Flame Dies.
NMP feature on six CD recordings including four discs of music by Ed Hughes on Metier: ‘Dark Formations’, his opera ‘When the Flame Dies’, ‘Symphonic Visions’, a DVD of silent film scores, and ‘Time, Space and Change’, featuring ‘Sinfonia’ (2018) and ‘Media Vita’ (1991) released in March 2020. They perform Ed Hughes’s scores for Eisenstein’s films Battleship Potemkin and Strike on a DVD box set released by Tartan Video, and on several silent films by Japanese director Ozu as part of a series released by the BFI featuring new scores by Ed Hughes.
NMP premiered Ed Hughes’s opera ‘States of Innocence’ at the Brighton Festival in May 2024 and will premiere Nicholas Smith MBE’s opera ‘The Stone God’ at the Bloomsbury Theatre, London in October 2024.
Orchestra of Sound and Light
The vision of Orchestra of Sound and Light is to share the excitement of live music-making and composing through participatory projects ranging from primary schools to major Festival commissions.
OSL is a core line-up of five musicians who all perform professionally at the highest level and have extensive teaching and facilitating experience, directed by composer and Artistic Director Ed Hughes.
OSL has presented workshops and performance projects across East Sussex and Brighton and Hove, including major performances at the Brighton Festival in 2016 and 2018.
Artistic director Ed Hughes and OSL have been awarded funding by Arts Council England for a project in 2022 'South Downs Songbook' featuring new works by composers Rowland Sutherland, Evelyn Ficarra, Ed Hughes and Shirley Thompson, workshops in schools and colleges, and new digital resources.
