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Patrick Nunn

About Me

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The CD of Music of the Spheres is available at www.redsockrecords.com and many other stores such as CDbaby.com as well as increasing number of digital download sites such as i-tunes and napster.

Red Sock Records

CDbaby (USA)

About
Patrick Nunn studied with Frank Denyer at Dartington College of Arts and with Gary Carpenter at the Welsh College of Music and Drama returning once again to Dartington in 1995 to study with the Dutch composer Louis Andriessen. He is currently studying with Professor Simon Bainbridge on a doctoral course in composition at the Royal Academy of Music supported by a 2007 PRS Foundation Scholarship. Other supervisors include Jonathan Harvey, Simon Emmerson and Tod Machover.

Patrick's work is often collaborative-based working with a broad spectrum of disciplines including film, theatre, dance, sculpture and performance art. Momenta, a recent collaborative venture with choreographer Mikaela Polly, was selected as part of Ballet Rambert's 2005 repertoire. His sensual and dramatic score for Genet's silent film Un Chant d'amour commissioned by the Arts Council of Wales toured the UK in 1998 returning to the Barbican as part of the BITE series in 2003 as an adaptation for piano. In 2002, his evocative score for Concentric Circles' production of Racine's Phaedra ran for over a month at Riverside Studio's.

Patrick has been commissioned by performers such as Icebreaker, Piano Circus, The Gogmagogs, The New London Children's Choir, PM Ensemble, Mark Simpson, Ephyra, Sub Divo and Charlie Barber & Band to name just a few. His work has gained many prestigious awards including the Gregynog Award 94 for Colour Cycle, the Composing for Children prize as part of the BBC's Fairest Isle festival in 1995 for Songs of our Generation and the RCM Rarescale award 2004 for Into My Burning Veins a Poison. More recently, Mercurial Sparks, Volatile Shadows received the British Composers Award 2006 in the Instrumental Solo and Duet category whilst Gaia Sketches was nominated in the New Media catagory. His work Escape Velocity for accordion and string quartet was nominated for the chamber category in the 2007 British Academy Awards and Transilient Fragments was awarded the Alan Bush prize at the Royal Academy of Music in March 2008.

Patrick's latest work investigates the meeting points between sonic worlds such as in Läuten (commissioned as part of the South Bank Nono Festival conducted under Diego Masson). In this work, the analysis of inharmonic tones of bells from Cologne Cathedral are realized acoustically through microtonal pitches within the instrumentation. His work Escape Velocity for accordion and string quartet similarly explores the concept of transference through the converging and exchanging of musical and timbral properties between the different instruments. The work was premiered at the Royal Academy of Music, London and was followed by a performance at the Queens Hall ‘Diamanten', Copenhagen where it was recorded live for Danish radio. His works Gaia Sketches for solo cello and live electronics and Fata Morgana for cello, ensemble and live electronics takes this concept a stage further by utilizing the extraordinary Hyperbow developed by Diana Young at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology to form an intuitive and musical connection between the performer and the live electronics. The collaboration was documented in the proceedings for the sixth International Conference on New Interfaces for Musical Expression 2006 (NIME 06) at the Centre Pompidou, IRCAM, Paris. The paper, titled “Composing for Hyperbow: A Collaboration between MIT and the Royal Academy of Music.” was co-authored with Diana Young and Artem Vassiliev. Other works that follow a similar approach with electro-acoustic elements include his work Gonk for solo bassoon and tape (selected as the competition piece for the Florence Woodbridge Bassoon Prize at the Royal Academy of Music) and his clarinet piece Coalescence (recently performed by Mark Simpson, winner of the BBC Young Musician of the Year 2006). His miniatures Music of the Spheres for piano and planets incorporate a soundtrack of sonified data taken by NASA spacecraft. Written for Thalia Myers and recorded by Red Sock Records, their success led to the commissioning of Collage on D for violin and tape and will be published by the ABRSM as part of their spectrum series this year. The ABRSM have further commissioned a new work for piano duet and tape for a new spectrum publication. Patrick recently completed Prism, a new commission for Mark Simpson (BBC Young Musician of the Year 2006) which premiered at the Assembly Rooms, Bath Festival on the 2nd June 2008. Both Coalescence and Prism will feature on a new CD currently being recorded by Mark Simpson. He has recently completed work on an orchestral piece and Shoaling for harp and electronics exploring spatial and transformational shoals of sound objects and features as part of the British premiere of Nono's Prometeo (RFH, South Bank, 10th May 08). Patrick's music is represented by the 2008 BMIC New Voices scheme.

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My Interests

Music:

Member Since: 8/29/2005
Band Website: www.patricknunn.com
Band Members: Myself, Me, I
Influences: Grisey, Murail, Debussy, The Necks, Arvo Part, Harold Budd, Bulgarian voices, Magnus Linberg, Jonathan Harvey, Michael Gordon, Steve Reich, Takemitsu, Stravinsky, Bartok, Ligeti (oh so many!)
Sounds Like: no other
Record Label: Red Sock Records

My Blog

Into 2007

After nursing one mother of a hangover (thanks Kirsteen ) it's all back to work. Just managed to complete Music of the Spheres for piano and planets and about to launch into a little piece for Maria ...
Posted by on Mon, 01 Jan 2007 10:21:00 GMT